Basque Park
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Basque Park is a north-facing reserve in
Eden Terrace Eden Terrace is an inner city suburb of Auckland, located 2 km south of the Auckland CBD, in the North Island of New Zealand. Eden Terrace is one of Auckland's oldest suburbs, and also one of the smallest. Eden Terrace is under the gov ...
, a former working class suburb in central
Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...
, the largest city in
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
. It is surrounded by
Symonds Street Symonds Street is a street in Auckland, New Zealand's most populous city. The road runs southwest and uphill from the top of Anzac Avenue (originally Jermyn Street), through the City Campus of University of Auckland, over the Northwestern Moto ...
, Newton Road, New North Road and the
North Western Motorway The Northwestern Motorway (also known historically as the Auckland–Kumeu Motorway), part of (SH 16), is the major western route and secondary northern route out of Auckland in New Zealand. Twenty-one kilometres in length, the motorway runs ...
. This green area was part of a group of important working class housing suburbs of New Zealand. Based in the most densely housed urban area in the country Basque Park served as a recreation area for the suburbs of Arch Hill and
Newton Newton most commonly refers to: * Isaac Newton (1642–1726/1727), English scientist * Newton (unit), SI unit of force named after Isaac Newton Newton may also refer to: People * Newton (surname), including a list of people with the surname * ...
.


History

In the 1930s it was the intention of the city fathers to create a playground for children whose families were crowded in the gully between the Symonds Street and Great North Road ridges during the Depression where Eden Terrace, Arch Hill and Newton suburbs were found. Certain private owned sections of land were bequeathed to
Auckland City Council Auckland City Council was the local government authority for Auckland City, New Zealand, from 1989 to 1 November 2010, when it and Auckland's six other city and district councils were amalgamated to form the Auckland Council. It was an elec ...
also to be used as a recreation area. Hard wood paving cobbles, that were originally used for roading on the waterfront of Auckland, were in the 1970s dumped on the eastern edge of the park in preparation to filling in a ramp that would carry a road through to Dominion and New North Road. One source states that the intention of the Auckland City Council was to build a fly-over of the Park. Because of Industrial zoning there was an uneasy co-existence between industry and housing. This is alluded to in copies of ''Flash'', the Grey Lynn, Westmere, Newton Community newsletter/newspaper, of the late 1970s, when the reserve was to the southern edge of a wasteland of old housing that was deliberately allowed to decay so that the North Western Motorway could be put through without opposition. In the late 1970s, once most of the housing was cleared out, the Auckland City Council moved to extend Upper Queen Street, the main street of the city through Basque Park to Dominion Road.
Christodoulos Moisa Christodoulos Evangeli Georgiou Moisa (born 1948) is a New Zealand poet, artist, photographer, writer, essayist and art teacher. Early life Moisa was born in 1948 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. His parents were immigrants from Cyprus. His father ...
, an artist and writer who lived in Fleet Street and was the Chairperson of the Newton branch of the Grey Lynn, Westmere and Newton Communities Committee, found out that the extension was going to be put through the bequeathed land and organised a campaign against this move. Enlisting the help of architect and lecturer at the School of Architecture, Vince Terrini,{{Cite web, url=http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?BU=http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/nzcardindex/search.htm&AC=QBE_QUERY&TN=NZcardindex&QF0=unique_record_id&NP=2&RF=Display+card+info&QI0=NZCI000034697, title=Inmagic DB/Text WebPublisher PRO: 1 records, website=www.aucklandcity.govt.nz he worked with architecture students to come up with a proposal to save the reserve. Moisa took the Auckland City Council to the Town Planning Tribunal where eventually Judge Turner ruled that the connection to Dominion Road should be diverted towards the north, circling around the Reserve. As a result, the area has now been re zoned for inner city housing and the few existing industrial workshops are in decline. By the beginning of the 21st century the Basque Park Reserve has become a gentrified enclave which has been extensively landscaped and planted with
nīkau ''Rhopalostylis sapida'', commonly known as nīkau, is a palm tree endemic to New Zealand, and the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. Etymology is a word borrowed from the Māori language; cognates of this word in the closely related E ...
palms and other trees. This is to the chagrin of some of the locals who had planted a community garden in the area during the period when the Auckland City Council did very little maintenance in the area.


References

Urban public parks Parks in Auckland