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The Garden and Avenue are of such an age that even buildings that must be regarded as encroaching on them have achieved historical importance. The Houses of Parliament at the lower end of the Avenue were completed in 1885. The building was to serve for twenty-five years as the seat of government of the Cape Colony, but in 1908 a National Convention, consisting of delegates of the four colonies, met to draft a constitution with a view to the unification of South Africa. The first meeting of the Convention took place in Durban. Then, from 23rd November to 18th December, 1908, and again from 11th January to 3rd February, 1909, it met in a hall in this building, and it was here that the draft of the South Africa Act, which was the constitution of the Union of South Africa, was completed.