Daily Photo – Baldwin Street: Planned Genius or a Happy Accident?

There’s something deeply endearing about Dunedin’s Baldwin Street. It’s the sort of place that makes visitors stop halfway up, hands on knees, and wonder how on earth the world’s steepest street ended up in Dunedin and why a road was built at such an angle in the first place. It looks less like a street and more like town planners had been enjoying a particularly enthusiastic lunch when they drew the lines. The truth, though, is far less deliberate and far more charming. Baldwin Street wasn’t planned to be the steepest street in the world. It just sort of… happened.

Back in the 1850s and 1860s, when Dunedin was still being dreamt into existence by Scottish settlers, the city’s layout was drawn up in London by people who had never laid eyes on the place. Working off maps with all the confidence of Victorian planners, they decided neat rectangular grids would do nicely – regardless of what the terrain actually looked like. 

Unfortunately, when the surveyors arrived to peg out the lines, they discovered that one of those innocent-looking streets went straight up a hillside that appeared to have been designed more for goats than carriages. So Baldwin Street was built exactly as it appeared on the plan: a perfect, unwavering line pointing directly at the sky.

As for the name, a gentleman named William Baldwin, a provincial councillor and local newspaper founder has the honour of the street bearing his name. Although whether Baldwin ever trudged up the street is anyone’s guess, I like to imagine he did.