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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 20, No. 3. 4th April, 1957

Victoria Story—2 — Dragged from Stable by the Cable

Victoria Story—2

Dragged from Stable by the Cable

Victoria College; an untidy agglomeration of buildings of varying sites and architectural styles clustered on a site better suited for breeding lambs than building a hall of learning—how the blares did it get there?

When Victoria was founded in 1899 (see last issue), like little orphan Annie she had a name but no home to call her own.

Classes were scattered around the City in odd rooms—in the old Technical School in Victoria Street, and the Girls' College and a select private school (now Thorndon Fire Station) in Pipitca Street. The 98 foundation students ran through the streets from lecture to lecture.

Around Town

Service was limited at first to English. Classics. Mathematics, and Chemistry—but quickly extended to include Law. Biology, Modern Languages, and Economis. The first timetables show that nearly all lectures were after 5 p.m. or on Saturday mornings—so even then V.U.C. was primarily a haunt for part-timers.

Agitation began early for Victoria to have a roof over her head of her very own. The Students' Association founded in St. Paul's Schoolroom is co-oval with the College itself, and (at first called Students' Society). Sydney Street, supported the College Council (prime mover: Sir Robert Stout) in a series of man-ouevres designed to obtain the Government's assistance in securing a suitable site for permanent buildings, with room for expansion.

First choice was Mount Cook (site today of Tech. and the Museum, then of a particularly ugly prison). An eminence above yet in the midst of the City, with a grand view and handy to transport, this seemed the ideal spot But the Government had other plans for the site, and offered Victoria instead the old Ministerial Residence in Tinakori Road (now a Dental Clinic Annexe). This was rejected as an insult.

Another suggestion that the lands set apart for "higher education" in the '50's and occupied Wellington College should be handed over to V.U.C. met with such indignant resistance from the former's Board of Governors that it was dropped.

For two years Victoria carried on a rather tentative corporate existence in far-flung corners of the town. The V.U.C. Debating Society, sponsored directly by the Students' Society in its own first year of life, established the V.U.C. tradition at its Friday evenings in the Sydney Street Schoolroom, where it voted that commerce was antagonistic to art, and that no event in the history of the Colony had had a more injurious effect than the dispatching of contingents to South Africa. Downtowners flocked to hear students wrangle, and as early as 1900, M.P.'s were induced to take the V.U.C. platform on a motion of confidence in the Government.

Cable Lift

Then, in February 1901. the College Council received a letter from a wellknown Featherston squatter and speculator. Mr. Charles Pharazyn. Indicating surprise that no site had yet been fixed for the College, he expressed his "conviction that the one position for it is on the Kelburn Park Reserve, or possibly, if that should not be available, on some of the land higher up".

Anticipating some comment, no doubt, from those irreverent students, he added: "I have hesitated to express this opinion in a public way, because I knew it would be said that I was influenced by my large share in the Kelburn-Karori Tramway"—i.e.. the Cable-Car, then recently floated by a private company. "I have, however, too long been subjected to absurd misconstructions of my motives to care what may be said now that I am in a position to make a definite proposal, which I hope will be considered in the spirit in which it is made, viz: if the site I have indicated is decided on, but not otherwise. I shall be happy to gove a donation of £1.000 to the College funds . . ."

That clinched it. After some prolonged negotiations with the City Council. 6½ nearly vertical acres of Town Belt were acquired for the College, and Mr. Pharazyn had assured a steadily growing population of users for his Cable-Car by the investment of £1.000 which the College badly needed.

The site itself and the first building, like the Student Union building to come, derived their biggest private contribution from the wool-sheds of the Wairarapa.

Work began on the "old clay patch" after a tussle with the Government for a subsidy, and the Governor (Lord Plunket) laid the foundation stone in August, 1904. while the students themselves excavated a site for tennis-courts and building of their own (our Gym.); [unclear: Premi] Seddon riding up on a bay mare to turn the first sod. These two buildings when finished (the College March, 1906. the Gym. July, 1909) could hardly, even then, have been boasted of as structures of great beauty, but the view from them was unsurpassable, and anyway the spirit that was to dwell there was not to he affected by the shape of her material abode.

And after years of chasing her hat Victoria had at last found her home.

—Victorian