Courtenay Place, Wellington
Wellington City Council | |
Length | 450 m (1,480 ft) |
---|---|
Location | Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand |
East end | Cambridge Terrace/Kent Terrace/Marjoribanks Street |
West end | Taranaki Street/Manners Street/Dixon Street |
Courtenay Place is the main street of the Courtenay Quarter in the Wellington inner-city district of Te Aro.
Courtenay Place is known for its entertainment and nightlife. Many restaurants are open late and most of the bars stay open until dawn. It contains offices, accommodation, tourist shopping, entertainment, food, art and buskers offering many genres of free performance. Pedestrian traffic is substantial around the clock.
The arts
Every two years Courtenay Place is home to many of the
Downstage Theatre, founded in 1964, was New Zealand's first professional theatre. It closed in 2013.
Paramount Theatre (no longer operational) was until 2017 the oldest surviving cinema in Wellington, still with its original name. Originally a part of Te Aro beach, in August 1916 the location of the Paramount was purchased by John James Williamson. He arranged for architect James Bennie to design a picture house. The cinema closed down in 2017, following its sale to developers.[1]
Reading Courtenay Central Complex contains shops, restaurants and a ten-screen multiplex cinema. The 8,000 m2 development links Courtenay Place with the waterfront and was designed to complement the existing character of the strip. This project won the 2003 Property Council NZ Entertainment Excellence Award.[2] The site was originally bulldozed in the mid-1980s by Chase Corporation for the proposed Wakefield Centre,[3] but after the company fell victim to the 1987 sharemarket crash, the site remained derelict for years until it was purchased by Reading Cinemas. The complex was temporarily shut down for safety reasons, after the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake damaged an adjacent parking building beyond repair.[4] After reopening following the demolition of the parking building, the cinema section shut down again in 2019 due to further unseen structural issues.[5]
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (aka NZ Film Archive) was located on the corner of Ghuznee St and Taranaki St, a block from Courtenay Place. In 2019 it announced its relocation to the National Library of New Zealand on Molesworth St, due to earthquake concerns.[6]
In July 2011, Positively Wellington Venues, an integration between the Wellington Convention Centre and the St James Theatre Trust, began managing this theatre as well as The Opera House, Wellington.
There are two other theatres that sit just outside the Courtenay Place district, Circa Theatre which sits on the waterfront near Te Papa; and Capital E, home of the National Theatre for Children, which is in Civic Square.
Events
In 2017, TEDxWellington hosted 13 speakers and 1,000 delegates at the St. James Theatre on Courtenay Place.[7]
Gallery
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Reading Cinemas on Courtenay Place
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Courtenay Place's fire station
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Courtenay Place, leading up to theEmbassy Theatre. Rod's building (built 1902) is first left (pink)
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120 Courtenay Place with a restored facade. Settlers from China have been around Courtenay Place more than 150 years
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Camera on a tripod outside 5 Courtenay Place
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View of Courtenay Place looking back towards Mount Victoria
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BATS Theatre (next door to fire station)
Railway station
Courtenay Place's own railway station sat between Tory, Blair and Allen Streets bringing produce from the hinterland to the markets there and the milk to be processed before distribution from upper Tory Street.
Rail's passenger traffic took to the trams when they were electrified in 1904 and the station closed during the first world war. The rails were torn up soon after.
Early development
The north-eastern side of Courtenay Place was beach until the 1855 earthquake when it became swamp drained by the stream from the Basin Reserve between Kent and Cambridge Terraces.[8] The short-lived Te Aro Pa was at the higher end west of Taranaki Street and a remnant of a structure can be seen in situ at 39–43 Taranaki Street.[9] By 1870 the Pa site which once covered as much as 80 acres had been sold and subdivided. The triangle at that end was designated a Market Reserve. The inland Taranaki Street corner became Rouse Black and Hurrell’s carriage manufactory in 1859 (Hope Gibbons Ford lineal descendant) and the beachfront corner became Greenfield’s timber mill (Reading Cinemas) in 1862. The Wellington Gas Company put up its coal to gas and coke plant and gasometers on 3½ acres of reclaimed land in 1871 and their head office building beside it on the corner of Tory Street and Courtenay Place in 1898.[8] The Gas Company building is currently labelled KFC.
It is reported
References
- ^ "A century of Wellington's Paramount cinema". RNZ. 24 September 2017.
- ^ http://www.ignite-direct.com Archived 2 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Gatley, Julia; Hari, Kunal; Skinner, Damian; Clark, Justine (2014). Vertical Living: The Architectural Centre and the Remaking of Wellington. Auckland University Press.
- ^ "'Big Bertha' crane moves in for Reading Cinema car park demolition". Stuff.co.nz. 30 December 2016.
- ^ "Shops reopen at Wellington's Courtenay Central complex". RNZ. 17 January 2019.
- ^ "Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Wellington office relocating". Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
- ^ "Hasbro toy designer among list of TEDxWellington speakers". 18 May 2017.
- ^ a b Joseph Ward. ‘’Early Wellington’’ page 216 accessed 9 June 2020
- ^ Heritage New Zealand accessed 9 June 2020
- ^ Louis E. Ward. Early Wellington page 393, Whitcombe & Tombs, Auckland. 1929
- ^ Personal Matters. The Evening Post 13 January 1920 Page 8
- ^ Original Plans held by Wellington City Archives