ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 5, 1 October 1935, Page 13

ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

Neglect of Environs

IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED

(By

H.P.)

lu view of the completion next year of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum, and the near approach of the centenary of Wellington, there is a consensus of opinion that the City Council might interest itself a little more closely than it is doing in the improvement? of the environs of the building which is to mean so much to the cultural advance of Wellington. It is understood that, following upon the planting of the trees in front of the carillon tower on Arbor Day, a more extensive lay-out and scheme of planting will be undertaken next year, prior to the official opening in June next. The clay banks on either side of the carillon tower and the rough roads that curve oast the tower to meet in front of the* art gallery and museum will have to be properly laid out and constructed. This cannot very well be done until the heavy cartage work is over. That should be toward the end of the year. But it is not only the front bank between the Buckle Street frontage and the building that requires attention. There is still the matter of the removal of the cottage and the police station to other sites to be brought about; and so far the Defence authorities do not seem to have provided for the set-ting-back of their offices at the western end of Buckle Street to conform .with the new building line imposed by the city council in its decree of seven years ago. In other respects the environs of the new cultural centre are far from satisfactory. The Taranaki Street dank is especially unsightly. Part of this ground is occupied by a brick and pipe company’s works, while the rest, also formerly bricks works which obtained their supplies of clay from the bank at the rear, is now occupied by scattered cottages and a lot of waste land overgrown with gorse and weeds, with goat tracks up the bank leading to the Technical College. The whole neighbourhood calls for the attention of the authorities, and might easily be the first work to receive attention under the town clerk’s scheme of preparing the city for the coming centenary. It is a comparatively simple matter for the City Council to acquire property with a view to improvement or street widening, but having done so it appears to be a much more difficult task to make the improvement that was originally intended under the proposal. The City Council has during the last six or seven years acquired nearly the whole of the western side of Taranaki Street, between Courtenay Place and Buckle Street, but the old buildings still remain shabby and unpainted for the most part, and only where there has been any new building erected has there been any setting back, notably in the case of the Panama Motel, the City Mission’s headquarters and Francis Holmes Ltd.’s warehouse. Were there a more active policy the widening of Taranaki Street might become an accomplished thing by 1940. At the present rate of progress it may reach the same end by the year 2000.