City Sites From the Sea

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 10

City Sites From the Sea

Record of Reclamation

Auckland May Yet be a Free Port

MUCH of Auckland City is built on reclaimed land. Where, formerly, tide ebbed and flowed, there are now acres of buildings, and the outward march of the foreshore has seen the old-time picturesque bays obliterated. Only by the contour of the hills rising from the waterfront can their outlines now he traced.. . Official and Commercial Bays are only a dim memory, while Freeman s Bay and Mechanics’ Bay exist simply as a concession to tradition.

TJECLAMATION has given the Auckland Harbour Board endowments of fabulous value. Processes, set in motion away back in the ’fifties are still in operation. Already they have redeemed from the sea floor 31/ acres of nearly priceless land, and more is yet to be accomplished. As the years pass cheap leases granted in the early days will automatically terminate, and the Harbour Board’s revenue from its leasehold will rise substantially. The city’s first waterfront quay was Shortland Street, and buildings erected where the South British offices and Nathan’s old building now stand commanded an uninterrupted view of the broad sweep of the Waitemata.

Drainage permitted the use of building lots between Shortland Street and Fort Street, and in 1859 the first serious reclamation project was undertaken, when tlip Customs StreetFort Street block was redeemed from the harbour. Further conversions of water to dry land did not follow until the ’seventies, when the Freeman’s Bay undertaking was begun, and a fringe of doubtful land at the head

of Mechanics’ Bay was consolidated into building allotments. Official Bay was on the western flank of Mechanics’ Bay, just under Point Britomart, while Commercial Bay was the deep indentation since reclaimed to form the maritime business quarter of Auckland. Between the two bays was Point Britomart,. a conspicuous eminence overlooking the harbour, while on the Albert Street side was Smale’s Point. Both these, like the picturesque bays they sheltered, were obliterated in the march of time and progress. Point Britomart was hewn to the gentle slope now forming Emily Place, in order that the site of the railway station might be reclaimed from the sea. At the same time railway engineers were piercing the Parnell tunnel, and with its spoil the ' reclamation of

Mechanics’ Bay was advanced a further stage. It is interesting to note that tlie first reclamation was accomplished in the days of the Provincial Council, which disposed of some of the leases on ridiculous terms. When the station site was wanted the Government commenced the work, but the Harbour Board finished the job, though the Government still insisted that property for a station should be set aside for it. The result is that the Railway Department, owning the Post Office site, and the railway station site, now possesses the only freehold in the reclaimed area. If it sells the station site when it moves to Beach Road, the buyers will possess freehold in the heart of an area iV- leasehold properties. On either side of the city area, in Freeman’s Bay and Mechanics’ Bay, extending reclamation efforts resulted in the creation of factory sites. The Freeman’s Bay reclamation, started in 1873, is not yet completed. The Auckland Gas Company’s site was formed in the ’eighties, and Victoria Park in the ’nineties.

Later reclamation in the neighbourhood is of more recent dale, while on

the advancing shore of Mechanics Bay there have been extensions within the past decade. Future efforts will complete the straight lines of the waterfront of to-morrow. Quay Street and its extension, King’s Drive, will be unbroken from St. Mary’s Bay to Campbell’s Point. Sites for timber mills will be formed on the outer flank of the New Western Wharf, and the Eastern reclamation, now broken for the benefit of oarsmen and yachtsmen, will be completed. Then, more even than now, the Harbour Board will be open to the charge that it has made a river out of a harbour. Certainly, it will have brought North Shore and the City appreciably closer together. But in addition it will have created for itself revenueproducing assets that may later allow Auckland to be a free port.