proposals in front of his architect sons-in-law, daughters and grandchildren for discussion and feedback. Anscombe employed a small office in Wellington which designed a range of work including residential apartments (Lyndfield and Olympus on Oriental Parade, Franconia on The Terrace (1938), Belvedere at the corner Austin and Majoribanks Streets), Hamilton Flats (Hawker Street) and commercial and institutional projects including: the Post and Telegraph Building, Herd St (1939), Dominion Motors, the Island Bay kindergarten, and the Lloyd St, Disabled Soldiers' Vocational Centre (1943). His work in the Hawke's Bay area included offices and a wool store for the New Zealand Shipping Co. Ltd at Port Ahuriri, Washpool Homestead, the Farmers Co-operative Association Building, Westerman & Co (1932), and the State Theatre (1933–34) with Vernon Brown in Hastings. One of his longest serving staff in this Wellington office was Mrs. Ethel Bulté, who was known as "Auntie Pat" by Anscombe's grandchildren. She was Anscombe's secretary and is remembered by the grandchildren as always wearing black, her "grey hair pulled back into a bun" with the appearance of being an "efficient secretary." She remained a friend of the family even after Anscombe died. Once established in Wellington, and after the extension of his office into the Hawke's Bay following the 1931 earthquake, Anscombe travelled to the United States again visiting the Chicago World's Fair for three weeks in July 1933. On this same trip he visited Long Beach, California where he was ""very impressed with the beautiful waterfront feature enclosing an area of of still water."" This influenced his 1945 proposal for a bandshell and amenities on a wide promenade wall to enclose of still water with an illuminated fountain at Oriental Bay, published in The Evening Post in February 1945. Such schemes were sometimes extensions of building projects as in the case of the Post and Telegraph Building in Herd St which shaped a proposed gardens in Chaffers Park part of a plan, which was realised, to extend Cable St as "a new approach to Oriental Bay." Anscombe also contributed to the discussion of the shaping of the Civic Centre, publishing a scheme in The Dominion in June 1934. In early May 1940, Anscombe anticipated travel to America and wrote to the Minister of Supply, Dan Sullivan, that he was "anxious to visit the United States shortly – primarily to visit both the San Francisco and New York Worlds Fairs – but