Manners Street a street in the Wellington, New Zealand, suburb of Te Aro. It runs from the intersection of Courtenay Place and Taranaki Street in the east to the intersection between Willis Street and Boulcott Street in the west. Cuba Street crosses Manners Street.
What Manners Street was named after is not known. There have been suggestions that it was named after Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury, who was a speaker of the British House of Commons. Another possibility is Frederick Tollemache, the son of Sir William Manners.
In the 1850s Manners Street was much closer to the waterfront than it is now because of a lack of land reclamation at this point in timeâÂÂWakefield Street and Jervois Quay did not yet exist. An 1858 image of the street shows that at that point the street was muddy and unfriendly to pedestrians. Transport through the street was often done on foot or by horse. Cattle, chickens and sheep were a common sight on the road.
A tram line was installed in Manners Street in 1878, the same year that the Wellington tramway system opened. In December that year steam trams at Manners Street were reported to run at speeds of approximately .
After one of the 1942 Wairarapa earthquakes, Manners Street was closed off to pedestrians for several days due to concerns about hazardous buildings.
On 3 April 1943, during the Second World War, a riot between American and New Zealand servicemen erupted at the Allied Service's Club in Manners Street. The battle may have started after some southern American servicemen prohibited MÃÂori servicemen from drinking at the club. Physical fighting on the street ensued, and spread elsewhere, such as the A.N.A club in Willis Street and in Cuba Street. Two Americans were rumoured to have been killed in the riot, and numerous others were injured. Over 1,000 servicemen from both countries fought in the battle, along with a few hundred civilians. The riot was not reported on by local newspapers at the time due to wartime censorship, which may have contributed to the battle becoming mythologised. Details surrounding the event, which is notorious in New Zealand, are not well known.
The section of Manners Street between Cuba Street and Victoria Street was pedestrianised in 1979 and was known as Manners Mall. A fountain was placed in the area at some point between 1979 and 1989. It had an orange sculpture which was removed in 1997 after being vandalised and the rest of the fountain was removed in 2001. With the intention of increasing bus reliability and reducing bus travel times, in 2010 a bus-only roadway was opened at Manners Mall, after five months of construction. This move, which was controversial, ended the pedestrian-only nature of the area. In 2012 ViaStrada reported a decrease in travel times.
In 2012, Wellington city councillor Leonie Gill proposed placing nautical pedestrian fences across the road to discourage jaywalking, as at that time there had been eight known cases of pedestrians colliding with buses since the bus route was introduced.
In March 2025 rainbow colours were painted onto the shelter of bus stop 5515 to celebrate Pride Month, which is March in Wellington.
The Wellington Opera House is located at 109-117 Manners Street and has approximately of floor space. It was opened in 1914 after work began on designing and constructing it in 1911. Since 1985 the building has been listed by Heritage New Zealand as a category 1 historic place.
The building of the former James Smith Ltd department store is located on the corner of Manners and Cuba Streets. It was built in 1907 with an Edwardian façade for George Winder, an ironmongery importer. The building has had several redesigns over the years, such as a remodelling of the façade in 1932 which changed the style to Art Deco. In 1934 the building was extended which required the demolition of its eastern corner. The building was used by James Smith Ltd as a department store until 1993. As of 2022 the lower floors of the building are used as retail space and a gym, and the upper floors are used as office space. Since 1991 the building has been listed by Heritage New Zealand as a category 2 historic place.
After a church at Manners Street was destroyed by the 1848 Marlborough earthquake, a Methodist church and parsonage was built at the same location in 1850. After two decades the building was replaced due to an increase in the size of the congregation. The church and several buildings neighbouring it were destroyed by the Great Fire of 1879. A replacement church was built at 75 Taranaki Street.
Manners Street, Lambton Quay, Willis Street and Courtenay Place form what is known locally as the 'Golden Mile'. This is where most of the city's retail and commercial activities are located.
The corner of Manners and Willis Streets is known by many as Perrett's Corner. By 1878 it was the location of a surgery. After about three decades the building was bought by the brothers Claude and Edwin Perrett, from France, who used it to run a chemist shop and a mail order business. This business was disestablished in 1964 and in 1971 the building was demolished. In 2012 there was a café in the area named Perrett's Corner.