Before the builders, Hansford and Mills Construction, began work, changes were made to the original plans — the grand entrance hall was opened to the full height of the building and the Maori court moved to a central position on the ground floor.
The meeting house, Hotunui, was placed on the museum's central axis. Carved as a wedding gift from the Ngati Awa iwi to Ngati Maru, in Thames, Hotunui was handed to the museum for safekeeping in 1924.
The museum's construction wasn't without controversy. Aucklanders questioned the choice of stone used for the museum's exterior. Portland stone, a creamy-white English limestone quarried in the Isle of Wight, was chosen over rock from Sydney and even local quarries. It was rare for New Zealand buildings to use stone from the opposite side of the globe but Aimer called it "the most durable free-working limestone known". Sicilian white marble was chosen over its New Zealand equivalent for the interior walls of the Hall of Memories, engraved with the names of 7297 Aucklanders who died in the Great War.
The Cenotaph also stood at the centre of a storm. When the museum committee decided there wasn't enough money to proceed, the RSA was incensed; its Auckland president, Lieutenant-Colonel T. H. Dawson, charging the museum's committee with losing sight of war memorial features in their excitement to create a great museum.
"Here, with a cenotaph before the building, would be an ideal place for the observance of Anzac Day for all time and with all the glory and solemnity demanded. Here, 70,000 or 80,000 people could easily be accommodated. At least the association can protest against the museum being opened until its memorial character has been given more tangible expression," he was reported to say in the Herald.
A new fundraising drive raised almost 6000 for the 10m high Cenotaph to be built in time for the official opening of the museum on November 28, 1929. On completion, the museum project had raised 231,614 through public and government donations; the largest commercial donation, 50,000, was from the Auckland Savings Bank.
Governor-General Sir Charles Fergusson presided over the opening ceremony, knocking on the museum's front doors with a carved wooden mere presented to him by the architects. The Archbishop of New Zealand, Walter Averill, consecrated the Cenotaph in the Court of Honour before a gathering of around 10,000 — among them Maori chiefs, returned servicemen and women and next-of-kin of those lost.
In 1946, the Mayor of Auckland, Sir John Allum, proposed extending the museum to commemorate the 4702 Aucklanders lost in World War II, as well as those killed in the New Zealand Land Wars and the Anglo-Boer Wars. Draffin and his son Rodney created a semi-circular extension at the southern end of the building, completed in 1960.
Since then, almost every gallery space has been altered. A 12-year project completed in 2006 gave the museum a major modernisation, better space for collections and public use and a glass and copper dome at the top of the six storeys.
Future plans include enhancing Te Korahi Maori, the Maori dimension of the museum and increasing public access to taonga, boosting the number of collections on display or available digitally and upholding the museum's role as a war memorial.
While not everyone approved of the imported Portland stone that cloaked the museum, one special slab carried a degree of mana.
In 1926, the Herald reported the arrival on the Ruahine of an "ancient" half-ton slab, quarried in the Isle of Wight 250 years before for the use of Sir Christopher Wren - the designer of St Paul's Cathedral and one of Britain's most distinguished architects. The slab, bearing the mark of the quarry, was believed to have been wanted for St Paul's but was never used.
It now sits at the bottom of the museum's northwest stairwell, burnished by the marks of fingertips that have traced its surface for more than 80 years.