The fascinating history of Wellington’s coolest suburb

Saturday, 9 November 2024

Newtown today is synonymous with great coffee, thrift stores and as being a hub for people from diverse backgrounds. Dig a little deeper and it’s easy to uncover the area’s captivating social and political history, as André Chumko reports.

Newtown is one of Wellington’s oldest suburbs, home to Wellington’s regional hospital, the zoo and Government House. You may know it for the annual Newtown Festival in which the area turns into a giant street party in late summer; or more recently and more tragically, as being the location of the fire at Loafers Lodge which killed five people in May 2023.

Popular with students who inhabit the nearby Massey University, Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School and NZ School of Dance campuses, and widely considered a melting pot of different cultures reflected in the diverse eateries that line Riddiford St that runs through its heart, Newtown has become more gentrified in recent decades, though its working class roots are reflected in its popularity with a large number of migrants who still live here today.

Wellington City Council’s district plan identifies it as a suburb with distinct character and this year, as part of the Wellington Heritage Festival, local long-term resident and heritage enthusiast Claire Nolan ran tours of the area for the first time to small groups to give insight into its rich history.

Newtown’s heritage area covers the main stretch of Riddiford St. Advocates are arguing for this to be widened to include Green, Emmett, Normanby and Donald McLean streets.

Before it even had its name, Newtown was a large boggy valley inhabited by Māori of the Ngāi Tara tribe who lived in an old stockaded village called Te Akatarewa Pā, on Mt Alfred, part of Mt Victoria.

In the 1870s, increasing numbers of settlers began to move to the area. London-born Charles Heaphy, who went on to become a New Zealand MP, worked to establish legal authority over 36 acres between the streets of Te Wharepōuri and Stoke, Rintoul and Adelaide Rd. That’s despite local iwi opposing the move. The Wellington Tenths Trust has sought compensation for the loss.

Charles Moodie was a prominent early settler who is thought to be the person behind the name of Newtown. Moodie built a wooden hotel on the corner of Constable and Riddiford streets in 1876 and is believed to have said he hoped a “new town” would come about after it was constructed.

The first store in the Newtown area was operated by T Howell, a carpenter who arrived in Wellington in 1840 and opened his shop opposite the end of John St. He operated it for 30 years.

Henry Wright who built his house in the 1880s at the top of Mein St, issued a public notice around the area addressed to “epicene women” saying, “electioneering women are requested not to call here. They are recommended to go home, to look after their children, cook their husband’s dinners, empty the slops, and generally attend to the domestic affairs for which nature designed them”.

For a long time, farming was the main activity and source of work in Newtown. Around 1869 it was possible to arrange pig shooting at the Miramar Peninsula or to have a picnic at Howe’s Farm in Newtown. It’s been reported that some children who made their way there on school trips by tram would arrive in a weeping state, likely because of the long, bumpy journey.

Howe’s Farm in the top half of northern Newtown was bought by Alexander Wilson in 1877 on behalf of Walter Turnbull for £4000. Sections were sold off and houses were then built there in the 1890s.

In the 1870s town acres earlier laid out by William Mein Smith were divided. Many of the acres had been sold by 1863. This led to the creation of the suburb’s oldest sidestreets from the mid-1870s ‒ Green, Emmett, Normanby and Donald McLean.

That area represents “the old town of Newtown”, Nolan says.

The first steam tram came to Newtown in 1878 but noise was a big problem, so horse drawn trams appeared in 1882, replaced with electric ones in 1904.

The tram line was extended from the northern end of Adelaide Rd to the Constable/Riddiford St corner in 1879. Trams saw Newtown’s population increase to 10,000 people in a 30-year period and contributed to the further development of the commercial area.

In the 1880s there was a soap works, a leather manufacturer, brickworks and candle factories as well as the hospital which was opened in 1881.

Newtown School was built in 1879, followed by St Anne’s School in 1890. South Wellington Intermediate was founded in 1946. The earlier schools helped to increase and school the population in Newtown. The Irish were a big immigrant group in the 1860s and 1870s.

Today the heritage area of Newtown encompasses various styles of architecture which can be seen in Victorian wooden commercial buildings and Edwardian masonry buildings. Some of these date between the 1880s and 1920s.

Here is a spotlight on just a few…

Former Ascot Theatre

On the corner of Riddiford and Constable streets. This was the site of Moodie’s hotel.

It was rebuilt in 1916 as a picture theatre for £8000. Nolan describes it as a Victorian masonry building in neoclassical style. Some Rococo-looking figures remain on the apex. While the front entrance has been altered considerably it has an art deco resemblance in places.

The theatre closed in 1976 with the advent of television. It’s now offices and apartments with shops on the ground floor.

14 Constable St house

This two-storey non-commercial building was built in 1897 by A Little for Robert Clark, a coal dealer. It remains in private ownership today.

This Victorian terrace-type house is one of the very few of the style remaining today. It’s distinctive for its double-storey front verandah.

Sub-Station

A classical-style utility building owned by Wellington Electricity.

Built in 1923 by Higgins and Angus for the Wellington City Council and designed by the city engineers department. It was built to convert AC to DC power for the trams. Ceased operation in the 1950s, has since had a variety of commercial occupants.

Bryenton buildings

Four Edwardian neoclassical commercial style, multiple-storey buildings on Riddiford St, formerly owned by wealthy butcher Lemon Bryenton, addressed as numbers 140, 142, 144-146 and 150.

The largest one was occupied by Bryenton himself, who operated a butcher’s business there. He died in 1944. The front façade is dated 1896.

In 1909 The Evening Post said it was “a year or two ago that Wellington South remembered a pretentious brick building being erected for the local butcher”, indicating it had a strong and controversial presence in the streetscape.

The buildings have variously been used for things including a bookshop, tobacconist, billiard saloon and a pentecostal church. The buildings now are home to a barber, a computer shop and a Middle Eastern food market.

Boot Arcade building

A two-storey neoclassical beaux-arts style masonry building, constructed in 1908. It has two shops (now Black Coffee and a barber) with accommodation above.

The upper façade with its balustrades and parapet with urns is a very rare surviving feature in Wellington.

141 Riddiford St and Castles Chemist

Both built by Hawthorn and Crump (they also built the Langham Hotel and other Newtown buildings) for Wylie and Castle in 1898.

Number 141, a typical Victorian commercial shop, housed Wylie the grocer and a general store.

Castles Chemist at number 139 Riddiford is a Newtown landmark and its interior contains the original shop fittings.

It was the workplace of John Castle who emigrated from England. He started a business in 1888, having passed the pharmacy examinations. Two of his brothers and five of his children also trained to be chemists.

Castles is the oldest Victorian chemist in Wellington. Visitors are enthralled by its kauri woodwork, gold-lettered drug drawers, specimen jars, antique bottles and ointment jars bearing Latin names.

Former Langham Hotel

The most important and most recognisable anchor building in Newtown’s heritage shopping area is undergoing heritage maintenance.

It was named after proprietor Russell Langham and built in 1907, and fully fitted out and opened in 1908. It’s a Heritage NZ-recognised category one building, and fully strengthened.

The three-storey masonry building outstripped its neighbours in size, materials and architecture. It was the apex of Edwardian design in New Zealand. It’s adorned with embellishments, parapets, columns, cornices and keystones at the top of its arched windows.

It’s opened and closed in various guises including a boarding house and in the 1970s, as the Ashleigh Court hotel. It’s now apartments and shops. It’s unusual in that it’s been a form of accommodation for 90 years.

Green St

One of the oldest and the most intact Victorian streets in Newtown with very early villas and box cottages with little embellishments.

The first houses were built before streets were formed, so among dirt and with no sewerage. Proper sewerage was petitioned by residents in the 1870s/80s, with the inspector of nuisances sent to investigate.

The residents said sewage was oozing up into the playgrounds of the schools and there were frogs breeding in stagnant water in warmer weather. In 1898 sewerage started to be installed, 20 years after the first house was built in 1878.

Some houses had stables for horses.

The street was also a hotbed of politics. Labour MP Peter Fraser (later prime minister) held open air political rallies there in the 1920s. Newtown was a rallying point for working class rights and the Labour Party.

Emmett St

It was built decades later than Green St. Named after Christopher and his wife Emma Emmett who died in 1890 and 1885 respectively.

The Emmett house was demolished to make way for Emmett St, which was approved in 1895.

The area was sufficiently removed from the central city that working people could afford to buy a section and build. It’s an intact reminder of Newtown’s working class origins.