Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand

Infobox Settlement
official_name = Brooklyn

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image_

subdivision_type = Country
subdivision_type1 = City
subdivision_type2 = Suburb
subdivision_name = New Zealand
subdivision_name1 = Wellington
subdivision_name2 = Brooklyn
established_title = Established
established_date = 1888
leader_title = Mayor (of Wellington)
leader_name =Kerry Prendergast
population_as_of=2006
population_total = 4763
timezone = NZST
utc_offset = +12
timezone_DST = NZDT
utc_offset_DST = +13
latd = 41 | latm = 18 | lats = 19.44 | latNS = S
longd = 174 | longm = 45 | longs = 48 | longEW = E
website = http://www.wellington.govt.nz
footnotes =

Brooklyn, a suburb of Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, has a friendly and vibrant village atmosphereFact|date=January 2008 which has attracted many young families whilst retaining its identity as older suburb with timber villas and varied architecture.

Geography

Location

Brooklyn stands just 3km south of Wellington’s central business district on the eastern slopes of the hills above Happy Valley. (The hills and the valley both extend south towards Owhiro Bay on Cook Strait.)

Nearby suburbs and areas include:

* To the north:
** Aro Valley and Highbury

* To the east:
** Mount Cook

* To the south:
** Vogeltown and Mornington

* To the west:
** Kowhai Park, Panorama Heights, Mitchelltown, Karori

Parks and Town Belt

Central Park

Central Park (named after the area of the same name in New York) separates Brooklyn from the city. Established in 1913 on Town Belt land, the park features a set of wrought-iron gates at its main entrance: the then Mayor, John Pearce Luke gifted them in 1920.

During World War II Americanforces established a military camp in the park between 1942 and 1944. In October 1942 building work started with an initial requirement to accommodate 416 men of the US Marine Corps. The partly built camp could accept some occupants by 22 November 1942, and by July 1943 it could accommodate 540 personnel.

The US Marines requested a further expansion of the camp, but the improving military situation precluded the expansion.

Tanera Park

Tanera Park lies to the north and north-west of Central Park on the opposite side of Ohiro Road. The park, sometimes wrongly called Ohiro Park due to its proximity to Ohiro Road, has a number of sports facilities, including soccer, cricket, and artificial surfaces as well as a block of changing-rooms.

In 1991 the Wellington City Council set aside some of the park as trial to help low-income families and community-organisations to grow their own vegetables. The gardens, currently including 33 plots, have become known as the Tanera Community Gardens; the Mokai Kainga Trust manages them.

Elliott Park

Elliot Park lies on the western side of Brooklyn, adjacent to Mitchell Street and Karepa Street. The park has a children's play-ground.

Town Belt

The first plan of Wellington, drawn in 1840 by the New Zealand Company, set aside large areas of open land for public use as the Town Belt. In 1873 the Town Belt was granted to the city of Wellington as public recreation grounds for Wellington residents; it then consisted of 1061 acres. The Wellington City Council continues to hold and manage the amenity.

However, the New Zealand Company did not just have public health in mind. The Company wanted to keep land prices high in the areas known in the plan as "town acres", thus ensuring more favourable returns for its investors (the owners of the "town acres"). The Company mayOr|date=June 2008 have also intended to set the social classes apart by dividing the town with planted areas, so that those who could not afford the expensive land would by default (planners hoped) formhuh? a working-class labour force.

Both Central and Tanera Parks form part of the Wellington Town Belt.

Wind-turbine

The Electricity Corporation of New Zealand installed the Brooklyn wind-turbine on Pol Hill above north-western Brooklyn in March 1993 as part of a research project into wind-power generation. The Corporation chose the Brooklyn site due to Wellington's "higher than normal" wind patterns and to gain maximum exposure in the viewscapes of Wellingtonians. The landmark turbine, visible from many parts of the city — including parts of the central city — stands at 299 meters above sea level, and its site provides spectacular panoramas of the city, Cook Strait and the upper South Island. It became the oldest operating wind-turbine in New Zealand [ [http://www.windenergy.org.nz/photos/gallery/brooklyn/index.html Brooklyn | New Zealand Wind Energy Association ] ]

Brooklyn has adopted the turbine as a local icon. When the City council re-sealed the foot-paths in central Brooklyn some years after the installation of the turbine, someone who? implanted ceramic tiles depicting the wind turbine into the foot-paths.

By present-day standards, and compared with many turbines now installed in New Zealand, the Brooklyn turbine classes as a relatively small machine:

* nominal annual generation: 1 GWh
* installed capacity: 0.23 MW
* blade length: 13.5 metres
* height: 31.5 metres
* weight: 22.8 tonnes

A number of microprocessors constantly monitor and control the turbine and will stop the blades when wind speeds get too high and then re-start them when more favourable conditions return. The power generated – enough for 60 to 80 homes - goes into the local network for general distribution. Unlike the Tararua windfarm, the Brooklyn turbine has never killed a bird. [ [http://www.eeca.govt.nz/renewable-energy/wind/frequently-asked-questions.html EECA - Renewable Energy - Wind - Frequently Asked Questions ] ]

Meridian Energy has managed the turbine since its formation as a company in 1999 with the deregulation of the New Zealand electricity market.

War memorial

Brooklyn's World War I war-memorial overlooks northern Brooklyn from the top of Sugarloaf Hill. It lists the names of the 48 Brooklyn soldiers who died in that war.

Soon after the war ended in 1918 a movement to build a memorial began, with the funds raised in two years. The Brooklyn Returned Services Association (RSA) chose as a monument a carved marble statue depicting a soldier with hat in hand, looking towards the harbour heads through which sailed the troopships bearing those who would not return. Colonel George Mitchell D.S.O. M.P. unveiled the memorial on 22 September 1922.

For around 16 years a board of trustees maintained the memorial, before passing it over to Wellington City Council. In 2003 a major nine-month restoration project took place, which involved re-securing the structure to the concrete pads that it stands on as well as cleaning, restoring plasterwork, removal of rust and replacing parts that had over the years gone missing.

The inscription on the elaborate pedestal reads:

"The motherland called and they went and these men died for their country."

The names of the soldiers read as follows:

Pol Hill Gun Emplacements

The well-preserved Pol Hill anti-aircraft gun emplacements date from March 1942: built for the capital's defence in response to fears of Japanese air-raids or invasion. Once completed the battery had accommodation for 109 army personnel.

The battery stands slightly north of the Wind Turbine within the new Panorama Heights subdivision, on a site allocated as reserve land. The site backs on to the firebreak running around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

Buildings

Architectyural styles

Brooklyn features a number of different styles of buildings, although very few of the older cottage style remain. One of the oldest recorded in the general area stands in Nairn Street in the neighbouring suburb of Mount Cook. It dates from 1858, and hosts The Colonial Cottage Museum. Brooklyn itself contains examples of many building styles including:

* Villa (Simple villas) - from c. 1895
* Bay villa - from c. 1910
* California bungalow - from c. 1920
* State House - between 1930 and 1940
* Bungalow - from c. 1960

Villa (Simple villas)

The Simple Villa, a style of home built from around 1895, often appears in the form of structures larger than the cottages and Victorian style properties built prior to this time. They generally consisted of a hallway with two rooms off each side and an indoor bathroom at the end. Often a "lean-to" attached to the back of the house would allow for a storage area that might include a wash-house. With the design of the property having the chimney within the house (as opposed to attached to an exterior side wall) fireplaces in the sitting room and kitchen could both use the same chimney — a configuration known as "back-to-back". Brooklynites built these homes from timber — with most of the period features (including architraves, skirting-boards, doors and windows) purchasable as standard items from timber merchants.

Buildings of special interest

* The Sutch House, designed by Ernst Plischke and built between 1953 and 1956, stands on Todman Street). The house shows influences of the Austrian Neues Bauen (New Construction) movement to which Plischke had belonged in the 1930s. Wellington architect Alistair Luke restored the Sutch House during 2003. It later received the New huh? from the one that was owned and lived in by Ernst Plischke. In its day it ranked as one of New Zealand's most radical house designs. It remains one of the country’s most iconic residences with its modernist design and has won a New Zealand Institute of Architects Resene Award for Enduring Architecture.

* Tower Studio (located on Karepa Street), a purpose-built five-level Tuscan tower, takes its inspiration from the towers of San Gimignano in Tuscany. It overlooks the native bush reserve in Brooklyn with an open belvedere offering 360° views.

History

Pre-European

In pre-European times Māori knew the Brooklyn hills as Turanga-rere, translated as "the waving plumes of a war-party". One interpretationFact|date=January 2008 suggests this may refer to "all trees on the hills waving in the wind like hair adornments on warriors dancing the haka".Fact|date=January 2008

Brooklyn and the wider Wellington region then and now hosted a number of "iwi", or tribes, all represented through a Charter of Understanding with Wellington Regional Council signed in July 2000:

* Te Āti Awa
* Muaupoko
* Rangitāne o Wairarapa
* Ngāti Raukawa
* Ngāti Toa (Ngāti Toarangatira)
* Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai

European settlement

European settlement began in the area during the 1840s. In January 1842 the ship "The London" commanded by Captain Attwood set sail for its second voyage to Wellington from Gravesend in Kent. It carried 700 tons of cargo, 137 adults and 39 children. On 1 May 1842 the ship arrived in Wellington, with John and Louise Fitchett and their seven children amongst the passengers.

The young colony established a district of Ohiro (Owhiro) in the early 1840s from the land surrounding Port Nicholson (officially renamed Wellington Harbour in 1980). Settlers could access the new district only via the steep Ohiro Road from present-day Aro Street. The land became subdivided into many blocks. In 1852 John Fitchett purchased a number of these blocks and established a dairy farm called Ohiro Farm, known also as Fitchett’s Farm. A township named Fitchett Town formed in the 1860s; it gained its new name "Brooklyn" in 1888 when the then land-owners, Aston B. Fitchett (son of John Fitchett d.1875) and R.B. Todman, offered the main subdivision for sale. The offer included 208 lots of Fitchett’s Farm next to Brooklyn.

In 1899, after the sale, a further subdivision took place, and the main roads of Mitchell and Todman Streets took form. These were then intersected with Reuben, Bruce, Laura and Charlotte Avenues, Tanera Crescent, Apuka Street and Sugar Loaf Road (the site of the War Memorial). In 1902 Brooklyn was extended further up the Brooklyn Hills when Ashton B. Fitchett sold additional lots of land. Both Karepa and Apuka Streets were extended onto this newly available land.

As Brooklyn became more popular, Wellingtonians proposed a tramway. As the existing route to Brooklyn via Aro Street and Ohiro Road had excessively steep gradients, an easier tramway route was cut through the town belt by Central Park. Opened in 1906, this route later became today’s Brooklyn Road. The tramway closed in 1957, and the City - Brooklyn route is now served by numbers 7 and 8 buses. The number 7 (City - Brooklyn - Kingston) route is electrified as part of the Wellington City trolley bus service.

Brooklyn takes its name from the borough in New York City, which in turn recalls the Dutch city Breukelen. When a syndicate led by J.F.E. Wright (a Wellington Provincial Councillor between 1861 and 1863, and then for Karori and Makara between 1873 and 1876) subdivided Brooklyn, it named a number of its streets after former US Presidents:

* Grover Cleveland (in office: 1885-1889 and 1893-1897) - Cleveland Street
* Calvin Coolidge (in office: 1923-1929) - Coolidge Street
* James Garfield - Garfield Street
* William Henry Harrison - Harrison Street
* Herbert Hoover (in office: 1929-1933) - Hoover Street
* Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson Street
* Abraham Lincoln - Lincoln Street
* William McKinley - McKinley Crescent
* William Taft - Taft Street
* George Washington - Washington Avenue

Interestingly, other suburbs of Wellington also have thematic names for their roads, as follows:

Demographics

Population: The 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings counted 3,684 people defined as “usually resident population”. This represented an increase of 9.6% from the previous census of 1996. In comparison, Wellington City and New Zealand increased by 3.9% and 3.3% respectively.

Male / female ratio: The 2001 census recorded a ratio of male to female of 1:1.104, or 47.5% male and 52.5% female. This compares to Wellington City and New Zealand with 1:1.067 and 1:1.050 respectively.

Age-profile: 16.4% of people in Brooklyn had an age of under 15 years, compared with 18.5% in Wellington City and 22.7% for all of New Zealand. 7.1% of people in Brooklyn were aged 65 years and over compared with 8.6% of Wellington City and 12.1% for all of New Zealand.

Ethnic Groups: In 2001 87.9% of people defined themselves as European compared with 81.7% and 80.1% for Wellington City and New Zealand respectively.

Employment: The unemployment rate for Brooklyn is 4.9% compared with 6.2% and 7.5% for Wellington City and New Zealand respectively. 32.1% of those resident in Brooklyn in 2001 defined themselves in the Professionals occupational group.

Facilities and amenities

Cinema

Brooklyn hosts the Penthouse Cinema, located on Ohiro Road just south of Cleveland Street. Constructed for the Ranish family in the art deco style, it opened on 15 June 1939 as the Vogue Theatre. The Ranish family ran the cinema until 1951, when the Vogue Company Limited took over. The Vogue Company turned the cinema into a television studio where a number of TV commercials were shot. The building was renamed the Penthouse Cinema when it was bought by Merv and Carol Kisby in 1975. Over the years since then additional screens have been added, as well as refurbishment of much of the interior in keeping with its original style.

Bars

* The Windmill Bar and Cafe, Cleveland Street
* The Cornerstore, Todman Street

Restaurants

* The Golden Lotus Restaurant ( Ohiro Road) serves Thai food.
* Penthouse Cafe, located in the Penthouse Cinema on Ohiro Road, serves varied brunch/lunch and dinner menus.
* The Cornerstore, Todman Street, bar and restaurant serving New Zealand cuisine and wines and beers.

Take-aways

* Nan King Takeaways, Cleveland Street, variety of foods, including [fish and chips| fish ’n’ chips, Thai, Chinese, Indonesian.
* Burger Wisconsin, Cleveland Street, burgers and fries.
* Brooklyn Fish Supply, Cleveland Street, fish ’n’ chips; also sells fresh fish.
* Khana Khazana, Cleveland Street, Indian tandoori cuisine.

Library

Brooklyn has its own branch library, opened on 16 February 1905 at 22 Harrison Street as the second branch library of the main Central Library. It opened with just 350 books in its collection and for only 9 hours per week; the Librarian lived in a flat at the rear of the building. In 1960 the library moved to the present building on the corner of Harrison and Cleveland Streets. The original entrance was in Harrison Street, but in 1992 this was closed off and ramp access was provided in Cleveland Street, enabling increasing numbers of parents with pushchairs to enter easily. The original building is now the Brooklyn Playcentre.

Schools

Brooklyn has two schools within its boundaries:

* Brooklyn School
* St Bernard’s School

Brooklyn School

Brooklyn School, a co-ed state primary school located at 58 Washington Ave, opened in November 1888 and caters for students from new entrants (five year olds) through to year eight (twelve year olds), and has been between 390-450 children on the roll each year. The current Principal is Chris Bryant.

St Bernard’s School

St Bernard’s School, a co-ed Catholic school, occupies 40 Taft Street, a quiet private cul-de-sac. The school started in 1935 when the Sisters of Mercy provided two sisters, Boniface and Fabian. It opened on 5th February of that year as St Anthony's School Brooklyn, located in the church on Jefferson Street - the church building itself opened in June 1911. At the time the school opened there were 44 Catholic children attending the local state school, 43 of which transferred to St Anthony’s on opening day. By the end of the year the roll had risen to 69.

The building remained as one large church hall, installing a temporary partition during the week to create a second classroom. On Fridays after school had finished the partition and desks were removed and replaced with pews for the Mass on Sunday, after which the desks and partition were put back ready for school on Monday morning.

In 1949 following the procurement of land at the present site on Taft Street by the then Parish Priest Father Paul Kane, the church was relocated and a new school built. However, in 1961 the school (and the parish) was renamed; the Priest who enacted this bore the nsme "Bernard". The school continued to be run by the Sisters of Mercy until in 1973 Doreen Barry became the first lay Principal.

Today, St Bernard’s School Brooklyn prides itself as an urban Catholic primary school close to the shops, buses and only 5 minutes from the city centre. The current Principal is John McKenzie who has held the position since 2004.

Churches

* Brooklyn Anglican Church
* St Matthew's Joint Parish, 96 Washington Avenue. St Matthew's is a combined Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian Church formed in the 1970s when 5 national churches united.

Transport

Three bus routes serve Brooklyn:

* No. 7: City - Kingston via Brooklyn Library (Mon-Sun)
* No. 8: City - Kowhai Park via Brooklyn Library, off-peak only (Mon-Fri)
* No. 29: "Southern Shopper" Hospital - Kingston - Brooklyn - Happy Valley -Island Bay (Mon-Sat)

Malaysian High Commission

The Malaysian High Commission occupies a site in Brooklyn on the corner of Washington Avenue and Brooklyn Road.

Notable Residents of Brooklyn, Past and Present

* John Fitchett arrived in Wellington in 1842 on the ship London and died in 1875. In 1899 his son A.B. Fitchett and R.B Todman decided to subdivide his land. A.B Fitchett imported the first milk separator in to New Zealand.
* Ann Pacey, one of New Zealand's great jazz and theatre divas, has as much of a reputation in London and New York as at home. She has appeared in many television programmes and movies over the years, including Pioneer Woman, and more recently she was a leading lady in the stage presentation of Chicago (playing Mama Morton) which toured for several months throughout New Zealand.
* John Henry Heaton arrived in New Zealand in 1856, aboard the "Lord Ashley". Worked as a customs and shipping agent and was a member of the harbour board. He was elected Mayor of Melrose borough, which was incorporated in 1888.
* Chris McLean has writtren histories and biographies, including Tararua: the story of a Mountain Range and John Pascoe.
* Eirlys Hunter, born in London in 1952, has written books for adults and children. Several of her books, including "The Quake", "Between black & white" and the "Finn's Quest" series can be found at the Brooklyn Library.
* Architect Ernst Plischke (1903-1992) was born in Vienna and emigrated to New Zealand with his Jewish wife in 1939, to escape Hitler's Nazism.
* Jane Thomson (1858-1944), Mountaineer.
* Shihad (once called Pacifier), originally from Wellington now in Melbourne, Australia, are the band leading the international Kiwi rock charge. Their albums are available at the library. Shihad are Jon Toogood (vocals and guitar), Tom Larkin (drums), Karl K (bass) and Phil Knight (guitar and keyboards).
* William Sutch (1907-1975) was a teacher, economist, writer and diplomat.
* Ray Ching was born in Brooklyn, Wellington in 1939. His paintings were first seen in Auckland in 1966, as an exhibition of thirty watercolours and gouaches of birds, his preferred subject matter at that time. These early paintings established his reputation in New Zealand and by 1972 Ching's work was recognised as being amongst the finest of its kind in the world.

Politics

Local Authority Elections

Brooklyn forms part of the Lambton Ward for the Local Authority Elections that elect members to the Wellington City Council; a small area at the southern end of Brooklyn is part of the Southern Ward. The Council approved its ward system for the 2007 Local Authority Elections on 8 July 2006 . A number of other suburbs comprise Lambton Ward (all to the north of Brooklyn), as follows:

* Aro Valley
* Highbury
* Kelburn
* Mt Cook
* Mt Victoria
* Oriental Bay
* Pipitea
* Te Aro
* Thorndon
* Wadestown
* Wellington Central

General Elections

For General Elections, most of Brooklyn forms part of Wellington Central and for Māori Electorate, Te Tai Tonga.

Future...

Brooklyn is expanding at the moment, with a new subdivision of Panorama Heights, behind Karepa Street and infill building on some larger sections.

References

External links

* [http://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/AboutUs/PowerStations/BrooklynWindTurbine/ Brooklyn Wind Turbine]
* [http://www.wcl.govt.nz/wellington/brooklyn.html Wellington City Libraries]
* [http://www.wellingtontrams.org.nz/history.html Wellington Trams History]