Newmarket, New Zealand

Newmarket

Broadway, the main street of Newmarket.
Basic information
Local authority Auckland Council
Date established 1840s
Facilities
Train station(s) Newmarket Train Station
Surrounds
North Parnell
Northeast Broadway Park
East Remuera
Southeast Remuera
South Epsom
Southwest Mount Eden
West Grafton
Northwest (Auckland Domain)

Newmarket is an Auckland suburb to the south-east of the central business district. With its high building density, especially of retail shops, it is considered New Zealand's premier retailing area,[1] and a rival of local competitor Auckland CBD.

While as early as 1873, Newmarket has been referred to as a 'suburb' of Auckland,[2] in fact until the amalgamation of the borough councils into Auckland City Council in 1989, local governance was by the Newmarket Borough Council, with its own Mayor. The borough, while one of the smallest in the Auckland Region, was also one of the busiest. This is especially true of Broadway, the main street, which has large shopping centres and smaller retail tenancies (with a total of over 400 stores as of mid-2010),[3] two movie theatres, and numerous restaurants, bars and cafés.

History

Maori beginnings

The Maori called this area, particularly the south of the current Newmarket, Te Tī Tūtahi, 'the cabbage tree standing alone' or 'the cabbage tree of singular importance', referring to a tree which stood on the corner of Mortimer Pass and Broadway (according to other references at the corner of Clovernook Road and Broadway) until 1908.[4] Some of the cabbage trees in the area are descended from this tree, after Alfred Buckland rescued a portion and replanted trees around Newmarket and as far away as Bucklands Beach.[4]

In the general area of Nuffield Street / Mahuru Street, no remnants today are visible of the Mahuru Spring, once sacred to the local Maori iwi. It is noted that the spring was named after the Maori word for the season of spring.[4]

European settlement

The earliest subdivision of land in this location took place in June 1841. In 1842 Epsom Road was formed, running from the bottom of town up through Parnell towards the middle of the Auckland isthmus. This was later called Manukau Road before being given its current name, Parnell Road. The position of Newmarket at the start of several major roads to the east and south, including Great South Road, was to strongly influence its character as a transport hub and "Gateway to the South".[4]

In 1845 Khyber Pass Road was formed and the intersection of these three roads was called "Hobson's Bridge" referring to a small wooden bridge that crossed over "Hobson's creek" (more or less where the railway track passes near the Olympic Swimming Pool). A very small bridge was the most noteworthy landmark of the area, giving some idea of the rather empty nature of the landscape.

Around 1851 this area received the name Newmarket because it was the site of the 'New Market' for livestock. Farmers would drive their stock up the Manukau, Great South, or Remuera Roads to the market which was better situated than the earlier stock market in Auckland proper. The presence of the a local railway station connecting it with Auckland, opened in 1873 after the completion of the first Parnell Tunnel,[2] was also a great advantage. The market was located to the south of Remuera Road and east of Manukau Road.

Overlooking Newmarket on a bluff to the south east is a 19th Century wooden House in the Gothic style called Highwic. The home of a local businessman Alfred Buckland, Highwic is now owned by the Auckland Council and administered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Another piece of Auckland land owned by Alfred Buckland located further out of town is still called "Bucklands Beach".

Thriving suburb

Newmarket's Broadway around 1950.

The main road of Newmarket is called Broadway. Originally Manukau Road it was renamed Broadway in late 1912 by the Newmarket Borough Council to reflect the fact that it was no longer a muddy dusty slushy street.[5] The Broadway Cinema opened in 1911 as the Adelphi Theatre and changed its name in early 1915. The picture hall was a brick and corrugated iron shed linked by a passage to a retail block on Broadway. The cinema lasted until late 1925. Like its New York namesake, Newmarket's Broadway developed a rather bright 'Moderne' flashy image in the 1930s & 1940s and by the 1960s had the biggest collection of neon signs in the country.

The Olympic Swimming Pool was constructed in 1939 to the designs of the borough engineer N. F. Alcock. This Art deco building was opened by the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon William Parry in 1940. As well as being the borough's only public amenity the Olympic sized swimming pool was a great asset for the whole of Auckland. Over the years it has been well used and facilitated the hosting of many sporting events by Auckland including the Empire Games in 1950. Recently the pool's streamline art deco form was considerably changed when a cinema complex was built over the pool, which was previously open to the sky. To the north of the Olympic Swimming Pools is the Olympic Park War Memorial.

Located to the south of the Olympic Pools is Lumsden Green. The Green occupies a triangle of land at the intersection of Parnell Road, Broadway and Khyber Pass which had been put aside as a reserve in 1878. The park is ornamented by a modernist fountain, a 19th-century canon and a stainless steel sculpture by Marte Szirmay installed in 1969 to mark the Centenary of the Newmarket Highway district. The park is named in honour of David Lumsden, the last Mayor of Newmarket before amalgamation with Auckland City in 1989.

For much of the 20th century most road traffic leaving or entering Auckland passed through Newmarket. Leading off Broadway is the beginning of Remuera Road which is the way to the eastern suburbs while further south Broadway splits into Great South Road and the secondary southern route, Manukau Road. The constant flow of traffic only added to Newmarket's fast, modern image and helped a great deal with its prosperity. Around 1966, between 25,000-30,000 cars used the street per day.[6]

A significant change to the skyline was the Newmarket Viaduct erected in 1966 to take one of the early sections of the Southern Motorway over the railway and half a dozen streets. The new motorway system opened up the new industrial suburbs to the south such as Penrose, Mount Wellington etc. This resulted in much of the local industry moving out of Newmarket and along with it many of the working-class people who lived in modest houses in the surrounding streets.

Since the 1960s Newmarket has been largely a retail destination, although a certain amount of light industry still existed in the surrounding streets, the most significant of which is the brewing trade. Ever since the 1840s Newmarket has been the location of several breweries. Water falling on nearby Mount Eden emerges in several reliable springs in the Khyber Pass area. Flowing through large amounts of volcanic scoria it is very well filtered. The Brewery buildings on Khyber Pass Road have recently (2014) been demolished, the land is to be redeveloped as part of the University of Auckland.

Modern days

Newmarket from Mount Hobson looking northwest.

Newmarket has become the second shopping and specialty store centre of Auckland City, and also a main entertainment hub. At the same time, the location on one of the major thoroughfares into and out of the city also led to increasing bottleneck issues, with some claiming during the middle of the 2000s that Council was neglecting the area (though projects like the Central Connector are now (2007) aiming to alleviate this). Traffic gridlock was one of the reasons why a plan for a major new Westfield Group shopping centre near the railway line was hotly contested by the Newmarket Protection Society, a group composed mostly of residents and some local business owners. Partly due to these objections, Westfield later abandoned the plans and instead bought the Two Double Seven shopping centre.[7]

Traffic remains a major factor in the area, as Broadway carries over 40,000 vehicles a day, limiting the ability of pedestrians in the shopping district to cross the main road.[8][9] An ambitious earlier plan from 2003 to construct a "road over rail" above the railway line, from the northwest end of Newmarket near Park Road, to the southeast near the St Marks Road interchange, did not go ahead, even though this could have significantly reduced vehicle traffic on Broadway.[10] A late 2000s upgrade has however provided new high-quality bluestone footpaths along Broadway and some of the side-streets.[11]

The Auckland Regional Council has designated Newmarket as a 'strategic managed growth area' in the Regional Growth Strategy, meaning that high-density mixed use (residential and commercial) buildings are encouraged. This is to encourage areas in which work, living and entertainment can be achieved close to each other, limiting the average amount of [especially car-] traffic required every day. Good public transport connections are also considered to assist these policy goals.[12] Partly due to the increasing attractiveness of living in the city, large apartment buildings are now increasingly springing up in the area, a process partly encouraged by Council via new planning rules.[10] However, many of the apartment buildings that were created in the suburb in the 2000s have been heavily criticised, and termed clusters of "shoe boxes" or "rabbit hutches", for their small unit sizes and bland exterior.[13]

Māori Television Headquarters has been located in a building at the edge of Newmarket and Parnell since 2004.

In 2007, the Lion Brewery declared its intention to leave Newmarket in the mid-term and sold its 5ha site north of Khyber Pass Road for NZ$162 million. The area is likely to become a mixed-use development within the next half decade, marking "the end of Newmarket's industrial age",[12] especially after of Hayes Metal Refineries Ltd, the other previously remaining industry, had also decided to move in 2008, after the owners had resisted development offers to be bought out in the 1980s.[14]

In 2012 an initiative between Newmarket Business Association and the arts resulted in the creation of the town's first fully professional theatre company, Newmarket Stage Company. The brainchild of Adey Ramsel, the company's first Artistic Director, the company aimed to build on the infrastructure of transport, cafe's, restaurants and bars. Operating out of The Factory Theatre in Eden St, the company launched with Educating Rita by Willy Russell and Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher. Renowned kiwi acting icon George Henare became the company's inaugural Patron in 2014. Henare played the lead in the company's first two productions.

Newmarket's shopping area's wireless CCTV system, a system cooperatively operated by the police and the Newmarket Business Association, has been described as "never having been done on this scale in a New Zealand town centre", and was credited partly for significant falls of some sorts of crime in Newmarket in recent (2009) years.[15]

Railway history

Newmarket was once a centre of railway activity, with significant growth occurring after the rail line from the city was opened in 1873.[2] Eventually, there was a junction station, two signal boxes, two railway workshop complexes, railway houses, a railway social hall and extensive goods yard. This changed in 1930 when the Newmarket Workshops closed and were replaced by the Otahuhu Workshops. The Workshops bordering Broadway on the other side of the Remuera Road overbridge were torn down. The workshops along Middleton Road were retained and transferred to the New Zealand Post Office for use as Post Office workshops and these structures remained in place until they were unceremoniously torn down in the mid-1990s.

On 22 February 1955 the Railway Lodge No 196 of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes was established in the Newmarket Railway Social Hall with a strong presence of over 100 brothers of the order, many of whom had connection with the railways. The Lodge continued to thrive for many years because of its link with the railways. The Railway Lodge 196 is a lodge of the New Zealand constitution of the Grand Lodge of England and continues to function, albeit in Ponsonby, not Newmarket.

In the 1980s the Newmarket Railway Social Hall and many other railway buildings were demolished. By 1995 all that was left of Newmarket's railway heritage was the Fine Station, closed in 1983 and its signal box still manned, and one of the last in New Zealand to utilise the old style lever frame. The old workshop buildings on Middleton Road were demolished in that year. By the 21st century little remained of Newmarket's railway heritage other than the station, the signal box, a few items of preserved rolling stock and the Railway Lodge No 196.

Construction proceeded in 2008 on a new railway station and plaza on the northern side of Remuera Road overbridge, as a part of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority's upgrade of rail stations across the city. Designed by Opus International Consultants, the station will feature two concourses, multiple escalators, and open access to Broadway via a wide plaza. A footbridge will allow access to the station for pedestrians from Remuera Road. The station will be the second largest in New Zealand after Britomart.

Notable buildings

Highwic house, former homestead, now a function venue at the southwestern edge of Newmarket.

Due to redevelopment Newmarket has lost many of its buildings of historical significance.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Malls bring in the big bucks". The New Zealand Herald. 15 September 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 "[Untitled mixed news items]". The Evening Post. 4 February 1873. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  3. ↑ "Cameron Brewer: Winter of discontent for retailers". The New Zealand Herald. 5 July 2010. Retrieved 6 July 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Newmarket Viaduct - Landscape & Urban Design Framework". Transit New Zealand. 7 November 2008. p. Section 5.3.
  5. ↑ Auckland Star 24 October 1912
  6. ↑ Road Engineering - Traffic Flow (from Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966 Edition))
  7. ↑ "Owen Lockerbie: High price of neglect". The New Zealand Herald. 15 November 2005. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  8. ↑ "New crossing for Broadway to enhance pedestrian safety". News release, Auckland Regional Office News. New Zealand Transport Agency. 26 January 2010. Retrieved 25 February 2010.
  9. ↑ "Newmarket Connection: Viaduct Replacement Project Newsletter, Issue 03" (PDF). April 2010. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  10. 1 2 Orsman, Bernard (24 November 2003). "Elevated Newmarket road seen as answer to traffic woes". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  11. ↑ Dearnaley, Mathew (13 August 2007). "From Horrible to beautiful". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
  12. 1 2 "Newmarket facelift on way as brewery site sells for $162m". The New Zealand Herald. 27 July 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  13. ↑ Gibson, Anne (28 November 2005). "Big apartment project distresses residents". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  14. ↑ "Hayes Foundry to bring new class to Newmarket backstreet". Bob Dey Report. 24 July 2008. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  15. ↑ "CCTV keeps down crime in Newmarket". The New Zealand Herald. NZPA. 24 May 2009. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  16. ↑ Heritage Walk in Auckland, New Zealand (via the Newmarket Business Association website. Accessed 29 May 2009.)

Further reading

Coordinates: 36°52′12″S 174°46′39″E / 36.869862°S 174.777578°E / -36.869862; 174.777578

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