AUCKLAND'S FRONT DOOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 7, 8 January 1920, Page 6 (Supplement)

AUCKLAND'S FRONT DOOR.

OLD CONTROVERSY RECALLED HOW THE MAYOR KILLED THE SHANTIES." AN APPEAL TO CAESAR. An interesting story of the "Star's" vigilance for the welfare of the city of Auckland, and tbe widening of Queen Street right at the entrance to the city, where it really forms what in many towns would be called a "square," is connected with the defeat of a proposal which, if it had been carried out, would have made the front-door of Auckland a reproach and a bye-word for many years. The waterfront was a dismal place in those day late •'seventies." Below the Waitemata Hotel there was little more than a desert of recentlyreclaimed mud, and where to-day there are buildings that would do credit to any ■town, there were then only a few unsightly iron sheds. • It must be remembered that Customs Street was then practically the end of civilisation, and from there down to the •waters edge—and a not very savoury edge it was, with the sewer emptying it 3 discoloured contents tinder the long wooden structure which was then Queen Street wharf—was controlled by the Harbour Board, and was not subject to the building by-laws of tbe City Council, which required buildings in the city area to be erected in brick. When the time came to dispose of the areas that had been won from the mud flats of the Waitemata. the Board of the day, with a short-sightedness that strikes one today as being little short of heinous, proposed to put the allotments up for 99 years' lease with a "go-as-you-please" policy in regard to the class of building to bo erected. This would have meant anything from a tent to a tin shed, and the tenant-3 were under no obligation to do their duty towards the growing city in return for foeincc allowed to occupy some of the finest sites in the city right on the spot where new-comers got impressions that nothing would eradicate. The Mayor at that time was MrHenry Brett, and he at once saw that such a thing would be intolerable. Even then he saw the great possibilities of Auckland, and was determined that if he could prevent it the mistaken policy of the Harbour Board should not 'be carried into effect. Xot content with pointing out in the "Star" the terrible handicap such an array of shacks would be at the entrance to a city, lie at once took steamer to Wellington, and laid the

whole matter before. Sir George .Grey, who was then Premier of- the colony. "That would never do, Brett," agreed the great statesman, who was alwaj-3 keenly alive to the welfare of Auckland, for which he always had the greatest affection. "I'll have a 'Gazette' out before 10 o'clock to-morrow morning bringing the foreshore under the jurisdiction of the city by-laws." Next day the new regulation ™ gazetted, and what wouid have been an intolerable wrong was frustrated. In the subsequent leases proper provision was made for the erection of. buildings in brick worthy of the sites, and. perhaps, most important of all, the Council was enabled to widen the street to its present adequate dimensions, making, as wo said before, something of the nature of a "place" where there is so much traffic and such a of people on holidays and other occasions. But for the stopping of the sale as advertised by the Harbour Board we should have had ail sorts of undesirable shanties for years, and the City Council would have been compelled to buy out the lessees at a very high figure.