The Newer Wellington

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 443, 27 August 1928, Page 8

The Newer Wellington

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

AN Aucklander who has not seen Wellington for some tmii‘ moves in the narrow streets with a certain curiosity. Tall buildings are climbing to the sky in the busy Queen Street of his home city in the North, but Auckland is not monopolising the building enterprise of the Dominion. Here in Wellington, too, new buildings are reaching heavenward. Though Auckland has far outstripped her m population, in many things Wellington is keeping pace with her northern rival.

\\ r ELLINGTON' seems at the mo- * ment to offer a greater architectural diversity than is evident in Auckland. This need not be a flattering observation; but it is a fact that out of the drab lines that etch the outlines of Wellington’s older business quarter are rising new buildings that seem to lack the gaunt severity of some we know in Auckland. The Aucklander frill see nothing to compare, in his own estimation, at least, with the towering mass of the

Dilworth building; but in the new T. and G. building, a massive structure flung to the height limit, it is nevertheless true that Wellington has a fine example of modern business construction. With the new National Bank building, it gives an old block a model frontage on three sides. Building permits issued in Wellington for the past two or three years have broken all records, and a new retail shop is at present being formed about its giant frame of steel, whence echoes the clatter of drills and rivetters across the city. In theatre construction Wellington is not lagging. There are two new theatres to Auckland’s three, but the foundations of another are now heing laid in Willis Street. Auckland, of course, will have two more new theatres in the city proper when the Civic Square and upper Queen Street theatres are completed. Speaking generally, the new buildings in Wellington seem hardly to be as. high as those of Auckland. Whereas nearly every new city block in Auckland goes to eight storeys, seven is the general rule in Wellington, though to this the new T. and. G. building is an exception. Further, it is a fact that, though Wellington has been enjoying a building boom, there seem even now to be more buildings actually under construction in the city area of Auckland

I than there are in the Southern city. I Like Auckland. Wellington has problems left to it by early civic legisla- | tors, who planned for narrow streets j with a narrow outlook. After broad Queen Street, the streets of Wellington, with shops pressed in upon constricted pavements, seem gloomy and dirty; but it cannot be said that the Welington City Council of the day lacks courage. A fine new sidethoroughfare has been created by the widening of Mercer Street, which has in turn a widened outlet to Manners Street. In time the crescent thus created will no doubt assume a commercial importance thoroughly in keeping with the name, Bond Street, which the far-sighted city fathers have bestowed on it. Altogether there seems, in the courageous methods by which Wellington has converted a dingy back street into a wide clean traffic route, a pattern for Auckland to follow with some of the narrow lanes off Queen Street. As the present lines of the mam shopping streets, such as Willis Street, Manners Street, and Cuba Street, can presumably be considered permanent, Wellington has an abiding problem in the congestion of pedestrians on her scanty foopaths. In Auckland the abutting fences in front of buildings under construction are bad enough; but in Welington these obstructions simply thrust a great proportion of pedestrians into the stream of traffic on the roads. Confusion on the footpaths is aggravated by the apparent absence of any orderly arrangement by which people keep to one side or the other. GUIDING THE TRAFFIC Control of motor traffic in the busier streets of Wellington is in the hands of the police, and one instantly misses the smart white gauntlets and precise signals of the Auckland muncipal traffic corps. Of course, there is not the traffic on any Wellington intersection that there is at either the Customs Street corner in Queen Street or the Grafton Bridge corner in Symonds Street; but the main city intersections appear busy enough to justify the suspicion that an Auckland traffic officer, jaunty and alert, would make motorists take more notice than they do of the more casual point duty police-constable, with his brown gloves and inadequate shako. On the trams, however, the casual observer will say that Wellington wins again. The standard fare concession card, by which one can ride to the farthest suburb for 3d, is a real boon to the worker, and the tram passenger is not pestered by inspectors as he is at frequent intervals in Auckland. In another phase of municipal enterprise, the establishment of golf Jinks, Wellington has given Auckland a definite lead. Wellington’s system of municipal milk supply is, of course, justly famed; but for the moment the golf course is commanding more attention, because it has been disclosed that it is returning a profit of £3O a week; and a municipal enterprise that pays in that fashion deserves all the encouragement it can he given. J-G.M. (Welington).