Memorial · Wellington

Site of New Zealand's First Public Library

Photograph at the Site of New Zealand's First Public Library Memorial

Wellington Central Library (Māori: Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui) is a public library building in the central business district of Wellington, in New Zealand. It is owned by Wellington City Council and is listed as a Category 1 historic place by Heritage New Zealand. The building was opened in 1991 and was a key element of Wellington's municipal centre, Te Ngākau Civic Square. It serves as the main hub for the municipal library service, Wellington City Libraries. The building was closed to the public at short notice on 19 March 2019, after Wellington City Council was advised by engineers that the building had structural vulnerabilities which meant it might not perform well in the event of a significant earthquake. Redesign and restructuring works were completed by September 2025 and the building was re-opened to the public in March 2026.

Source: OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

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