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From Capital Magazine

Disease, demolition, and developers: Three maps that shaped Wellington

“Proposed Extension of the City of Wellington 1877”

In 1877 Danish architect Conrad Seidelin – working under the pseudonym “Mr Darnoc” – drew up plans to transform Wellington’s waterfront. His imagination was fuelled by a big reclamation completed a year earlier, creating 190,000m² around the northern end of Featherston Street – almost a third of all Wellington’s man-made land.

The plan was a rejection of the closely packed laneways and squalor that characterised Te Aro. Seidelin’s map left the ghostly outline of the recently completed Queens Wharf in his layout as a reminder that his vision was of a modern city, rather than a colonial outpost; public facilities and businesses would have to make way. Ornamental gardens at Herd Street would have required the demolition of the recently opened Te Aro Baths, and warehouses around the northern end of Taranaki Street were to be replaced by a large piazza – a concept that has never really worked in New Zealand.

Wellington’s city councillors sensibly considered the design impractical and expensive: curved docks and further enormous land reclamation were luxuries the capital could ill afford. The proposal was rejected, and expansion into the harbour continued piecemeal for the next 50 years – a situation resembling the remodelling of Copenhagen, where many of the ramparts and lakes Seidelin wanted removed were eventually retained and are popular parts of the Danish capital today.

Seidelin’s vision is intriguing because it merges radical urban form with the streets we know today. The map was drawn before the railway arrived in the city, but the Government Building, opened in the previous year, is clearly identifiable the end of Lambton Quay. The idea of an accessible waterfront would have seemed fantastical in the late 19th Century – yet 150 years on visiting cafes at the water’s edge as envisioned is central to the Wellington experience.

Read the full story here - including old maps and how typhoid hit Te Aro