Wellington is full of architectural gems like Central Fire Station. Photo / Patrick Reynolds
Wellington is full of architectural gems like Central Fire Station. Photo / Patrick Reynolds
In a new guide to Wellington architecture, John Walsh maps out walking routes taking in 120 of the city's buildings. Here, he highlights some of the significant landmarks on one of New Zealand's best streets – Oriental Parade. Check them out on your next stroll around the city.
Topography and history have combined to make Wellington the country's most citified city. The compactness that's a consequence of the shortage of flat land is complemented by the development generated by Wellington's status as home of the government and, for much of the 20th century, the preferred location for corporate head offices.
The density of Wellington has resulted in a walkable city organised around streets of strong and diverse character – main arteries such as Cuba St and Aro St, Willis St and Customhouse Quay, Lambton Quay and The Terrace. Architecturally, Wellington is a very legible city. From its footpaths, you can get a strong sense of a century and a half of urban evolution and of the design styles deployed by successive generations of Wellington architects.
For the civic stroller with an hour or two to spare, no street offers a better aesthetic return on aerobic investment than harbour-hugging Oriental Parade. A good starting point for a walk along New Zealand's best promenade is Inverleith, a graceful apartment building at the northern end of the street, at 306 Oriental Parade.
Inverleith Apartments. Phoro / Patrick Reynolds for photography and publisher Massey University Press for Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide
Dating from 1922, Inverleith was the first of a series of mid-rise apartment buildings built on Oriental Parade in the inter-war period when Wellington was becoming a more sophisticated city. Local doctor Francis Mackenzie and his wife Susan commissioned Inverleith from the firm of Clere & Williams. The building's simple Classical style is relieved by a column of bow windows and balconies that were added in the 1990s.
Another traditional style was used on the building next door to Inverleith, at 300 Oriental Parade. In this case, the design by William Meek Page was inspired by the restrained and rigorously symmetrical architecture of Georgian-era Britain. The brick-faced building was constructed in 1930 but, apart from its street-level garages, it would have fitted comfortably into the streetscape of early 19th-century London. Eminent surgeon Sir Donald McGavin commissioned 300 Oriental Parade as his family's home; it is now divided into apartments.
300 Oriental Parade. Phoro / Patrick Reynolds for photography and publisher Massey University Press for Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide
A generation later, Modernism arrived on Oriental Parade. A fine example of the twentieth century's outstanding architectural movement is Clifton Towers, the nine-storey apartment building at 202 Oriental Parade. Each apartment occupies an entire floor in the crisply detailed, white concrete building, which was completed in 1963. Architects Lewis Martin and George Porter fitted Clifton Towers onto a wedge-shaped site at the end of the row of Edwardian timber houses known as the Seven Sisters.
Clifton Towers. Photo / Patrick Reynolds for photography and publisher Massey University Press for Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide
Clifton Towers was built in the same year as the landmark Freyberg Pool, which juts into the bay at 139 Oriental Parade. Jason Lewis Smith of the firm King & Dawson took a determinedly Modernist approach to the design of the Council-owned pool, which features a butterfly roof, glass curtain walls on its long north and south sides, and small porthole windows facing the street. Architectural aficionados might recognise Freyberg Pool's familial resemblance to a building designed in the early 1940s by the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer: the Pampulha Yacht Club in Belo Horizonte.
Freyberg Pool. Photo / Patrick Reynolds for photography and publisher Massey University Press for Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide
Oriental Parade is bookended at its southern end by the Central Fire Station (2–38 Oriental Parade). The building, which was completed in 1937, is an excellent example of the Art Deco / Art Moderne style popular for institutional architecture in the years before the Second World War.
Prominent contemporary practice Mitchell & Mitchell designed a facility to accommodate nine engines and living quarters for 21 married couples and 33 single men. The building's decorative façade details include a frieze pattern above the appliance doors and fiery rondels on the parapet beneath the clock tower. Eighty-five years after its construction, the building is still in use as the headquarters of Fire and Emergency in Wellington.
Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide, by John Walsh, with photographs by Patrick Reynolds (Massey University Press, 2022).
