More Info →Two Boys on One of the Cannons in The Square

This photograph is of two little boys perched on one of the cannons in the Square. The photographer is looking east towards the PDC building (now the Plaza). This gun was installed in 1909 and removed during the 1940s. Cannons were purchased by the Government in 1879 and installed at Fort Ngahauranga overlooking Port Nicholson, Wellington Harbour. They were obsolete by 1900. Two of these cannons were acquired by the Palmerston North Borough Council in 1909 for display in the Square to the delight of many children. By 1939, the Council decided the cannons had outlived their usefulness and sold them to a scrap dealer who cut up the steel undercarriages and buried the barrels in an Albert Street property. See Research File A175/72/2 in the Ian Matheson City Archives, City Library for more information. The Occidental Hotel can be seen right of this photograph - it burnt down in 1927.