WELLINGTON’S FILCHED RESERVES

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4296, 4 March 1901, Page 4

WELLINGTON’S FILCHED RESERVES

The discussion at last meeting of the | City Council on Councillor Tolhurst's | motion has thrown wholesome light on the municipal history of Wellington. W c in New Zealand pride ourselves to-day upon the conditions on which we insist in the laying off of our towns. Vi e. do not allow any town to be laid off without reserves of one-tenth of the area for endowment purposes, one-tenth for recreation, and sufficient land for refuse .deposit. for storage of road material, for gravel-pits and for quarries, whence the citizens may obtain their building and their road material. Hut in the beginning of colonisation, the pioneers had considerably better views, as may be seen from the history detailed by Councillor Tolhurst. Tiie New Zealand Company, .over sixty years ago, while setting aside 1100 aerds as a site for the City of Wellington, actually reserved an area of over 1500 acres for purposes of recreation and utility. The Town Belt alone which they get apart represented nearly the whole! of that liberal acreage, and there were besides several choice spots dedicated to various purposes. Had this far-seeing plan never been disturbed, tho city would now be richer by about half a million sterling in value. Further, tho modern Act in its wisdom will not allow any new town to have main streets under a chain and a half in widln, or side streets less than a chain. So it was in the original plan of Wellington. But everybody who has walked up Willis street knows that the plan was long ago. overridden by incompetent municipal government. Sydney has the same story to tell, recorded in narrow streets and tortuous alleys.

Of the 1517 acres reserved in Wellington for recreation and other purposes, reserved not only in accord with the spirit of modern requirements, but far in advance of it, over 400 were pillaged by benevolent freebooters of various hinds, while the guardians of tho interests of the citizens and their posterity slept tho sleep of tho lethargic and the unjust. After tho city came into being, properly endowed for all i time, the philanthropists, short-sighted as most philanthropists are, who see nothing but their particular object, to which they think everything must give way, lost no time in making assaults' upon its equipment. They asked for 200 acres for native reserves; they insisted upon 145 for college, asylum ana hospital sites; they seized forty for a hospital and orphanage reserve, and they annexed five for the Terrace Gaol. Fifteen fell into their hands for a battery site at Point Jorningham; five were devoted to the Mount Victoria signal station; the Botanical Gardens, an observatory site, and the Mount Cook position (choicest of all) followed; and the city, bountifully endowed by its far-sighted founders, found itself robbed of 432 acres, with tho connivance of its guardians. That is the particular circum-l stance which makes the matter so dc-j plorable, for it put tho city into tha position of the spendthrift who has deliberately .thrown away his inheritance. There is this difference, of course, that the objects of this diversion of endowments were good; but they would have been as well achieved 1 by seeking land outside the city boundaries, at a time when land was cheap. At all events, the city might easily have had an equivalent from the same source. The fact that nothing was done to recoup the city for the pillage of its best lands stamps the management of the past with a mark that requires no embellishment.

Nothing but vast expenditure will restore a portion of the! originally intended width of our streets. Nothing whatever will restore the major part of the endowments of which the city has been so deplorably deprived. One portion of the debatable! remnant is before a Court of Justice, and cannot, therefore, as the Mayer very properly ruled on Wednesday, he the subject of comment at the present stage. The paltry remainder, which was the subject of Councillor Tolhurst’s motion, is all that agitation can concern itself with. Other towns, not more far-seeing, have had) some measure of restorative justice; for example, Auckland, which rejoices in the Albert Park, which has passed from the hands of the all-devouring military, and become a thing of beauty to the citizens and a joy for ever. Herd there are thirtyeight and a half acres of the spoil for which there are none of the original beneficiaries left. It is just that those acres should revert to their original purpose. The city was deprived of them for a purpose. That purpose is now among the things of the past. The original purpose of public recreation tc which these lands were devoted has the first claim. It' should bo tbe object of all sections of citizens to get them back to that original purpose. For tire stand ho has taken in tbe matter, Councillor Tolhurst deserves the utmost credit. He has proved his case up to the hilt. He has done so by an exercise of public spirit highly commendable, and the more so as it is in magnificent contrast to tuo apathy of the past. In doing so,'be has with considerable industry unveiled a chapter of municipal history which conveys a startling moral. That moral speaics for itself; hnt one part of it requires special attention from an appreciate c public. It is that if all the past guardians of thd city interests had been like Councillor Tolhurst, -Wellington would now have been one of the best endowed cities of the colony.