For most Dunedites in the 21st century the Stock Exchange Building, demolished in 1969 and replaced by John Wickliffe House, has become a distant memory.
Author Michael Lawson, who is writing a book for the NZX's 150th celebrations, said Dunedin's Stock Exchange Building was the "foundation" for exchanges to come and "where it all started".
The first association which traded in shares for the public was the Dunedin Sharebrokers Association, formed by Connell & Moodie, on June 30, 1866.
"This being, in effect, the first stock exchange-type organisation, this was a clear starting point," Mr Lawson said.
At the time of the Stock Exchange's completion in the late 1860s, gold rushes were still a vital part of Otago's economy, as it was only in 1861 that Australian prospector Thomas Gabriel Read found gold near Lawrence which ignited the best-known Otago gold rush.
His find followed that of a lesser-known Indian man from Bombay, Edward Peters, who discovered the first workable gold field in Otago in 1858, but was unable to properly capitalise on it.
Read's Gabriels Gully, just one area alone in Otago, went on to yield more than 500,000oz of gold.
Adjacent to the Stock Exchange Building were historical, austere bank buildings, long since converted, at least one of which still has a gold smelting room in its basement.
Former ODT journalist Jo Galer researched the stock exchange story for her BA (hons) dissertation in history at the University of Otago, which was published in the ODT in 2009.
The Exchange building started life as Dunedin's new Post Office and was completed - using Oamaru stone as construction material for the first time - in 1868, designed by William Mason, who co-founded Mason and Wales architectural firm.
However, instead of being used for processing mail the graceful Palladian structure, with its Grecian columns, moulded arches, and clocktower, was commandeered from the government for local use, due in no small way to the machinations of the colourful and controversial politician, James Macandrew.
As well as hosting within its highly decorative hall some of Dunedin's grandest early community events - including the 1869 citizens ball in honour of the visiting Duke of Edinburgh, with a veritable who's who of early Dunedin identities in attendance - it became the home of New Zealand's first university from 1871.
The University of Otago quickly outgrew the building and sold it to the Colonial Bank in 1877.
After the bank merged to become the BNZ about 1900, the building became a rabbit warren of shops and businesses with correspondingly awkward structural changes under the ownership of the Dunedin Stock Exchange Proprietary.
The Dunedin Stock Exchange, and its 48 members, moved from cramped accommodation elsewhere in the city into the Princes St building in May 1900.
In 1954, the government bought the building, promising future plans, but it transpired those plans did not involve keeping the building.
By 1969, the rot had literally set in to the ageing building in Princes St, and there were claims it was unsafe and an eyesore.
Research of internal government papers about the building's final decade showed how the then Ministry of Works had a deliberate and documented policy, not made public at the time, yet implicit in the slowly deteriorating building, of letting the building "run out", as the ministry termed it.
The Dunedin City Council of the 1950-'60s, along with business leaders and MPs for the Dunedin area, actively campaigned for demolition of the Stock Exchange.
The economy was precarious and they felt Dunedin's central city area needed a more modern image.
Ironically, after its demolition there was an outpouring of letters and soul-searching in newspaper editorials about what should replace it, and, more than ever, concern mounted at just how much Victorian architecture Dunedin was losing.
The legacy of the outrageously grand Stock Exchange Building's demise was at least a public awakening of the historical community value in many of Dunedin's earlier buildings, which likely later saved the Otago Boys' High School's tower and second University of Otago building from the wrecking ball also.
