Princes Wharf

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Princes Wharf as seen from Quay Street.

The two 'ship's prows' of the wharf as seen from Waitemata Harbour.

Loading at the old Princes Wharf in 1924.

Princes Wharf is a former commercial wharf on the Auckland waterfront, in Auckland City, New Zealand, which has been redeveloped into a multi-story high-class mixed-use development and cruise ship terminal. While generally considered a success in redevelopment, as is the close-by Viaduct Basin, some critics have called its architecture 'urbanely sterile',^[1] while others have remarked on the restrictions private owners have placed on public access rights.

1 History
- 1.1 Working wharf
- 1.2 Redevelopment
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Working wharf

Princes Wharf was opened 12 May 1924 by Earl Jellicoe, having been planned and built between 1919 and 1924. The HMS Hood, the then largest battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, berthed at the wharf for the commissioning, showing the strategic importance the British Empire attributed to the naval facilities of its colonies.^[2]

Princes Wharf was also Auckland City's first wharf of reinforced concrete (though there had been similar works on the other side of the harbour at Devonport, now North Shore City), as it had been found that the hardwood piling of the other wharves were strongly affected by the wood-boring teredo worm.^[2]

After World War II, the wharf, and Auckland itself, gained in importance both as starting point and destination for an increasing number of ocean liners (especially in the early post-war years when long-distance air travel was not as established yet), and later on, cruise ships. Ships like the Rangitane and Ruahine often berthed here, and in 1961, a dedicated passenger terminal was built on the wharf.^[2]

[edit] Redevelopment

In the early 1990s, plans were introduced to redevelop the wharf and add new functions to a site that had become under-used in some respects. With the new buildings designed to be reminiscent of a ship, the redevelopment of the wharf started in 1998.^[2]

The wharf now contains the renovated Overseas Passenger Terminal (berthing of cruise ships) of Ports of Auckland,^[3] a Hilton hotel, various restaurants as well as apartments, office space and a multi-story parking building. Princes Wharf also contains the largest apartment of New Zealand, a luxury residence built for one of the wharf's developers with 1,061 m² of internal floor space and decks of 416 m² of deck space.^[4]

The development also contains first-floor viewing decks at the 'prow end' of the development, which are public space like other parts of the wharf, but have long been a matter of legal contention. The wharf developers and the Hilton hotel have repeatedly, and against legal orders, limited public access to this area (for example to use it for private functions), while officially claiming a need to act against vandalism and use by drug dealers.^[5] In the discussion about opening up more of the waterfront, the wharf has thus been cited as a negative example, touted by developers as providing more public access to the harbour, but now being all but privatised, as well as inadequate for the increasing demands of the cruise ship industry.^[6]