The history of Trafalgar St

Trafalgar Street has been the beating heart of Nelson for 180 years. Amy Russ takes a closer look at the city’s main drag and how it changed over the decades.

Surrounded by hills and compactly built, Nelson was named after the British naval commander Admiral Lord Nelson. The city has many names that make a nod to England and to Horatio Nelson’s famous sea battles – including Albion Square and Britannia Heights. Trafalgar Street is named after the 1805 battle in which Nelson died and the top of Trafalgar Street is widely regarded as the historic centre of Nelson. Upon his death, Lord Nelson’s final words were reputed to be, ‘Kiss me Hardy’. Thomas Hardy was the flag-captain and a close friend of Nelson’s. In fitting form, Nelson’s Hardy Street, is at right angles to Trafalgar Street.

It is known that early Māori lived in the region since the 1300s and the area that is Whakatū. Before the arrival of Europeans, Church Hill had been known as Pikimai and was the site of a pa. According to the collaborative venture, The Prow, for European settlers in the early 1840s it appeared to be unoccupied with no permanent settlements. The site of the city was chosen in 1841 when its strategic position was quickly put to use by Sir Arthur Wakefield and the New Zealand Company with the pitching of his tent on its summit and a pole used as a surveying marker to lay out Nelson’s main thoroughfares. It was not long before a temporary cluster of buildings became landmarks on the hill and the city’s first cathedral was opened in 1851. In 1858, with a little over 5,000 people, Queen Victoria made Nelson a city with the seat of an Anglican bishop. Cattle still wandered the streets, but from 1860 onwards the population growth increased and new suburbs slowly developed. The wide range of heritage buildings around Trafalgar Street are testimony to its importance in Victorian and Edwardian times. Trafalgar Street has remained the city’s main shopping area with the impressive Christ Church Cathedral dominating the landscape. As the country emerged from the Depression in 1936 the city’s population topped 12,000. Unfortunately, many iconic and historic buildings were demolished and replaced in the 1980’s back when there was little regard for significant heritage value. But some buildings have managed to weather the onset of change and still grace our main precinct. Often, we walk the streets only noticing things at ground level, but looking above our usual line of sight, it is easy to pick out the historic buildings. Now housing a mixture of residential apartments and business premises it is easy to imagine the role these buildings played in the forming of our city all those years ago.

The Municipal Building, which was built for Nelson City Council in 1903 was originally sited on the eastern corner of Trafalgar Street and Trafalgar Square. This was demolished in 1990 and is now a preserved site. A donation from the trustees of H. C. Cock Charitable Trust enabled the Council to make the site a reserve in October 1992 and develop it as an enhanced open space. The 1903 Square commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar with a work of art and a plaque in a cobbled square and is an important site for public performances.

On the corner of Trafalgar Street, opposite the Church Steps, lies the Smythes Building at 300 Trafalgar Street, built by innovative dentist J.W Tatton in 1884 who resided with his family upstairs and ran his dentistry on the lower floor. The building has housed a wide range of organisations including accountants, lawyers, and Waimea Council offices, and now is a bustling fine dining restaurant Eight Plates.

In late 1842, in the area known as Town Acre 445, New Zealand’s first museum was sited. The Literary and Scientific Institution of Nelson (the Institute) opened firstly as a library (with attached museum storehouse) before subsequently incorporating the museum. The Nelson Womens Club building, located on this very site at 320 Trafalgar Street, once housed one of the region's most well-known coffee shops, Chez Elco, and the building is now home to popular Southeast Asian restaurant, Hawker House.

Standing on the corner of Trafalgar and Hardy Streets, the Commercial Hotel was built in 1842 and was replaced by a two-storey building in 1883. Added to in 1907 and 1936, before being renamed Hotel Nelson, it stood until permits for it to be demolished were approved in 1986. After several location changes the Nelson Provincial Museum set up in 2005, back in its historical Insitute roots on the original site of the Commercial Hotel.

At 284 Trafalgar Street, Hopgoods sits in what was formerly known as the Dalgety & Company Ltd Building. Offering a stylish backdrop to the food and wine, the building was designed and constructed in 1929 by New Zealand architect Arthur Reynolds Griffin. Mr Griffin was the grandson of the founder of biscuit manufacturer Griffin and Sons Limited, John Griffin, and is responsible for many of the CBD’s most iconic buildings, including the construction of the Nelson Church steps in 1913, the nearby Plunket and Restroom Buildings at 324 Trafalgar Street, the