Hannahs Laneway

You've stepped into Hannahs Laneway, and the big brick building above you is the reason it exists. This was the R. Hannah and Company boot factory, built in nineteen twenty-three. Hannah's dominated New Zealand's footwear market for over a century — at their peak, if you were wearing shoes in this country, there was a decent chance they made them.

The factory closed, as factories do, and for years this corner of Te Aro was dead space — loading docks and empty warehouses. Then in the mid-nineties, developer Ian Cassels hired Sir Ian Athfield — arguably New Zealand's most famous and most eccentric architect — to convert the factory into loft-style apartments. It was one of the first warehouse conversions in the country, and it transformed these laneways from industrial dead-ends into what you see now.

Athfield was a character. His own house in Khandallah is a sprawling, multi-level structure that grew organically over decades — part Gaudi, part mad scientist's lair. He brought that same energy here, keeping the industrial bones while carving out light and living space. He died in twenty-fifteen, but his fingerprints are all over this part of the city.

What fills the old factory now is excellent. Wellington Chocolate Factory has been making bean-to-bar chocolate here since twenty-thirteen — they import raw cacao from the Pacific and roast it on site. If you're here during the day, you can watch through the window. Fix and Fogg, the peanut butter company that's somehow become a national institution, started in this laneway too. Leeds Street Bakery does some of the best pastries in the city. And if it's evening, Golding's Free Dive is right here for craft beer in a converted warehouse.

This is the Wellington that doesn't make the tourist brochures. Old industrial bones filled with people who actually make things.