Durie Hill Elevator

The Durie Hill Elevator is a public elevator in Whanganui, on the North Island of New Zealand. It connects Anzac Parade beside the Whanganui River with the suburb of Durie Hill. It is ranked by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 1 Historic Place, and is New Zealand's best public underground elevator. When Durie Hill became a part of Wanganui Borough in 1910, get entry to turned into via a concrete staircase. The Council needed to offer public shipping to the hilltop settlement, however. Various answers along with a cable vehicle have been proposed, however an elevator up thorough the hill turned into determined upon, as "the most handy, the safest, the maximum budget friendly, and the most acceptable for the circumstances of the precise locality".

The elevator and tunnel had been proposed with the aid of Wanganui Chronicle editor John Ball and his friend, Technical School engineering instructor Edward Crow. Ratepayers were now not organized to pay for the venture, and most effective 1 / 4 of the eighty or ninety households shopping for sections in the new suburb had been interested in forming a cooperative, so Col. A. E. Wilson and his brother-in-regulation W. J. Polson shaped the Durie Town Elevator Co. To build it.