Wellington City Libraries is the public library service for

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

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Wellington Central Library

From 1840 onwards various organisations attempted to establish a public library in Wellington. The first Council-operated public library opened in 1893 on the corner of Mercer and Wakefield Streets in a building designed by William Crichton, a prominent architect of the time. The library closed in 1940 and the building was demolished in 1943. The site was later occupied by the City Council municipal buildings that are still in use today. In 1940 a new library opened on a block between Mercer and Harris street. This building was converted into the

City Gallery Wellington City Gallery Te Whare Toi is a public art gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. History City Gallery Te Whare Toi began its life as the Wellington City Art Gallery on 23 September 1980 in a former office block located at 65 Victoria Street, now ...

in 1993. In 1991 the new central branch library opened on Victoria and Mercer Streets along the edge of Civic Square.

Ian Athfield Sir Ian Charles Athfield (15 July 1940 – 16 January 2015) was a New Zealand architect. He was born in Christchurch and graduated from the University of Auckland in 1963 with a Diploma of Architecture. That same year he joined Structon Group A ...

of Athfield Architects designed the new building, which Fletcher Development and Construction built. The library building, closed in 2019, has three main floors. The ground floor contained fiction, the Sound and Vision Centre, the Young Adult and Children's collections and the main circulation desks. The first floor housed the sciences,

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and

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

collections. The travel, history and New Zealand reference collections were located on the second floor. A cafe and meeting rooms were situated on a mezzanine floor accessed from the main entrance but separated from the main library. A basement level held a public carpark. The high-level portico bridge linking the library building to the WCC service centre building was demolished in 2013 as an earthquake risk.

Awards

The central library building has won two New Zealand architectural awards: the Environmental Award in the

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Awards in 1992 and the National Award for Architecture 1993 sponsored by the

New Zealand Institute of Architects Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) is a membership-based professional organisation that represents 90 per cent of all registered architects in New Zealand, and promotes architecture that enhances the New Zealand livi ...

. In 2006 the

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honoured the Library with an excellence award for its "Sing along with Stu" story-time programme. Te Awe Library in Brandon Street won the 2021 Wellington Architecture Award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

Library Closure

Wellington City Council decided to close the Central Library at short notice on 19 March 2019, after receiving advice from engineers that the building has structural vulnerabilities which mean it may not perform well in the event of a significant earthquake. In September 2020, acknowledging fears that the building might be demolished,

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proposed that it should be listed as a category 1 historic place. This would not stop demolition, but would help inform Wellington City Council's decision-making. A month later the Council announced that it would spend $179 million to repair and upgrade the library rather than demolish it, but in May 2021 the Council announced that it was considering other options. In September 2021 Wellington City Council announced that it was disposing of the fittings in the Central Library, either putting fixtures into storage for four years or recycling furniture that cannot be used elsewhere by the Council. The building will be strengthened and modernised and the layout redesigned. Additional space will be added to the top two floors and base isolators installed under the building. Three pop-up replacement libraries have opened in central Wellington: Arapaki Manners Library (opened in May 2019 in Manners Street), He Matapihi Molesworth Library (opened in October 2019 inside the National Library in Molesworth Street), and Te Awe Library in Brandon Street (opened in July 2020). However none of these has the reading rooms or the opening hours of the Central Library. Wellington Central Library's collection of 400,000 items has been relocated to a new collection and distribution centre named Te Pātaka, in Johnsonville.

Branches

Wellington City Libraries has 14 branches open to the public. Three of these are in central Wellington, and the rest are located in suburban areas: * Arapaki Manners Library * Brooklyn Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Brooklyn) * Cummings Park (Ngaio) Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Korimako, Ngaio) * He Matapihi Molesworth Library * Island Bay Library * Johnsonville Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Waitohi) * Karori Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Te Māhanga) * Khandallah Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Tari-Kākā) * Mervyn Kemp (Tawa) Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Te Takapū) * Miramar Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Motu-Kairangi) * Newtown Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Omaroro) * Ruth Gotlieb (Kilbirnie) Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Te Awa-a-Taia) *Te Awe Library * Wadestown Library (Te Whare Pukapuka o Ōtari) There is also a housebound service, whereby volunteers will deliver books to those who are unable to get to a library. From 1947 to 2006 the library operated a mobile service taking books to communities that had no branch library or limited public transport, but this service was cancelled in 2006 due to low use and high costs. File:2019-08-17 - Wellington, New Zealand - Arapaki Manners Library and Service Centre.jpg, Arapaki Manners Library and Service Centre (2019) File:Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand (2).JPG, Brooklyn Library (2014) File:He Matapihi Molesworth Library entrance.jpg, He Matapihi Molesworth Library (2019) File:Ruth Gotlieb Library.jpg, Ruth Gotlieb (Kilbirnie) Library (2018) File:Wadestown Library.JPG, Wadestown Library (2012) File:Karori Library.jpg, alt=Photo of Karori Library taken from across the road., Karori Library (2020) File:The original Wellington Public Library on the corner of Mercer & Wakefield Streets, 1930.jpg, The original Public Library designed in 1891 and opened in 1893 (1930) File:Postcard. Public Library, Newtown, Wellington, N.Z. New Zealand post card (carte postale), printed in Germany. Fergusson Limited Sydney and London W 64. Industria-series. (ca 1904-1914). (21016845124).jpg, The Newtown Public Library (ca 1904-1914) File:Wellington Public Library in Mercer Street 1940.jpg, The Wellington Central Library built in 1937 (1940) File:WellingtonLibraryFront.jpg, Wellington Central Library building (2007)

References

External links

Wellington Central Libraries website
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Wellington City Education in the Wellington Region Libraries in Wellington