'TOWN-PLANNING IN'39

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 70, 24 March 1914, Page 8

'TOWN-PLANNING IN '39

A PROPOSED CITY OF WELLINGTON. In the year 1839 there was no Wellington, but there was a plan, drawn in London by a surveyor who had not seen the ground. A copy of that plan,, prized by a citizen of Wellington, is headed thus: — "A proposed plan of the city of Wellington in the first settlement of New Zealand, founded 1839-40, containing 1361 acres, exclusive of streets and terrace round the town, thus allowing 261 acrefi for Government purpctes, squares, public buildings, hospitals, schools, markets, wharfage, etc., and 1100 acres for the colonists for building purposes, etc." The locality was near the mouth of the Hutt River, which divided the town into two parts, about equal in area, with only one "tunnel or bridge" to connect the two sections. It was a queer notion to have a town thus thrown around a river as if it was a solid Toad instead of a fluid. The scheme is a square with a severe system of right angles throughout; it i 5i 5 as prim as a ch«6s-board, and even the rectangular areas for markets, public building}*, the "president's palace," and other odd things merely emphasise the monotonous preciseness. At each corner of the city is a cemetery and a fort, and two of the burial grounds have prisons for the living beside them. There are many peculiarities in the plan, but above all the effect i fi the provision of the amenities of civilisation. Tho boundary terraces are shown as seventy yards wide, and a marginal note states .-—"The city surrounded by 1100 farms of 100 acres each." 1