WELLINGTON AS IT WAS
RETROSPECT OF 50 YEARS GROWTH AND PROGRESS OF THE CITY (Written for "The Post" by F.W.W.)
No great number of present-day citi-j zens of Wellington can form a clear | idea of what the city and its environs. | and the people and institutions of the i modest little town of fifty years ago | were like. As one who made quaintance of the capital of New Zea-1 land in March. 1886, I propose, witn the leave of the Editor, to make some attempt at enlightening them. If a fewwords of egotism may be excused, I may state that just at that time I came from the north to join the reporting staff of the "Evening Post." The paper was then written and printed at an! office at the foot of Willis Street, at I the head of the little covered lane that, still runs up at what we now know | as the Stewart Dawson corner. That j corner was then occupied by Mc- j Dowell's drapery establishment. "Thej Post's" public office was in Willis j Street, and the printing and editorial departments up the small lane, then known as "Post" Avenue. With the exception of Mr. Peter Georgeson, I believe I'am the only surviving member of the staffs then engaged in the production of "The Post," and it is a pleasure to note that Mr. Georgeson, though long on the superannuation roll of the firm, still attends at the office daily, for the sheer artistic delight of illuminating the contents bill put foi-| ward each day. as he has done ever since he succeeded the late Phil Corliss in that cl -city, upwards of forty years ago. "The Post"' was then edited by the late E. T. Gillon. at that time recognised as the foremost ; -'lahstin 1 New Zealand, and the ha :st-hittmg leader-writer within our r.icrcs. Besides that, he was one of the bestinformed men in regard to public affairs in the colony—we were not yet a Dominion. It was my privilege to serve under Mr. Gillon as sub-editor from 1891 to the time of his death, and then to continue in charge of the news section of the paper under his successor, the genial and (to his staff) paternal Gresley Lukin, until a change of occupation" took me elsewhere. This period covered the removal of "The Post" to its present site, though to a less handsome building than that which now occupies it, and also saw such revolutionary steps as the introduction of the web printing machinery and < the substitution of the linotype for hand-setting, with ■ the changes of system that these steps involved, and which it was my duty to organise. So much for egotism, and it is the last word of that kind that shall be introduced into the whole of the present series of articles. It is only used at all by way of suggesting credentials of some authority for dealing with that whereof I write.
THE BUSINESS AREA. Business Wellington of fifty years ago was little more than a fringe of warehouses a couple of blocks deep, running out from Lambton Quay to Waterloo Quay, bounded oh the northwest by Waring Taylor Street; then extending southwards through Willis, Manners, and Cuba Streets, as far as Vivian Street. Thence it tailed off gradually to Newtown by way of Adelaide Road and Riddiford Street, becoming more and more sparsely built upon until it virtually ended at Newtown Park. Everything between that point and Island Bay was practically country land, and the bay itself was considered quite a long-distance journey, which there was no means of accomplishing except on foot or on horseback. Courtenay Place hardly counted. On its southern side this street was almost wholly residential from Taranaki Street to Cambridge Terrace, and also from the gasworks, which stood opposite what is now St. James Theatre —the site of the theatre was then occupied by the United Free Methodist Church. The northern side of Courtenay Place was residential from the gasworks onwards, and beyond Tory Street, where now are the fruit market and warehouses. It was backed by a block of miserable one-storey hovels, always flooded in times of heavy downpour. Again, there was no sign of business places on Thorndon Quay— notihng but dwelling-houses from the Lambton railway station to the beginning of the Kaiwarra Bight. Lambton Quay was still commonly known to early settlers as "The Beach" that it originally was. For it must be borne in mind that everything from the line of Thorndon Quay, Lambton Quay. Willis Street, and to the seaward of the block immediately outside Manners Street, has been reclaimed from the harbour.
OUTLYING WILDERNESSES, Of suburbs there was none, unless one counts the little village of Kaiwarra, chiefly notable for its little hotels. Kilbirnie was another straggling village, and the only means of getting to it was "Shanks's pony," ?ither in a toilsome climb over the tfount Victoria saddle or in a stroll around the rocks." There the Patent >lip had already begun its operations, laving been installed by a Wellington :ompany. Lyall Bay, as a town area, vas unknown. It was simply a waste if sandhill undulations, without a ingle building upon it other than the lut on the beach of the strait, where he telegraph cable to White's Bay ank into the sand. The bay was best tnown as a bathing place to which he lads of the city resorted on Sunlay mornings for their weekly dip in he ocean. Miramar Peninsula had lot more than a score of inhabitants, •hiefly the employees of the cattle and heep run of Mr. J. Coutts Crawford, vho had been an early Magistrate m he city. On the frontage of the peninula to the harbour channel there was 10 building but the pilot station at Vorser Bay, which still remains, and vas then occupied by Captain Holmes, •hief pilot, and his crew, whose serdces were always required to guide ncoming overseas vessels in the port, lesidential settlement there really )egan in the nineties, wilh the erecion in the bay by Mr. R. A. Hearn. her. a master plumber in the city, of a ■ow of waterfront cottages, some of vhich still remain, and which were hen let to the public as a means of ittaining what he advertised as "health ind change at small cost."
EMERGENCE OF KELBURN. > Residence on the hillside above the : city ceased almost immediately behind i Wellington Terrace. Beyond that, be- j tween The Terrace and the Botanic, Gardens, came the endowment blocks j of Wellington College and the Method- j ist, body, then almost vacant, but long | since subdivided into building sections and built up. Kelburn was Moxham's j Farm, which was the nearest of a number of farms that were the source of the milk supply of the city. Some of the others were Fitchett's Farm, now Brooklyn West, that of the redoubtable Henry Bodley out at Korokoro, and others at Karori. and away towards Johnsonville. Kelburn did not become occupied until access was given to it by the Kelburn and Karori Tramway Co.. Ltd., which pierced the intervening hilltops with tunnels, and laid the cable tramway that has run ever since, i Then settlement boomed, and the picturesque suburb that now covers the area came into being. One remarkable feature of the construction operation." connected with Kelburn was tne formation of The Glen, which emerged
out of the levelling of the large knolls that used to fill the valley, their soil being spread by means of an aerial wire tramway until they supplied the habitable areas now so freely occupied by residences. An account of the early population statistics and harbour envelopments that have so widely extended Wellington's business area must wait for another article.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 142, 17 June 1936, Page 10
Word Count
1,294WELLINGTON AS IT WAS Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 142, 17 June 1936, Page 10
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