'Losing Wellington's City to Sea Bridge would be a terrible thing'

Last December, Wellington City Council confirmed that due to the high cost of seismic restrengthening, the 35-year-old City to Sea Bridge is to be demolished. This week, a battle to save it failed.

Public art heritage advocate Sue Elliott questions whether, alongside facts and figures about the iconic bridge's "dire" seismic situation, decision-makers were adequately informed about its significance as a "treasured sea anchor of the Wellington streetscape".

"The role that the bridge has played in the Wellington landscape is crucial, and a new bridge absolutely has to happen if we cannot keep this one," she tells Culture 101.

Designed by architects Rewi Thompson and John Gray and featuring wooden sculptures by artist Paratene Matchitt, the City to Sea Bridge was designed to complement Civic Square and the nearby Central Library, which reopens as Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui in March 2026 after a seven-year closure.

When the pedestrian bridge was constructed in 1990, it delivered something that Wellingtonians had been crying out for, Elliott says - access to the waterfront from the city.

"The whole kaupapa of this project was to connect the civic centre and the waterfront in a way that didn't mean that you cross the road on a pedestrian crossing. That doesn't provide the same public space that the bridge does, and that same sense of arrival… the whole space will be lesser if it is not connected to the waterfront in the way that it was.

"To lose the bridge, I think would be a terrible thing to happen."

In the years since, much has changed in Civic Square - the Central Library has been rebuilt, the Town Hall is being renovated, and the City Gallery is closed

While Elliott concedes that cities need to be "organic", public artworks that already exist, such as the City to Sea bridge, need to be protected and valued, Elliott says, which is why she co-founded Public Art Heritage Aotearoa.

If Wellington cannot keep the current bridge, a replacement bridge with a similar raised plaza providing a two-way lookout to the harbour should be built, she says.

"I'd like the kaupapa and the spirit of the former bridge to be there in the new design."

Civic Square, which is currently under redevelopment, was once an "enormously successful" public space where people gathered, conversed and protested.

"I think it is key that Civic Square remains the creative heart of Wellington."

The Central Library, which reopens in March 2026 after being closed since March 2019, has been renamed Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui (The Window to the Wider World).