Victoria Square is a public park located in central Christchurch, New Zealand. Originally known by European settlers as Market Place or Market Square, it was renamed to Victoria Square in 1903 in honour of Queen Victoria. It was one of the four squares included in the original plan of Christchurch when the city was laid out in 1850.
Prior to European colonisation, a small Māori settlement was located here, on the bank of the Avon River / Ōtākaro (where the Christchurch Supreme Court was later built). The square was a centre of civic life in early Christchurch. It was the site of market days, fairs, and trade before its redevelopment in 1896–1897 into a park. It continued to be a venue for political and religious speeches until after World War II. The square was also the usual place for both military and civilian parades, and a key location for most royal visits to the city.
For most of its history Victoria Street ran diagonally through the square, carrying trams and cars northwards out of the Central City. The square underwent major changes during the last part of the 20th century, with the construction of the Christchurch Town Hall on the northern side in the 1970s. Victoria Street was closed at Kilmore Street in the 1980s to enable the square to be transformed into a major urban green space. Following the February 2011 earthquake, Victoria Square was closed to the public as part of Central City Red Zone. After initial repairs, it was re-opened in November 2012 and full restoration was completed in 2018. Today the square hosts a number of notable landmarks including the Captain James Cook statue, Queen Victoria statue, H. L. Bowker Fountain, and a Ngāi Tahu pouwhenua. It also features the country's oldest cast iron and stone bridge, now known as the Hamish Hay Bridge. Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre faces into the square on its southern side. The square is part of the precinct of greenspaces through the central city on the banks of the Avon River / Ōtākaro.
Geography
Christchurch was originally planned with a grid layout around a central square, along with three smaller public squares nearby. Victoria Square is one of these four original squares, the others being Cranmer Square, Cathedral Square and Latimer Square. Colombo Street forms the eastern boundary of Victoria Square and runs directly south to Cathedral Square, which is only one block away. Armagh Street bounds the square on the southern side. The Avon River bisects the square from south-west to north-east. In the early days, Oxford and Cambridge Terraces ran alongside the river, but those streets have now been pedestrianised and only continue through the square as footpaths.
The square was initially bisected north-west to south-east by Whately Road (named after the Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately, who was a member of the Canterbury Association). It was later renamed to Victoria Street, and this formed a major route to the north towards Papanui and beyond. Other boundary streets are Kilmore and Durham Streets on the northern and western boundaries, respectively. Victoria Street was stopped from running through the square in 1988 when the Parkroyal Hotel (later the Crowne Plaza) was built.
Depending on context, Victoria Square can refer to either the entire area bounded by the four surrounding roads, or just the public park in that area. This would exclude the Town Hall in the north-east and the former Christchurch Law Court complex in the south-west.
History Market Place era The area where Victoria Square was established was originally swamp land on the banks of the Avon River / Ōtākaro. This area was part of an important (food-gathering place) and (settlement area) for early Māori. The swampy ground made the area difficult for long-term settlement but extremely valuable as a food resource, with seasonal settlements established for collecting food. The area was settled by Waitaha as early as 1300, with Ngāi Tahu later occupying the area. The name most often used for this area is , though this name is probably fairly modern. Indeed in 1850 was the name of a small Māori settlement on the bank of the Avon River (where the Christchurch Supreme Court was later built), which was likely to better facilitate trade with the European settlers at the nearby Market Place.
Christchurch was surveyed by Joseph Thomas and Edward Jollie in March 1850, and on these earliest maps the area that became Victoria Square is marked as grassland. On Black Map 273 the area straddling the river can already be seen marked as "Market Place". The third wooden building in Christchurch — a general store owned by Charles Wellington Bishop — was built on the Colombo Street side of the square in early 1851. Market Place was also the location of an important gravel quarry, that provided much of the shingle used for metalling the major gravel roads in early Christchurch, both north to Papanui and east to Sumner. A plaque on Armagh Street marks the location of this early quarry.
Market Place was the de facto centre of early Christchurch, being the major centre of trade for both European settlers and Māori in the new city. By March 1852 Market Place was home to the city's first post office, three general stores, a hotel and stable, a butchery, a carpenter, a tinsmith and a gunsmith. George Gould, the father of the prominent businessman and long-time director of The Press of the same name, had his general store on Colombo Street facing Market Square. The first simple bridge over the Avon River in the square was built in March 1852; it was variably known as Papanui Bridge and Market Place Bridge. During an 1852 visit to Christchurch of the Governor, George Grey, it was agreed that the government would pay for a police station and lock-up. In June of that year Isaac Luck built the structure, measuring only , on the corner of Armagh Street and Cambridge Terrace. What was long talked about afterwards was that upon completion, Luck held a ball in it for his friends.
In 1858 a new police and immigration barracks were constructed by George Cliff, close to the existing lock-up. A simple wooden bridge over the Avon River was constructed on Colombo Street in 1859, and the Market Hall was built by the provincial council on the north side of the square. By 1862 the original wooden bridge in the centre of the square was in need of replacement due to heavy use. The provincial council chose to build a permanent bridge of stone and cast-iron. The metal girders and railings were ordered from England, and arrived in July 1864. Three of the girders had cracked in transit and needed to be repaired by local blacksmith John Anderson, who bolted plates across the cracks. These repairs are still visible on the exposed central part of the bridge today. The bridge was officially named the Victoria Bridge and opened on 28 September 1864 by councillors John Ollivier and Dr William Donald, who together smashed a bottle of wine against the decking to mark the occasion.
During the great storm of 1868 the square was completely flooded when the Avon River overtopped its banks. Water filled the square to the Armagh-Colombo corner and flooded many of the surrounding houses. Whately Road had to be rebuilt on both sides of Victoria Bridge due to damage to the road surface, and the banks of the river were largely eroded. Luckily damage to the surrounding buildings was mostly superficial.
In 1868, Pita Te Hori — the first (tribal leader) of Ngāi Tuahuriri, a hapū of Ngāi Tahu — made a claim to the Native Land Court that the area of Victoria Square belonged to them, as the original Canterbury Purchase deed had specified that locations should be kept by the iwi. Though was a , it did not have any fixed structures or permanent cultivation, and so became excluded from iwi ownership by the narrow interpretation of the colonists. Ultimately the court ruled against the iwi, deciding that the land had already been alienated from Māori and now belonged to The Crown.The Late Pita Te Hori, The Press, 13 August 1872, p. 3
Construction of the Christchurch Supreme Court began on the western-side of the square in January 1869, with the first cases heard there in 1870. Designed by Alexander Lean, the stone building was made in the Gothic revival style, like many early buildings in early Christchurch. It was later followed by the Magistrates' Court building in 1880, just to the south on Armagh Street. This smaller building was designed by Benjamin Mountfort, and is a heritage-listed building.
James Irving, a physician and surgeon whose property fronted onto Market Place, first proposed in 1894 that the area be renamed to Victoria Square as it was no longer used as a market. During 1896 and 1897 the square was landscaped to make it more of an urban park. With Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897, a petition was made to the city council with 71 signatures to rename Market Place. Despite the strong support the proposal languished as the council believed the square could not be renamed without an act of parliament. Patriotism was heightened during the Second Boer War, and with the 50th jubilee of Christchurch in 1900 it was decided a statue of Queen Victoria would be erected in Market Place. The statue was ordered from England, but Queen Victoria died just twelve days later. This caused high demand for similar statues, which resulted in the statue being delayed until 1903. The Queen's grandson and Duke of Cornwall and York, Prince George (later King George V) placed the foundation stone at a ceremony during his visit to Christchurch in 1901. Market Place was renamed to Victoria Square on 25 May 1903 alongside the official unveiling of the statue.
20th century During the early part of the 20th century Victoria Square continued to be a centre of civic life. The band rotunda was a popular venue for military parades, music performances, religious meetings and political speeches. In 1905 the first electric trams began to run on the No. 1 Papanui line through Victoria Square, across the Victoria Bridge.
During the first few years of the 1930s the Great Depression made Victoria Square into the scene of violent clashes between Police, striking workers and the unemployed. The cities' unions – in particular the New Zealand Tramways Union and the Unemployed Association – egged on by radicals such as Sidney Fournier and members of the Communist Party of New Zealand, attempted to block the trams from operating. When police broke up the protests in Cathedral Square, the angry crowds recongregated in Victoria Square.
In 1931 the Bowker Fountain was installed, which was notable as the first electrically illuminated fountain in the Southern Hemisphere. It was followed in 1932 by the Statue of James Cook. After a crowd of 60,000 people attended a fundraising event for soldiers wounded in World War II in 1940, the trampled flowerbeds led the city council to decide that Victoria Square would be maintained as a city park and garden, and would no longer be a place for large public meetings.