St Patricks's Square history

History of St Patrick's Square | 19th century changes | 20th and 21st century changes | St Patrick's square upgrade

History of St Patrick's Square and Federal Street Park

St Patrick's Square, incorporating Federal Street Park, is on the western ridge of the Central Business District of Auckland, between Albert and Hobson Streets. The site close to the Hobson Street ridge was an ideal location for a Catholic chapel in Auckland in the mid 19th century, with the Anglican St Paul's Cathedral close to Point Britomart, and the Presbyterian St Andrews up on the lower Symonds Street ridge, both to the east.

Today, much of the landmark appeal of the site has been eliminated by the development of new buildings and towers dwarfing St Patrick's Cathedral - yet, this remains a hidden treasure in Auckland, especially with the addition in the early 1970s of the Federal Street Park on the northern terraces below the cathedral, and the creation of the pedestrian mall.

Pre-Contact situation

While there are no known specific studies into the pre-contact archaeology of this area, the site of St Patrick's Square lies close to Freeman's Bay to the west (called Wai Kokota, or 'the place where cockles could be harvested), ¹ with Swanson Street apparently where a Maori track called Te Tarapounamu led up the ridge towards a pa site. Below the Square in the Queen Street valley flowed Te Waihorotiu, renamed Ligar Canal during European times. To the east was the site of an old pa, Te Rerenga-oraiti, on the former headland, which was once Point Britomart. ² The site was therefore close to food sources and pathways linking pa and small settlements.

Origins of Chapel Square

Soon after Governor William Hobson declared Auckland to be the new capital of New Zealand in 1840, his Surveyor-General Felton Mathew drew up a plan in 1841 for the new city, which included two grand residential squares, Wellington Square and Hobson Square, both along the line of Hobson Street and to the south-west of the present day St Patrick's Square. Neither of these ever came to exist. What was to become Chapel Street (later Federal Street) from the harbour to Wyndham Street appears to have only been intended as a service lane within the Wyndham-Albert-Customs-Hobson block, ending in a T-shaped right-of-way. ³ This came to be known as Section 18 of the City of Auckland for land registration purposes.

Mathew's plan of five lots along the northern frontage of Wyndham Street on that block was changed that year when it was apparently resurveyed. The lots were divided up into: Lots 32 and 33 fronting Hobson Street; Lots 1 and 2 fronting Albert Street; and Lots 34 and 35, which came to be the site of the cathedral in the middle. A road is clearly visible on the allotment maps for the City of Auckland from this time which would come to be called Chapel Street, leading from the harbour straight up to the cathedral site, where it then squared around that site, becoming two entrances off Wyndham Street, ⁴ before continuing south.

¹ Auckland's Original Shoreline, Heritage Walks booklet, Auckland City, 2005, p. 10
² ibid, p. 21
³ See Felton Mathew's plan of Auckland, c.1841.
⁴ Map of Section 18, City of Auckland, LINZ records