When you have lived somewhere, at least off and on, for a length of time, for me 46 years, you become a source of local trivia both historical and biological. In this case I was talking to a colleague who has been working on project mapping and document the trees of Wellington city (Interactive urban tree mapping in Wellington). We got talking about individual trees and their history. These histories are usually oral with very little formally recorded. I asked him about a particular tree in the CBD and if he knew anything about it, which he didn’t. So, I decided to write a blog about it.
The elm on the corner of Sturdee and Dixon Streets, looking north [photo Geoff Ridley, 10 February 2023]
The tree of interest in a golden elm, the European Ulmus glabra, growing at the corner of Victoria and Dixon Streets. The corner is wide and has been developed into a small urban green space known as Volunteer Corner and includes a raised footpath to prevent root damage by pedestrians.
I first met this tree in the late 1970s when I moved to Wellington to go to university. At that time, it was growing on a traffic island garden in the middle of Sturdee St where it formed a T intersection with Dixon St. Sturdee St was a wide street providing a lot of parking but didn’t go anywhere in particular. It was a typical of many of the cross street and lanes to be found in the area bounded by Wakefield, Taranaki, Webb and Willis Streets and represents some of the oldest parts of the central city.
The Sturdee Dixon St intersection, looking south, the building on the right are the edge of Howes Lane, 1958 [National Library Tiaki Reference Number: EP/1958/2221-F]
The oldest photo of Sturdee St I could find was from the 1958. It shows a man striding down a very narrow street, a building on the right with a wholesale sign, a group of parked cars on what looks like a building demolition site, on the left the back of buildings with a road in front, and behind the parked cars more building where I thought there shouldn’t be any. What was I looking at? The wholesale building, I knew as it was only demolished in 2021 as an earthquake risk. Everything else in the photo where long gone.
So, I went to a 1929 street map and discovered there had been a dead-end lane, Howes Lane, parallel to Sturdee St. What the photo showed was the beginning of the Sturdee St redevelopment in which the City bought all the building along the left-hand side (in the photo) of Sturdee street and demolished them.
Sturdee St, 1929 [The Complete Wellington Guide, 1929]
Sturdee St was widened, and Howes Lane was engulfed by the widening. A central island divided the street which would provide a large area of angle parking for the nearby Cuba Street shopping mall.
The truck is in the old Howes Lane looking south down the widened Sturdee St, 8 October 1959 [National Library reference number: EP/1959/3386-F]
A widened Sturdee St, 3 December 1959 [National Library reference number: EP/1959/4114-F]
The Sturdee St parking, looking south, with the garden island, 1960-61 [Sourced from Old Wellington Region, Facebook]
The golden elm of interest will eventually, late 1960s or early 70s, be planted in the garden at the Dixon St end of the central island.
Looking south down Sturdee St with the elm planted in the centre of the island rose bed, 1976 [Wellington City Council Archives, 00291-2130-21]
Sturdee, now Victoria St, and Dixon Street intesection, looking south [photo Geoff Ridley, 10 February 2023]
Sturdee St will, in the 1980s, be realigned as part of the Victoria St extension. This involved angling it across its original site so that the central island became part of the pedestrian area on the right side of the new Victoria St. Note the pale green building with arched windows is the only building left from the original Sturdee St as everything else has been demolished over the last 60 years.
Sturdee St was parallel to Willis St, but was realigned to connect with Herbert St on the right and Cumberland Place on the left, all of which would be renamed Victoria St [Google Maps]
The other interesting feature of this tree is that in the very late 1970s the trunk split during a storm. It was secured by bolting together using steel plate on both sides of the trunk. The tree has grown considerably in that time so that the trunk has expanded and engulfed the steel plates. However, they can still be seen at the base of the deep fissures on either side of the trunk.
The elms, looking across the Sturdee, Dixon and Herbert St intersections [Wellington City Council Archives, 00291-2130-14]
The elms trunk, looking across the Victoria and Dixon St intersection [photo Geoff Ridley, 10 February 2023]
Deep scar on the trunk with the grey steel plate just visible [photo Geoff Ridley, 10 February 2023]
Elms do not form ectomycorrhiza like other exotic European deciduous trees so the only mushrooms that you might see under it are those that breakdown wood chips such as Chlorophyllum species. I will keep an eye on it to see what comes up.
Note: For the pre-1958 history of Sturdee St, originally named Quin St, see Vivienne Morrell’s blog Quin Street Wellington.
Spores, moulds, and fungi 