THE BATTLE OF THE SITES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 192, 10 May 1921, Page 5

THE BATTLE OF THE SITES

Sir, —The complacency with which certain individuals suggest alternative sites to the one selected for the Girls’ College above the Wellington College is rather amusing to those who know whalt influences are working underneath. Mr. Robert DaiToch, the mouthpiece-in-chief of the Wellington College Old l Boys’ Association (not in this instance the parervbs) at first suggested the top of Pirie Street, but finding from the Mayor that tho ground was earmarked as a playground for children, he saunters along the Victoria ridge and finds some more Town Belt at tho head of Constable Street, nicely exposed to tho prevailing winds from the south and north, and well away from the centre of the city. He offers this as the site with Columbuslike pride of discovery. In his anxiety for tho welfare of the morals of the students of bolth colleges, he would place them on the hill-top, four miles from the G.P.0., a spot where no one roams for pleasure, a windy, gorse-grown waste of Town Belt, which Air. Darroch has to be informed eveiy other day is inviolable, simply because it is Town Belt. Why should another area of Town Belt be “pinched” when, there is ample space on the College Reserve provided for the purpose? I am the father of two girls attending the college, and have sufficient confidence in their knbwledge of what is right and wrong—thanks to the excellent instruction they receive at the hands of Miss M'Lean and her staff—to take the risk of sending them to the college when it is erected on the observatory grte. Mr. Darnoeh's frequent reiteration of the one phase of the question apparently Dominates his objection to the site, decided upon and approved by the Minister, the Department, and the College Governors, has been nauseous to many people, and by stressing hie belief in the probability of moral contamination he is losing supporters eveiy day. I have personally visited the site, on the observatory hill, and believe it to be on admirable one from many points of view. We all know the value of environment. I believe the Basin Reserve is destined 'to be Wellington’s great educational and religious centre. The Wellington College already creates a certain atmosphere, and St. Patrick’s College on the other side of the Reserve lifts its gloomy pile impressively above the surrounding buildings. The site next the Boys’ College is earmarked for the new Wellington Anglican Cathedral, and the new Catholic Cathedral is also to be erected on the Convent site in Dufferin Street, both immediately below the .site of the proposed Girls’ College. Across the green sward of the Basin Reserve the brick walls of the finest Technical College in New Zealand are beginning to show above the ground, and a few hundred yards away the Education Department intends erecting the finest modem State school in Wellington (to replace tho three Mount Cook Schools, which have served their term). There is also the Buckle Street Roman Catholic Church and School in the same locality, and the Vice-Regal residence and grounds (on the southern side of the Wellington College grounds). This "congregation” of noble edifices, devoted to great purposes, must be regarded ns inspiring to students who are to pass half their school lives in their company. The site also commands a full sr.-cop of the harbour and city, and beyond that tho green barrier of the lordly Tinajforis. It' is within fifteen minutes qf 'Hataitai and Kilbirnie (by tram), amfsome twenty minutes of populous Lyall Bay and South Kilbirnie, whilst from almost any point within the city it can be reached in about twenty minutes by faking the tram to Austin Street, and walking along that pleasant, sunny thoroughfare directly into the college gates. I fancy that Messrs. Darroch, Denton and: Co. will have a very difficult task in persuading many to differ with the Minister and the Department, who should new insist that the board proceed with the work without further delay—l am, etc., PARENT.