Clarendon Tower was a high rise building on Worcester Street at Oxford Terrace[1] in the Christchurch Central City, New Zealand.

Brittan sold his building in 1859 to Irish migrant Rowland Davis, who obtained a liquor licence and enlarged the house.

Joseph Clarkson Maddison was the architect and he designed the three-storey building in Renaissance Revival style.

[3] Maddison was a notable architect in Christchurch at the time and designed 14 hotels over a period of 28 years (including Warner's[4] and Carlton Hotels[5]), the Old Government Building[6] and the buildings for the New Zealand International Exhibition in 1906 in Hagley Park.

[8] Some notable people stayed in the hotel, including the Duke of Edinburgh (1869), Lee Kuan Yew (the 1st Prime Minister of Singapore), King George VI (1948), Queen Elizabeth II (1954) and the Queen Mother (1958).

Eventually, the Christchurch City Council suggested that the façade be retained with the redevelopment as an office high rise building.

Local artist Bill Sutton described the new creation as "a boy with his trousers around his ankles", a comment which many agreed with, whilst others were grateful for the retention of the historic façade.

[12] In 2019 a competition was made for a design to replace the Clarendon Tower and reinstate the historic façade, the winner was architecture firm FourFourSixSix but so far no progress has started on the site.