Te Aro

Te Aro is an inner-city suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. It comprises the southern part of the central business district including the majority of the city's entertainment district and covers the mostly flat area of city between The Terrace and Cambridge Terrace at the base of Mount Victoria.

Geography and history

Waimapihi Stream is now mostly culverted, but formerly ran from the area around Zealandia and down Aro Valley then past what is now the western end of Te Aro Park and on to the sea. The name means "the stream of Mapihi, a chieftainess of those iwi". Te Aro Pā was east of the stream near what is now lower Taranaki Street.
Waitangi stream flowed from Newtown, past the Basin Reserve and down to the shore at the eastern side of Te Aro, forming a large swamp or lagoon that was used by Māori for food and flax gathering. The stream flooded in heavy rain. Periodically the shingle beach that created the lagoon would collapse, draining the lagoon. This happened in spectacular fashion in March 1853:

On Thursday evening it commenced raining heavily and continued to do so without intermission during the whole of Thursday night and the greater part of yesterday. About four o'clock yesterday afternoon the large additional body of water which had accumulated in the swamp at Te Aro, in consequence of the rain, caused to burst the narrow bank which separated it from the sea with a loud noise which was heard to a considerable distance, and a thick turbid stream of mud poured forth with great rapidity into the harbour. From the head of the swamp, winding through its whole length, a regular channel has been cut of the average width of ten or twelve yards, and during the afternoon masses of earth, and small islands of flax were hurried with amazing swiftness by the stream and force of the current into the harbour, the surface of which was covered to a considerable extent with masses of floating mud and flax. The opening which has been made to the sea by this sudden eruption of the swamp extends over several of the town acres with water frontage at the head of Lambton harbour.

The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake uplifted Te Aro and drained the swamp. The area around the former swampy foreshore was redeveloped and opened in 2006 as Waitangi Park.
The Te Aro Reclamation Act of 1879 made possible reclamation of 40 acres of land on the foreshore as far as what is now Cable Street. Early European settlement in Te Aro was centred on commerce and working-class people, as opposed to Thorndon which was the centre of official business. By the 1880s Te Aro was packed with working-class houses and businesses catering to the workers, and the area had gained a reputation for being poorly-drained, dirty and disease-ridden. Typhoid was prevalent in the city in the early 1890s and most deaths from the disease occurred in the slums of Te Aro. Almost half of Wellington's deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic occurred in Te Aro. The situation gradually improved as new suburbs such as Newtown, Miramar and Karori opened up and city infrastructure was developed. In 1945 Wellington City Council held a conference to discuss the slums of Te Aro, which led to the widening of Taranaki Street.

Te Aro Pā

A war party of Te Āti Awa and others migrated from Taranaki to Wellington and established the pā in the 1820s. Members of the New Zealand Company arrived in Wellington in 1839 and laid out a town plan which paid no regard to the several pā in the area. In 1844 six rangatira from the settlement signed the 1844 deed, bringing Te Aro Pā into the New Zealand Company purchase of 1839. William Anson McCleverty was tasked with swapping Māori land around Wellington Harbour for land further away, which resulted in less-convenient food-growing areas.
Around 200 people lived at the pā in the 1840s, but numbers decreased after that. An 1850 survey stated that there were 186 people at Te Aro Pā who were mostly Christian. People lived in traditional "huts" and there were two "churches or chapels". The people had 26 acres cultivated in potatoes and also grew small amounts of kūmara, wheat and maize. They had seven canoes, 20 horses and two carts, some cattle and tame pigs and had half a ton of flax prepared for export. As a result of losing resources provided by the land they had sold, combined with loss of food- and flax-producing swamp land uplifted by the 1855 earthquake and the return of many people to Taranaki in 1860, the population of Te Aro Pā decreased and by the 1880s almost all had left. Some Māori at the pā had been given Crown Grants to the land which meant they could not sell it, so they leased parcels of land to European settlers. By the 1870s most of the pā's remaining land was sold to Wellington Council who wished to extend Taranaki Street to the waterfront through pā lands.
In 2005 archaeologists discovered the remains of three structures from the pā during redevelopment of a site at 39–43 Taranaki Street.

Chinatown

Haining Street and Frederick Street are short streets which run between Taranaki Street and Tory Street. This area became the centre of Wellington's Chinese community in the late nineteenth century, after miners migrated to the city from goldfields in the South Island. Haining Street became known by its Chinese residents as Ton Yung Gaai. Haining Street developed a bad reputation for its gambling houses, brothels and opium dens, and the street's notoriety increased in 1905 when white supremacist Lionel Terry shot dead an elderly Chinese man named Joe Kum Yung. Terry was anti-Asian and told authorities he killed Joe to bring public attention to his views. In 2006 a memorial plaque to Joe Kum Yung was installed on the footpath in Haining Street. Some other reminders of the area's time as Wellington's Chinatown are the Chinese Mission Hall at 40 – 46 Frederick Street, designed by Frederick de Jersey Clere and built in 1905, the Wellington Chinese Masonic Society building at 23 Frederick Street, built in 1925, and the Tung Jung Association building at 2 Frederick Street, built in 1926.

Red light district

The area around Marion Street, Vivian Street and Cuba Street was the heart of Wellington's red light district for much of the 20th century. Carmen Rupe, a transgender woman prominent in Wellington in the 1970s, ran Carmen's International Coffee House at 86 Vivian Street where sexual services were available. Carmen is remembered with themed traffic lights in Cuba Street. In Marion Street is a trompe-l'oeil mural of a prostitute leaning on a wall. It was painted by Michael Benseman and Michael Ting in 1990, and references the area's history of prostitution. A television documentary produced in 1989 explored the red light district, interviewing prostitutes, strippers and business owners. In 2018 Wellington City Council installed a rainbow-coloured pedestrian crossing at Dixon Street where it bisects Cuba Mall, and in October 2022 two memorial benches were unveiled at the corner of Cuba Street and Vivian Street. The benches commemorate Carmen Rupe and Chrissy Witoko, another transgender businesswoman in the area, and resulted from a collaboration between PrideNZ, the Chrissy Witoko Memorial Trust and the Cultural Heritage team at Wellington City Council.

Demographics

The population of Te Aro roughly doubled between 1991 and 1996 and has increased rapidly since then. The rapid growth rate of population in the area become particularly evident at the beginning of the 21st century as apartment buildings were erected all over the suburb. Particularly characteristic are new rooftop apartments on existing buildings. These can be attributed to the relaxation of city by-laws governing commercial building-zones in the early 1990s. In October 2021 Wellington City Council released its draft District Plan which would allow new buildings in Te Aro to reach 42.5 metres or 12 storeys, to cater for projected population growth in the area. Public feedback following release of the draft plan showed many residents were worried about loss of sunlight and privacy.
Te Aro, comprising the statistical areas of Dixon Street, Vivian West, Courtenay and Vivian East, covers. It had an estimated population of as of with a population density of people per km².
Te Aro had a population of 11,823 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 1,596 people since the 2013 census, and an increase of 4,437 people since the 2006 census. There were 4,968 households, comprising 5,799 males and 6,021 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.96 males per female, with 378 people aged under 15 years, 6,738 aged 15 to 29, 4,113 aged 30 to 64, and 600 aged 65 or older.
Ethnicities were 72.7% European/Pākehā, 8.0% Māori, 2.5% Pasifika, 22.4% Asian, and 4.0% other ethnicities. People may identify with more than one ethnicity.
The percentage of people born overseas was 42.9, compared with 27.1% nationally.
Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 63.4% had no religion, 20.6% were Christian, 0.3% had Māori religious beliefs, 4.3% were Hindu, 1.1% were Muslim, 1.9% were Buddhist and 4.1% had other religions.
Of those at least 15 years old, 5,292 people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 318 people had no formal qualifications. 2,688 people earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 6,744 people were employed full-time, 1,710 were part-time, and 726 were unemployed.

Name	Area	Population	Density	Households	Median age	Median income
Dixon Street	0.30	4,185	13,950	1,629	25.9 years	$26,500
Vivian West	0.37	3,483	9,414	1,362	25.8 years	$30,400
Courtenay	0.32	1,761	5,503	831	31.4 years	$50,400
Vivian East	0.29	2,394	8,255	1,146	30.7 years	$49,000
New Zealand					37.4 years	$31,800