Victoria Square
Originally known as Market Square or Market Place, Victoria Square was the commercial hub of early Christchurch because it contained the Post Office and markets as well as the Police Station, Women’s Prison, animal pound, work stores and Immigration Barracks.
Victoria Street, which until recent years cut through Victoria Square on a diagonal connecting it to Colombo Street, was an essential traffic route which provided a direct link to the Papanui Bush, a timber and firewood source for the early settlers.
Because of the heavy traffic flow the present bridge was built as early as 1864. A traffic count in 1862 showed that in one single day 1,000 pedestrians, 58 bullocks, 316 horses and one donkey had used the old wooden bridge. The 1864 bridge, erected to cope with this traffic flow, was built in iron and stone and is one of the earliest of its kind in New Zealand. In 1989 it was renamed the Hamish Hay Bridge.
In 1896-97 the area was cleared and developed as a park for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Victoria Square was redeveloped in the 1980s and is today a delightful inner city park area which contains a number of interesting historical and more contemporary objects and monuments. Victoria Square is framed to the north by the Crowne Plaza (formerly the Parkroyal) Hotel and the Christchurch Town Hall. The amphitheatre was opened in conjunction with the Parkroyal in 1988. The remodelling of Victoria Square was completed in 1989 and in the same year the design was recognised by the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects winning its highest award.
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Floral Clock
The clock, which is now part of Victoria Square, was gifted to the city in 1953 by the former retailing firm of Calder Mackay Limited. The clock mechanism is electrically operated and the face has an approximate diameter of 8.5 metres. Up to 7,000 plants are required each spring and autumn for the floral design.
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The H. L. Bowker Fountain
The H. L. Bowker fountain, also part of the Victoria Square complex, was designed by Victor Hean in 1931 and was the first illuminated electric fountain in Australasia. In his will of 1915, Henry Bowker, a city businessman whose office overlooked Victoria Square, gifted money for a fountain or structure to be erected in front of the proposed Town Hall. It took until 1931 to erect the fountain and until 1972 to finally build a Town Hall. The fountain is on the site of a former animal pound.
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Victoria Square Poupou
The six metre high Māori carving in Victoria Square was unveiled in December 1994. The poupou was initiated by the Christchurch City Council in conjunction with the Ngāi Tahu Trust Board as a "1990 project" commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
The poupou is the work of Christchurch master carver Riki Manuel and was created from a totara trunk given by a West Coast farmer. The main theme of the poupou is mahinga kai (food resources). It also depicts tipuna (ancestors) of the Ngāi Tahu-Waitaha people.
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Source
This page was originally derived from the Christchurch City Council handbook of 1998.
