Courtenay Place Heritage Area

Courtenay Place Heritage Area has a variety of settings, all of which contribute to the broad values of the area. Overall, the area is relatively open, with the wide streets and low-scale buildings responsible for that. This open character, not common in Te Aro’s streets apart from the wider arterial routes, is not unduly compromised by the odd large building. On the Wakefield Street side the New World supermarket and carpark block views to Waitangi Park beyond, which would otherwise emphasise the spacious aspect of the area; further west on Wakefield Street the taller buildings make more of an impact. Tory Street is something of a narrow canyon, opening up only its north and south ends. It also has a substantial carparking building on its west side, a dominant and unsympathetic feature opposite the ‘heritage side’.

Perhaps the most famous vista is the view east up Courtenay Place, with the imposing front façade of the Embassy Theatre and behind it the timber houses of Mt Victoria. Mt Victoria is an equally significant presence in views from Wakefield Street and Cambridge Terrace. While the southern edge of Courtenay Place has the buildings of Te Aro behind it, the northern side is a relatively short distance from the sea, albeit that the waterfront is now only partly visible from Blair, Allen and Wakefield Streets.

The broader setting of the Courtenay Place heritage area includes the second principal block from Tory Street to Taranaki Street which includes a number of significant buildings including the former Wellington Gas Company building, St James Theatre, and the public toilets in the triangle at Taranaki Street among others. The long view down Courtenay Place is arrested across Taranaki Street at the Hope Gibbons building although the views continue further east along Manners and Dixon Streets.

The wider setting includes the Te Aro area which is characterised by a high proportion of old commercial buildings of a wide range of purposes, styles and scales.

Courtney Place is a distinctive, popular and important urban space framed by, and containing, a wide variety of commercial buildings. The broader environs include historically significant areas and buildings along Cambridge and Kent Terrace, Wakefield Street, Tory Street and the existing heritage precincts of Blair and Allen Streets.

The plan form of Courtenay Place records the early evolution of Wellington and the imposition of the original town plan on the available land. The meandering north side of the space parallels the original shore-line (which was one Town Acre block to the north); the south side establishes an important reference line to the original Te Aro city grid. It is contained at the east by Kent Terrace, along the originally proposed canal route to the Basin Reserve and by the foothills of Mount Victoria, and at the west by Taranaki Street, one of the principal streets of the early town. The distinctive plan form is created by the divergence of the two generating lines and by the definitive stop end and rising terrain at the east.

Courtenay Place was one of the most intensively developed areas of Wellington from the early days of the settlement until the Depression and very few of the original 19th century buildings survive in any recognisable form. The characteristic period of the remaining heritage buildings is the early 20th century, with a particular concentration of 1920s and 1930s buildings prominent in the streetscape.

The buildings that now define the space are predominantly two stories tall and give the street a particularly human scale that is quite rare in central Wellington. There are some exceptions, including the seven-storey Courtenay Chambers and some groups of three-to-five storey buildings, but the general sense of the space is of low buildings and an open skyline along the key edges, an impression enhanced by the excellent sunlight enjoyed by the area. All of the buildings in the heritage area conform to the line of street boundaries and create a strong street wall along the edges of the space. These factors give the urban space an open and inviting character.

The ancillary parts of the heritage area have their own distinctive characters – Blair and Allen Streets are characterised by their generous street widths edged with a uniform collection of warehouse buildings of similar three-to-five storey heights and simple utilitarian designs (and entirely without pedestrian cover); narrow Tory Street has a collection of particularly interesting heritage buildings of quite disparate character, and the Kent and Cambridge Terrace buildings are set off both by the wide street space and the significant heritage buildings.

The extent of the Courtenay Place Heritage Area is shown in the District Plan, Chapter 21, Appendix 22.

Courtenay Place Heritage Area is the name given to a rectangular block of Te Aro, incorporating the eastern half of Courtenay Place, along with Allen and Blair Streets, the northern ends of Tory Street and Kent and Cambridge Terrace, and the southern side of Wakefield Street (at its eastern end).

This area has clearly delineated boundaries determined by the buildings and the grid-like streets they line. The area is tightly confined to the greatest concentration of heritage buildings – the eastern block between Courtenay Place and Wakefield Streets and the five streets between. The only street that sits outside this configuration is Kent Terrace, but as it directly faces Cambridge Terrace and includes a number of important heritage buildings, it can be considered a key part of the area.

Many of the buildings were constructed in the early-20^th century, particularly the Blair and Allen Street block, which was redeveloped from 1903 onwards, but the area contains buildings from several different eras and designed in a range of mainly Classically-based styles. A few buildings predate 1900, but there are no surviving buildings of any great age. Aside from Blair and Allen Streets, the most strongly evident era of development is the 1920s. Scattered infrequently are buildings of a more recent vintage, but few of these are contributors to the heritage values of the area.

The buildings are primarily two or three stories in height, but the southern side of Courtenay Place and some other streets – notably Wakefield and Kent and Cambridge Terraces – contain larger buildings. However, these larger buildings are the exception rather than the rule and the area remains distinctive for its low-rise character and open aspect.

Along with the former warehouses of Blair and Allen Streets, one of the most distinctive features of the area are its theatres (both cinema and live performance).  There are places as diverse as the Embassy, Paramount and Bats Theatres and Hannah Playhouse. Courtenay Place can be considered the heart of Wellington’s theatrical district.

1.1.1         South side – Cambridge Terrace to Tory Street

The south side of Courtenay Place is characterised by its continuous line of buildings between Cambridge Terrace and Tory Street which emphasise the original survey line. The buildings are diverse in nature and age but, despite some particularly intrusive modern buildings, have a high streetscape quality which contributes significantly to the heritage value and character of Courtenay Place as a whole.

Harper’s Building, on the corner with Cambridge Terrace, is a quite plain three-storey building; its only architectural features are the Art Deco cornice and window head mouldings, a regular pattern of fenestration and a chamfered street corner. It is adjoined by a long low modern two-storey commercial building of no particular interest and the former McDonald’s building constructed in 1911, which is distinctive for its two-storey high gabled façade in exposed brick, rare in Wellington, and for its lack of ornament in a period where embellishment was requisite. It has an ungraceful apartment addition which, although within the height of the original roof, detracts from the streetscape value of the upper part of the building.

Next to this is the 1927 Courtenay Chambers which at seven stories is the tallest building in this part of Courtenay Place. Although it is singularly out of scale with its two and three-storeyed neighbours, it is interesting for its elegant proportions and Stripped Classical version of the Chicago Style then prevalent for high-rise buildings and it sits reasonably comfortably in the streetscape for those reasons. It forms an emphatic termination to the view south from Blair Street although the particularly inelegant 1970s verandah detracts from the longer views of the building.

Courtenay Chambers is joined by two poor commercial buildings, the first a low two-storeyed structure containing Arty Bees and some eateries, which strongly detracts from the heritage, architectural and streetscape values of this side of Courtenay Place and of the area as a whole. Adjoining this is another two-storeyed building, No. 23 (containing Subway), that similarly detracts from the values of the area, although it appears to be a modern façade emplaced on a much older building.

The next group of buildings is rather more interesting and, as it is a group of old buildings that extends all the way to Tory Street, makes a particularly strong contribution to the heritage values and the streetscape of the area.

The Paramount Theatre is the earliest surviving purpose-built picture theatre in Wellington and continues in this use today. Built in 1917 to the design of James Bennie, it has a two-storey principal façade surmounted with a tall parapet that masks the large block of the auditorium beyond. The façade is elegantly composed and detailed in a lightly ornamented but formal style reminiscent of the Glasgow Arts and Crafts school. Although today not much remains of the original building beyond the façade, it is a very important building in the streetscape and retains high architectural and heritage values. New retail spaces have been carefully designed to sit within the building and the broader streetscape and reflect the original pattern of shop-fronts.

The next two buildings have a high degree of compatibility in form and scale and, although they are quite differently detailed, they share common elevation lines and have high group value and townscape value as a result. No. 31 is a small two-storey masonry building, currently housing United Video, which is distinctive for the composition of the upper level of the face in three identical bay windows. Adjoining this is the group of the Courtenay Market building (Nos. 31a-39). Built in the same year and designed by the same architect as the Paramount it has little else in common with the theatre. The street front of the building is divided into four identical pedimented facades, each with three windows centred on the upper floor and joined by a prominent horizontal cornice line which ties in with the next-door building.

This pair of buildings is joined by a pair of narrow and low two-storey buildings. No. 41 has a distinctive upper façade with square Doric pilasters at each side rising through a strong cornice and bracketing round headed windows divided by fluted pilasters, each capped with palmettes. Stewart’s Building is an even smaller two-storey masonry building. The main feature of its street façade is the complex bay window set within a segmental arch at the top floor. The streetscape value of this building is diminished by a clumsy, modern smoker’s balcony set above the verandah.

This group of low buildings joins in to the two substantial constructions of the Athenic Building and the National Bank. The 1923 Athenic Building is a tall four-storeyed concrete construction of elegant vertical proportions. Its street façade  is symmetrically arranged about a narrow central bay and features pilasters rising the full height to a pediment, with the intervening spaces divided between bands of windows and decorated spandrel panels. The decorative motifs on the pilasters and the spandrels are precursors to the elaborate geometric details that became popular with the Art Deco style. The National Bank, completed in 1928, is a tall five-storey concrete building with a Chicago-esque base-shaft-capital composition trimmed out in simplified neo-Classical detail above the street level and with an impressive Doric temple-like façade at street level, featuring fluted Doric columns and some interesting ironwork. This building is disfigured by a poorly-conceived modern glass verandah.

The last building on this block is the former Hoosons building, now occupied by Burger King. This is a three-storeyed concrete building decorated in a Stripped Classical idiom with Adam-esque wreathings and other finishing details worked in to the plaster. It is given distinction with its regular pattern of oriel windows on each of the principal façades, light ornamentation and the broad verandah which sweeps around both façades and helps emphasise the horizontal lines of the building.

1.1.2         North side block 1 – Cambridge Terrace to Blair Street

The northern side of Courtenay Place is characterised by its division into blocks, in contrast to the continuous street wall of the southern side, the more uniform scale of the buildings, and is particularly important for its close association with the important heritage precinct of Blair and Allen Streets. There are few modern buildings evident on this side of the street and it has a high level of authenticity in the streetscape for that, although the 1970s BNZ is a particularly intrusive element.

The somewhat Brutalist Downstage Theatre anchors the eastern end of the block with a strong modern presence but is carefully arranged on its corner site and proportioned to be compatible with the adjoining streetscape. It makes a positive contribution to the area. Heading west, the next building is the very modest and undistinguished single-storey Zico bar which is book-ended by the three-storey Westpac Trust building. This is a distinctive Art Deco building in Courtenay Place. Built in 1936 it has a symmetric composition dominated by a central fluted pier around which windows and panels of horizontal and vertical fluting are arranged to add considerable visual interest. The block is finished at Blair Street by The Establishment. This is a two storey commercial building completed in 1905 which features a well-executed corner entrance, but which is dominated by a modern verandah cum balcony that breaks the otherwise strong vertical lines of the building. It is finished in a minimalist Classical style that relates well to the nearby utilitarian warehouse buildings.

1.1.3         Block 2 – Blair Street to Allen Street

The next block contains a group of two and three-storey buildings. Opposite The Establishment is Hummingbird. A modest two-storey commercial building finished in 1907 it takes little account of its corner site with a very plain façade to Blair Street. The principal façade faces Courtenay Place and is composed symmetrically with paired arched windows set about a narrow central bay capped by a triangular pediment. A 1920s verandah wraps around both sides. The building is capped by an undistinguished modern roof-top addition which detracts from its heritage and streetscape values.

Next to this is No. 24 which, constructed in 1894, is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Courtenay Place. It has a simple but handsome symmetrical façade divided in two bays; each bay has two arched windows with architrave mouldings and a string course at the springing line and surmounted by an entablature formed with two further string courses and a small triangular pediment set against a plain parapet. This building and the next are largely obscured from view by modern bus shelters. No. 28, two storeys high and meeting the parapet line of the adjacent building, makes free use of Classical elements in embellishing its street façade which is characterised by prominent arched windows – a large bay in the centre capped by a segmental arch pediment set against an ornate parapet, which includes a rare surviving urn, and flanked either side of dividing pilasters with smaller arched windows detailed with architrave mouldings and prominent keystones. It is somewhat disfigured with a modern balcony on the verandah.

The building to the Allen Street corner, now known as Jet Bar, is another of the oldest buildings in Courtenay Place. It dates from 1901 and has an elegantly simple presence. The two street façades are characterised by the level parapet line and the tall double-hung windows, deeply set, separated with a regular pattern of simple pilasters; the façades meet at the corner with a graceful radius at the top floor and a chamfer at the ground floor which contains the main doors. The verandah was added in 1930. The aluminium window and door joinery is a recent addition.

1.1.4         Block 3 – Allen Street to Tory Street

The last block in the main part of the heritage area has two modern buildings and two interesting old buildings. The BNZ building is located on the Allen Street corner. This is a modern four-storied curtain wall box; although the curtain wall is enlivened with an interesting pattern of opening windows it is rather out of character for the area. Adjoining this is the curious No. 46, a narrow two-storey masonry building that sports an unusual combination of Spanish Mission and Art Deco motifs on its street façade. The main element of the façade is the pair of large arched windows, with the head of each arch in-filled with a large sun-burst pattern which contrasts with the rounded crenellations at the parapet line. The most distinguished building in this block, and one of the best in Courtenay Place, is the elegant Newport Chambers (1930), a four storey masonry building notable for its bold central three-storey oriel window and the fine geometric brickwork to the spandrels and parapet which gives it a distinct Art Deco character. The block is finished with the modern Sports Bar which runs along Tory Street. This is a three-storey development with a strange blend of styles, motifs and details. Despite the odd finishing it has a level of detail and patterning that is quite compatible with the old buildings in the area.

1.1.5         Other items

The streetscape of Courtenay Place is a visually cluttered one, much more so today than in the 1920s, particularly in its continuing role as a major transportation hub with the associated overhead trolley-bus cables. The street edges are marked out with custom-designed street lights, bits and pieces of landscaping and a wide variety of street furniture. The majority of the footpaths are covered in the now ubiquitous Australian paving bricks and have various marine motifs let in to them.

There are, particularly at the Cambridge Terrace end, a plethora of traffic lights, navigation signs, trolley bus poles, pedestrian shelters and other visual clutter that detracts from the quality of the streetscape. Contemporary bus shelters are particularly prominent on both sides of Courtenay Place, the majority placed strategically in front of important heritage buildings to detract from views of them. Strangely designed public toilets are found in the middle of the southern side.

There is a modest collection of public art, including the tripod sculpture erected by Weta Workshop.

1.2               Ancillary areas

There are three important ancillary parts to the Courtenay Place heritage area that contribute to the heritage, architectural and streetscape values of the area. These are the lower part of Tory Street (including some buildings on Wakefield Street), Kent and Cambridge Terraces and Blair and Allen Streets.

1.2.1         Tory Street

Tory Street has an eclectic collection of interesting heritage buildings and illustrates a variety of modern development techniques. The building heights vary considerably.

North from the Sports Bar, the first building is a beautifully composed little 1924 sub-station built in plastered brick and featuring a stepped gabled pediment above a central pair of doors, which are flanked by plain window openings, and the WCC logo worked in to a plastered panel above the main doors. Next to this is Mountain Safety House built in the following year. This is a substantial four storey brick and concrete building, notable for fine brickwork and elegant proportions. It has a simple composition with a central section of five window bays capped with a heavy cornice and simple pediment, subdivided into a central bay of three windows and two single flanking bays, flanked on either side with additional single bays, slightly recessed, which terminate at the ground level in large square openings. The next building is the comparatively small John Swan Picture Framer, a two storey building completed in 1900. This has a simple symmetric but quite distinctive street façade which has a full-height pilaster on either side and features a stepped parapet, three arched windows at the first floor (the middle window broadened into Art Nouveau proportions) all set above a shopfront with a door at either side of the façade flanking a large display window. It has strong horizontal cornice lines that terminate in striking large bosses at the pilasters.

The next building, Nos. 9-11 Tory Street is a group of three façades, all originally the same building , now all rather different in appearance but with some significant common features. At the ground floor, each façade has matching segmental arched windows with architrave mouldings and a small key stone joined to a simple string course. The central façade has one arch, the two flanking façades have two each. The façades differ greatly at the first floor and above – the northernmost, and most original, has four large architraved windows, two at each floor, disposed symmetrically below a heavy two-layered cornice. The next façade to the south has been altered for apartment use and includes a distinctive belled balcony with Art Nouveau-style steelwork railings (this motif is further expressed in the main entry with a Guimard-esqe swirl of organically flowing steel). It is framed with a shallow pilaster on either side, each terminated above the pediment in a ball. At the top centre of this façade there is an arched opening that contains further decorative steelwork. The southernmost façade is the most radically altered and features two contemporary steel and glass box oriel windows projecting out over the pavement. While interesting, it greatly detracts from the heritage and streetscape value of the group.

The final building of interest on Tory Street is Colebrook House, originally a three storey masonry building constructed in 1917. Today it has a very bulky and disproportionate two-storey apartment addition on the roof which overly dominates the original building.  The original building has a quite interesting composition symmetrical about a central bay and divided by pilasters, rusticated at the corners and vestigial Classical to the central bay. The two side bays have square-headed arch openings at ground level and rectangular window assemblies to the two floors above, divided by a spandrel panel. The central portion has bay windows at the upper two floors.

The corner building to Wakefield Street is the rather unimaginative single storey Tory Continental car show-room which has little to do with either of the streets it sits on; it detracts from the streetscapes of both.

1.2.2         Wakefield Street

The heritage area wraps around Wakefield Street from Tory Street to Cambridge Terrace to include buildings that add to the values of the area.

From Tory Continental, the next building is the Commonsense Organics warehouse which is the remnant of an old warehouse building. It is set well back from the street and makes no contribution to the streetscape values of the area, although it is of some minor architectural and heritage interest. Adjacent to this is the Paris bar, a dour little two storey box of no discernible merit. The adjoining building, dating from 1907, is three original stories high on its corner site to Allen Street. A very plain building, with little architectural feature, it is not improved by the recent addition of a fourth floor. The sculpted corner entrance to Pandoro Bakery at the ground floor adds interest.

Across Allen Street is the Panhellenic Association building, built in 1906 but extensively altered in 1942. A building of two parts separated by a party wall, the easternmost part (currently painted dark green) is least altered and shows how the whole building must originally have looked. The building is three stories high and constructed in concrete. The two principal façades have symmetrical arrangements of common features. The ground floor is set as a plinth and features rusticated walling and arched windows and doors. A cornice line sets this apart from top floors, which are modelled with shallow pilasters to each bay and a lightly detailed spandrel panel between the floors. The middle floor has pairs of square-headed windows; the top floor alternates large arched windows at the corners (and in the centre of the Allen Street façade) with much narrower pairs of segmental arched windows which adds variety and interest to what is otherwise a fairly plain building. The surviving original details that can be seen on the eastern part include unplastered brick walling and fairly elaborate head mouldings to the upper floor windows.

The last building on the block, on the corner of Blair Street is a three storey masonry building. It is characterised by the prominent expressed columns on the main facades, the trimming beam to the top which, in lieu of a pediment, is ornamented with dentils underneath, and the gently rounded windows which give the utilitarian design a little Art Nouveau hint.  It is topped by a heavy-handed two-storied roof-top addition which although of architectural interest in itself has little to do with the building and perches uneasily atop it.

The next short block contains the two most ornamented buildings in the Wakefield Street part of the heritage area. The corner building (Zino’s) has two matching façades articulated around a chamfered corner that contains the main ground floor entrance. It is three stories high with an austere ground floor; the principal decoration is to the top two floors and consists of double-height Corinthian pilasters rising to a cornice and reflected above the cornice in the parapet with pinnacles of an Art Nouveau flavour. The walls and spandrel panels are finished with rough-cast plaster between the windows which adds textural interest to the façade. Abutting this building is the narrower Café Wakefield building which was constructed in 1908. Much the same height as its neighbour, the floor levels are quite different and the elevations do not line through neatly. It is designed and detailed in a style quite compatible with its larger neighbour. Next to this is the YHA building (described in the section on Kent and Cambridge Terraces) which strongly detracts from the quality of this block.

1.2.3         Kent and Cambridge Terraces

These two streets form an important adjunct to the Courtenay Place heritage area and contain a collection of significant heritage buildings in groups clustered from Wakefield Street to Alpha Street. Perhaps the most important part of this area is that between Wakefield Street and Courtenay Place which contains a distinctive Wellington streetscape little changed since the 1930s and features the landmark Taj Mahal building.

Excepting the Downstage Theatre, the key buildings in this part of the heritage area all precede the World War II and are diverse in purpose, scale and style. They reflect many of the varied uses that Courtenay Place has been put to over the years and its ongoing role as one of Wellington’s major public areas and its importance as a central part of the city.

Two modern buildings significantly detract from the streetscape and architectural values of this part of the heritage area – the New World supermarket, which was inexplicably allowed to block the view to the waterfront from the two Terraces and the poor and overly dominant apartments at No. 5 Kent Terrace. The redressed modern YHA building at the Wakefield Street corner also detracts from the values of the area, although to a lesser extent than the other two buildings.

1.2.4         Kent Terrace

The buildings included in the heritage area along Kent Terrace, with one notable exception, have high heritage values and are important buildings in Wellington.

The northernmost building in the area is the Wellington Central Fire Station, which was built in 1937 and which remains in its original use today. A long three storied building, it has a symmetrical composition with wings either side of the heavily-glazed central engine bay and is notable for its Moderne street elevation and Deco clock tower, which incorporates the original Wellington Town Hall Clock. Adjoining this is the well-known Bats Theatre, a small three-storied Stripped Classical concrete building constructed in 1924 with a strong symmetrical composition in three bays. Overshadowing this pair and the block as a whole is a particularly gruesome 9-storey modern apartment building which, although it features a base in scale with the two adjacent heritage buildings and has a symmetrical composition, is quite unsympathetic and strongly detracts from the heritage, architectural and streetscapes value of the area. The next building to the Marjoribanks Street corner is the gracefully rounded Clemenger BBDO building which is three original streamlined Moderne stories high with a modern mirror-glass roof-top addition and is distinctive for its horizontal emphasis developed with strong projecting curvilinear balconies and for its simple regular pattern of fenestration.

Opposite stands the Embassy Theatre, a commanding presence in the Courtenay Place streetscape for its large scale appropriate to its position centred on the eastern end of the space. This concrete building, constructed in 1924 in a very formal Stripped Classical style, features a three storey front block, symmetrically composed about a prominent central bay and backed with a large flat wall to the auditorium which rises a further three stories. Adjacent to the this is the Wellington Motorcycles building, a three storey concrete building with light Art Deco details to the façade. It is surmounted by a distinctive curved pediment which is not original to the building.

On the island between Kent and Cambridge Terraces stands one of Wellington’s special buildings, the Taj Mahal, a former public toilet built in 1928 and converted to hospitality use in recent times. This small single storey building is distinctive on the exterior for its domes and its simple Raj-style Stripped Classical decoration. It is an important local landmark.

1.2.5         Cambridge Terrace

The northernmost building on Cambridge Terrace is the recently refurbished YHA, a modern seven-storey building which detracts from the qualities of the heritage area with its poor treatment of the corner site and bland contemporary materials and colours. The other end of this block is strongly anchored by the Downstage Theatre, a formidable 1970s building with a high level of architectural integrity and heritage value in its own right and a strong presence in the streetscape. Between these buildings is an important surviving group of three modest turn of the century commercial buildings. Adjoining the YHA and co-opted to the same use is the former Rolle House (1908), a three storey masonry building with an unornamented but nevertheless formal and symmetrical composition. It has a heavy-handed modern single-storey roof-top addition and verandahs which detract somewhat from its heritage values. The former Caesar’s Palace is a building of almost identical scale, but carried out in richly embellished Italian Palazzo style. Until recently, this building had very high heritage values, but extensive ongoing changes and development proposals have affected, and will significantly detract from, the heritage, architectural and streetscape values of this building and the group as a whole. The third building, housing Origin Design and Thonet, is a quite plain two-storey brick building, simply composed and detailed and with an asymmetric modern roof-top addition that somewhat helps it relate to the adjoining Downstage Theatre.

On Cambridge Terrace, south from Courtenay Place, is the former Wellington East Post Office (now known as Oriental Chambers, principally a back-packers hotel). An original eight stories high, it was for many decades the tallest building at this end of the city and, with its modern roof-top additions, remains among the highest in the area. The principal façade is symmetrically composed about a main central block with recessed wings on either side. It contains an intriguing blend of Classical and Art Deco motifs in its design, highlighted in the juxtaposition of characteristic Deco set-backs and vertical proportions to the two wings, the strong neo-Classical composition of the central block, all resting on a Classically inspired base which is particularly distinctive for the giant arches which flank the Ionic pilasters dividing the façade and which support the “entablature” which includes a clock and the Post Office crest.

1.3               Blair Street and Allen Street

The key heritage, architectural and streetscape characteristics of these two streets lie in the substantially uniform collection of two-to-three storied warehouse buildings, all of a similar era, scale and utilitarian style set along broad open streets; the width of the streets is emphasised by the absence of pedestrian cover, which enables the buildings to be appreciated as they were designed. The growing popularity of inner-city living has resulted in a plethora of roof-top additions to these buildings which, although executed in a variety of styles and with a common lack of architectural achievement, are mostly in proportion to the original buildings and do not detract greatly from the character or heritage values of the streets.

Many of the buildings between the streets are the same buildings, some with two street addresses.

1.3.1         Blair Street

The first group of buildings from the Wakefield Street corner of Blair Street, although of a mixture of styles and detail, are notable for their very similar elevation lines, created by very similar floor heights and a nearly uniform parapet line, and proportions which create a strong street wall and confer a high streetscape value on the group.

At the east side of Blair Street, the first building back from the Wakefield Street corner was built as a separate part of the former Rolle House on Cambridge Terrace and, three stories tall, essentially mirrors the plain but elegant composition, well-balanced proportions and design details of the other street façade. Adjoining this a matched pair of 1905 buildings, detailed with a light Beaux Arts touch, which together create a symmetrical three-storey façade of six bays. The ground floor bays of both buildings have rounded square arches which are reflected in the rounded windows at the two top corners. The two end bays are brought forward of the line of the columns and feature strong architrave mouldings, keystones and a small horizontal pediment at the top as well as wreaths to the spandrel panels. The middle bays are recessed slightly behind the column lines and are distinctive for the bracketing to the entablature. The next building, completed in 1906 shares a high commonality of elevation lines but is very plainly detailed with only a prominent dentilled cornice and modest window hoods to enliven the expressed structural grid.

The last building before the Courtenay Place corner, four stories high and relatively plain, is the 1924 extension of the former bank (now The Establishment) on the corner. It has been converted to apartments and has balconies jutting from each of the top three floors.

On the west side, the first building back from Wakefield Street extends through to Allen Street and has a matching pair of façades. Built as part of the Wellington Produce Exchange in the 1920s, it is a tall and wide three-storey building with  a distinctly modern design, albeit very plain in detail. The façades are divided into regular bays with pilasters and the first floor and roof lines are marked with strong horizontal elements. The last building before the Courtenay Place corner is the earlier section of the Produce Exchange, completed in 1905, which also goes through to Allen Street with a matching façade on that street. It is two storeys tall and composed in a formal but spare Edwardian Classical style featuring blocked pilasters, strong square architraving to the openings, a very prominent cornice line at the first floor and a particularly distinctive central entrance in the façade featuring a triangular pediment on corbels. It was originally capped on both streets with an elaborate parapet, long since removed.

1.3.2         Allen Street

On the east side of Allen Street, the first building back from the Panhellenic Association building is the eastern façade of the newer Wellington Produce Exchange building, adjoined by the older Produce Exchange building. The gap to the corner building at Courtenay Place is filled with a small plain concrete two-storeyed former warehouse, constructed in 1936.

On the west side of Allen Street, the first building back from Wakefield Street, housing Masala, is a three-storey companion to the corner building with a similar plainness of style and lack of detail, completed in 1906. The floor levels differ, but the cornice line and the line of the modern fourth storey align closely and give the pair some streetscape presence. Next to Masala and built in the same year is a considerably more elaborate two-storey building (Nos. 14-16) which has a slightly Italianate appearance. It has a distinctive façade composed in five bays (one slender bay at the left containing the main door, steps and a narrow window at the first floor and four main bays, each with a loading dock at the ground floor surmounted by a generous round-headed window at the first floor) and trimmed with a large projecting dentilled cornice below a plain parapet. The window head moulds are all run together to emphasise the shape of the windows. That the main roof is visible above the parapet suggests that a more elaborate parapet was previously removed.

Next door to this is the former Wellington Performing Arts Centre, a two storey masonry building unique in the street for its asymmetric composition. This building appears in two parts, with the small part on the right-hand side reading as an infill section between the main left part and the adjoining warehouse. The composition of the façade is best understood from the first floor where the main part of the building is composed in three bays, a central bay containing five identical arched windows and two flanking bays containing a single arched window each. The bays are given prominence by the wall sections between them being recessed. On the ground floor, the first bay on the left hand side has a narrow entry way set next to a broad segmental arch, the central bay has a section of wall with two round-headed windows and two loading docks and the right hand bay has the most peculiar feature of the building, a great round arch which is only partly rusticated.

The last building in the block before the BNZ on Courtenay Place is the Courtenay Arms, until recently a two-storey building, now inflated to six storeys with a modern roof-top apartment addition. The base building has a simple composition in a five bay façade consisting of three central bays emphasised with a cornice and step in the parapet at the first floor flanked by two single bays on either side.

Not available

Not available

Not assessed

The architectural and aesthetic value of the Courtenay Place Heritage Area is derived from its townscape quality which is significant for the consistency and quality of the buildings, the range of heritage on display and the low-rise and open character of the area. There are excellent examples of buildings from the late Victorian period to the present day, with a particular concentration of buildings of the first two decades of the 20th century. Blair and Allen Streets, in particular, contain buildings of a relatively uniform height and scale and while their design often varies, the common purpose and architectural character of each building is such that they form a compatible whole. As befits the nature of the uses these buildings were intended for, they lack extensive decoration, which enhances their visual cohesiveness and demonstrates on a fundamental level the link between use and design. Together these two streets have a strong sense of place that enhances the heritage value of the wider area. While the remainder of the area, particularly Courtenay Place itself, contains buildings of much greater variety in age, style and scale, this contrast plays a key part in the overall heritage value of the Courtenay Place Heritage Area. Because the buildings in this area have remained in reasonably authentic condition for up to a century or more, they provide a valuable record of commercial, warehouse and office building technology from the late 1890s onwards. The work of many notable Wellington architects is represented by buildings in Courtenay Place and environs.

The historic significance of this area lies to a considerable degree in the sheer diversity of its history. It has been a place of industry, commerce, entertainment, transport and living, and while Courtenay Place and its associated streets bear no evidence of their swampy beginnings, there is an overall theme of continuous historical development that adds to its obvious visual quality. Against a backdrop of anxiety about poor housing and unsanitary living conditions, the transformation of the area surrounding what was Grainger Street into a warehousing precinct in the early 1900s was a calculated and historically significant attempt at urban renewal. Blair and Allen Streets also have important historic value as the focal point of the area that housed the wholesale produce markets for the city for approximately 90 years, from shortly after the turn of the century until 1993. The markets saw an immense amount of life, some of it when the city was otherwise quiet in the early hours of the morning, and they brought into the area a wide variety of characters, including growers, wholesalers, auctioneers, retailers, truckies and others. The markets strongly influenced the growth and development of this part of the city, and left behind an important legacy of Edwardian warehouse buildings.

The heritage area has a recorded history that spans several centuries and is likely to have high archaeological value. Because the buildings in this area have remained in reasonably authentic condition for up to a century or more, they provide a valuable record of commercial, warehouse and office building technology from the late 1890s onwards. The work of many notable Wellington architects is represented by buildings in Courtenay

Courtenay Place’s growing social value had its origins in the theatres, hotels and cafés that appeared in the 20th century. Today it is Wellington’s premier night spot and nationally (and even internationally) famous for that. Its theatres have long been a significant part of the city’s cultural life and include landmark buildings such as the Embassy Theatre (1924) and Hannah Playhouse (1974), and the historically significant Paramount (1917), Wellington’s oldest surviving picture theatre.

The Courtenay Place Heritage Area contains significant number of buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a good example of an early 20th century NZ commercial streetscape, and contributes to the continuity and sense of place of Wellington city and the Wellington Region.

{64DC70B4-B5DA-4CC2-A689-12F017851E91}

Not assessed

Not available

Not available