Alexander Turnbull Library Curatorial Summer Series 2018 - #4

The Team from Alexander Turnbull Library

Alexander Turnbull Library Curatorial Summer Series 2018 — showcasing curators over 4 successive Wednesday evenings in February. The curators talk about their research, and highlight stories from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections.

Date / Time: Wednesday 28 February 2018 / 5:30pm
Venue: Programme Rooms, Te Ahumairangi (ground floor), National Library, corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets, Thorndon.
Free. No booking is required but do come early as seating is limited.

In the last of the 2018 series Mark Bagnall, the Curator of the Cartographic Collection, will explore the history, context and use of Thomas Ward’s 102 sheet, detailed map of Wellington completed in 1891. This 3-year project mapped the area of the original town acres of Wellington at 40 feet to 1 inch. It showed every building, road and item of street furniture within the original Wellington city limits, detailing building materials and layouts, locations of outhouses and size of the water reticulation pipes.

Once completed Ward’s City of Wellington map became a significant document in planning Wellington’s infrastructure, Ward being contracted to update the map for several years thereafter. This talk looks at the history of the map, the context in which it was produced, and how it was used for urban planning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Mark Bagnall is the Curator, Cartographic, Alexander Turnbull Library. Previously, he has worked in Collection Development, Reference Services and Cataloguing at the National Library, Macmillan Brown Centre, University of Canterbury, and Lincoln University.

Image: Ward, Thomas. City of Wellington. Wellington : Brown, Thomson & Co., 1891. ATL MapColl 832.4799gbbd 1891. Detail showing the current location of the National Library on the corner of Molesworth Street and Aitken Street (then Fraser’s Lane).