It is the seat of the Dunedin City Council, providing its formal meeting chamber, as well as a large auditorium and a conference centre.

The second stage, built in the early 20th century, had not one but two auditoriums; this whole new addition was then officially designated the "Dunedin Town Hall", and the pre-existing office block became the "Municipal Chambers".

Following the population growth and wealth generated by the Otago gold rush, the city council decided it should build new and larger premises.

What was built in this first stage was a set of offices on the Octagon, with a council chamber and an observation tower, the latter intended as a lookout for the Fire Brigade.

[9] This first building has three main storeys, the ground or basement constructed of Port Chalmers breccia with the floors above built of Oamaru limestone.

There was a central entrance at the first floor level – the piano nobile in architectural terms - reached by a double flight of steps from the street.

The inspiration of the design, or at least its main elevation, is Michelangelo’s for the Palazzo Senatorio on the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, the seat of the Roman civic government.

In this the design parallels George Gilbert Scott’s for St Pancras Station in London which similarly mingles Italian and north European elements in an eclectic mix.

The side elevations were dressed to be seen, like the Octagon frontage, sharing its tiers of pedimented and then arched windows, Corinthian pilasters, cornice and balustrade.

The city council's profits from its trading departments during the 1925-1926 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition enabled it to undertake the project and pay for it with cash.

This impeded Lawson's intended entry from the Octagon to the spaces behind the Municipal Chambers, and generally made movement through the whole extended complex difficult.

The building was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete with Oamaru limestone cladding and was intended to harmonise with the Municipal Chambers which it physically adjoins.

Corner stairwells on the Moray Place front and comparable "towers" at the southward end give the main auditorium's building compartment a basilica-like form.

The Concert Hall's entrance facade is more detailed, and more closely matches Lawson's Municipal Chambers whose west elevation it joins, making a successful transition to the plainer side of the main auditorium.

The narrow Harrop Street flanks that western boundary of the whole complex while the eastern one, originally designed to be chiefly unseen, is bounded by the pedestrian walkway of Municipal Lane.

[19] In 1963, the top of the Municipal Chambers' tower was removed and replaced with a truncated aluminium cap, known as "the meat safe"[20] ostensibly for reasons of safety, but in fact as a prelude to demolishing the whole of Lawson’s structure.

After much public debate, this plan was abandoned in favour of making the additional provision by opening the compartment housing the Glenroy Auditorium internally into the adjacent Municipal Chambers.

While further reducing the capacity of the Glenroy Auditorium this would also allow linear access through the whole extended complex from the Octagon to Moray Place at the level Lawson intended, the first floor of his Municipal Chambers.

Philadelphia City Hall extends to enclose a courtyard, while Sydney’s interior plan does not have the transverse compartment of Dunedin’s old Concert Chamber.

The Auckland Town Hall, opened in 1911 and designed by the Melbourne firm JJ & EJ Clarke in a Renaissance Revival manner, is better preserved.

In Australia, apart from Sydney, the Adelaide Town Hall, built between 1863 and 1866 and designed by Edmund Wright and Edward Woods in a Neo-Renaissance style, is another parallel.

The Perth Town Hall in Western Australia is another representative of the type, designed by Richard Roach Jewell and built between 1860 and 1870 in a revived Gothic style.

The Concert Hall's symphonic organ, affectionately dubbed "Norma", was built in 1919 by William Hill and Son of London, and contains 3,500 pipes.

[29] Originally considerably smaller, though still an impressive 23 tons in weight, the instrument toured England and was set up in halls and theatres as part of a travelling vaudeville show.