There is much joy to be had poring over a great map. And this particular map may be the finest in New Zealand to pore over of them all.
It’s a map of Wellington city first made in 1891 by surveyor Thomas Ward. Obsessive in its detail, it’s thought to be unique as a record of a New Zealand city for its time, and provides the visual structure for a very handsome new book, Mr Ward’s Map by Elizabeth Cox, published by Massey University Press.
It records a crowded, expanding capital city over 88 sheets, each the size of a poster. Over two and a half years Ward had walked every street of the city, drawing the outline of every single building. These included garden sheds and outhouses, but excluded hen-houses.
It includes details such as the number of bedrooms to a house, the building materials used, and every street light in the city. There are oyster saloons, brothels, the remnants of Māori kāinga, the ‘lunatic asylum’, and even salt-water baths near today’s Sky Stadium, or Cake Tin. It’s a kind of Victorian version of Google streetview.
And yet it’s not just Mr Ward’s Map - it’s also historian Elizabeth Cox’s masterful history.
Considering the city sheet by sheet, Cox doesn’t just decode the map for us, she brings the contents alive, highlighting the social groups and citizens of the city. Copious early photographs, drawings, and writing by the likes of Katherine Mansfield assist in revealing much of the excitement and diversity of our fledgling colonial culture.
Elizabeth Cox specialises in architectural and women's history. Running Bay Heritage Consultants, she has researched and written about hundreds of New Zealand heritage buildings, and was a senior historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Cox regularly works with the owners of historic homes, and previously wrote Making Space, a History of New Zealand Women in Architecture published in 2022.
