Kia ora, Welcome to Wellington City Archives, Te Kano Kohinga Kupu o Pōneke

We are the custodians of the weird and wonderful, and the primary information resource for the history of Wellington. Established in 1994, Wellington City Archives holds physical and digitised records dating back to 1840. Our collections are a rich resource for anyone researching Wellington’s social history and show changes in the community and urban development over the past 150 years.

The collection consists of 

• Community collections 

• Council Controlled Organisation archives 

• Wellington City Council archives 

This is made up of a range of item types including: 

• Documents 

• Photographs

• Maps

• Plans

• Physical objects

Winning entry for the Wellington Town Hall competition by Joshua Charlesworth 

(Wellington City Council Archives, 00252-6) 

Highlights of the collection 

• Family history  

• Community collections

• City Photographer Series

• Wellington Harbour Board

• Property permits and consents 

• Featured content such as people, places and events

Accessing the collection

The best place to start with your research is Archives Online. This lets you search across the Wellington City Archives collections to see if you can find anything helpful. Information about all 800,000 records (metadata) is progressively being added making records easier to find.    

• To search our collection, click here.  

• To conduct a property search, click here.  

Archives Online enables you to view and download items. You can create collections and share them with people. You can also request to have items digitised, or to view them at the Archives. Check out the Archives Online User Guide for help getting started.

Services and Fees 

Hopefully Archives Online will meet all your research needs. However, if you have specific digitisation requirements or would like to hire a staff member to undertake your research, our fees and services can be found here

Wellington Heritage Week Poster

(Wellington City Council Archives, 00088-1)

Contacting Us

If you would like to get in contact, please phone us on 04 801-2096 or email us at archives@wcc.govt.nz.

Visiting is by appointment only to ensure we are prepared for your visit.

We are located at 28 Barker Street. Our opening hours are Monday - Friday 9 - 4 and we are closed public holidays. 

Keep up to date

We're active on social media! You can follow us on the below links for a look at the work we do and the cool archives we find in the collection

	Facebook
	Instagram

Summer City, Sun Festival, Parading Characters 1991 

(Wellington City Council Archives, 00557-319-12)