This 850-metre street is built on reclaimed land and runs from Victoria Street to Cambridge Terrace. It was likely to have been created around the mid-1840s, along with many of the other early Wellington Streets.
Wakefield Street was named after Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862) who masterminded the British settlement of New Zealand through the New Zealand Company in the late 1830s.
Wakefield Street is home to the Wellington Town Hall, The Michael Fowler Centre and several other notable heritage buildings. It is one of the main streets surrounding Te Ngakau the Civic Centre.
The Council formerly had an electrical generating plant, on the corner of Jervois Quay and Wakefield Street.
