K Road Heritage

02/06/2026

31/05/2026

Looking southeast along the east side of Queen Street towards Karangahape Road - from opposite Marmion Street.

Showing the premises of Hoyes Motors Limited, left,
Waverley Street - centre.
Mrs C M Vicker, corner of Waverley Street, Mrs M R McKenzie.
William Goodsell, antique dealer, corner f Turner Street,
Bank of New South Wales (top of the hill in the far-right distance, on the corner of Karangahape Road).

'Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-1908

31/05/2026

Waverley Street. 19th century inner city housing replaced by commercial buildings in the mid 20th century - which are now being converted into and supplemented by high-rise residential buildings in the 21st century.

The large building in both images is the Airedale Street Telephone Exchange built in the 1960s to replace the Wellesley Street Exchange built in 1916.

Waverley is one of a group of streets just off Queen Street above Mayoral Drive with names taken from the works of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Marmion (1808) and Waverley (1814) in particular - Waverley was previously called Rokeby - another of Scott's novels Rokeby (1813) while White Street may be a reference to the White Lady of Avenel, a central character in Scott's 1821 Kenilworth novel.

Scotia Terrace was originally South Esk Street - which probably derived its name from a house (South Esk Cottage). This may be an oblique reference to Scott. Apart from it appearing in the poem Lochinvar (1808) the house where he wrote most of his early work was situated on the banks of the Esk River.

However, James Carnegie, the Earl of South Esk was a major celebrity in the 19th century (he was a noted writer of non-fiction, a Novelist and Poet and renowned as an explorer of Canada). A passenger ship named after him (either 'South Esk' or 'The Earl of South Esk" was how some early settlers reached New Zealand. It is possible people may have used the term South Esk because of the connection to him or Sir Walter Scott (or both).

Scotland was a fairly popular cultural ideal at the time - seen in the fact that when the street was renamed the new name Scotia was chosen (the latin version of the word Scotland). There are other examples of names in Victorian Auckland probably taken from the same sources: Airedale & Rob Roy (the Pub at Victoria Park now called the Birdcage) for example. Even the choice of the name Lancelot Terrace (now the upper entrance to Myers Park from Greys Avenue - may, likewise, be an oblique (but incorrect) reference to Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake (1810) due to confusing that poem with the Arthurian tales in which includes King Arthur, the knight Lancelot and another 'Lady of the Lake'.

Scott was probably the most widely read British Novelist of the early 19th century and even after the advent of names such as Dickens and the Brontes his works sold fairly well - his books were commonly found on most domestic bookshelves in the English-speaking world throughout the century.