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The Canterbury College Board of Governors began planning for their first building in 1873, which they envisioned would include two classrooms and a large hall. They approved a design by architect Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort in 1874, but the project lapsed when no agreement could be reached as to where to build it. Despite already owning land on Worcester Street, dithering over whether the College should be adjacent to the Museum affected the establishment of its first buildings significantly.

In 1875 the arrival of Professor Bickerton, newly appointed Professor of Chemistry, finally forced matters along as the need for laboratory space became pressing. The Board authorized B.W. Mountfort to design a temporary laboratory on the Worcester Street site, though many still held on to the notion that a future joint building with the Museum was the preferred option. This supposedly temporary structure was constructed in 1876, and was known for being both ugly and inconvenient over its 40 year lifespan. Such was its reputation that it was nicknamed ‘The tin shed’ or alternatively ‘The realm of stinks’. Whatever its later drawbacks, the lecture room in the Tin Shed was the largest in Christchurch at the time it was built, and for many years it was used for public demonstrations and lectures, as well as for teaching students.

Eventually, it became clear that the Worcester Street site was to be the only site for Canterbury College. Mountfort was engaged to create the first formal building, which was a modified version of his earlier design, and included offices for the porter and registrar, studies for the professors, a board room, and a lecture room. On the opening of the first permanent College buildings in 1877, Professor Macmillan Brown announced “Hitherto we have done our work in old lecture rooms in Christchurch. Now we receive a local habitation, and pass into a stage of united existence.” By the time the University began to depart for Ilam in the 1950s, the city campus would reach over five and a half acres.

Despite the humble beginnings, Canterbury College was to grow into a significant institution with Gothic inspired buildings that many claimed were the envy of the country. At its height the campus would be home to a clock tower, a great hall, a library, the classics building, the Girls' High / art school, the chemistry building, the biological sciences building, the physics building with observatory, a school of engineering, the Boys' High school, a gymnasium, a theatre, a registry, and a student union building. The ivy-clad buildings would lead some locals to claim that Christchurch was ‘the Cambridge of New Zealand’.