Donald Stuart's monument near Queens Gardens breaks all the rules.
It's a statue of a clergyman but isn't near a church; it's the first bronze statue sculpted by a New Zealander yet most people have barely heard of it or its subject; it has finished up facing a non-existent building, with its back to most of the passing traffic, and sits on a plinth so high that the original intention of a monument to a man who moved among people has been hopelessly obscured.
How could such a situation have arisen?Donald Stuart arrived in Dunedin from Falstone, Northumberland, in 1860, to take up the post of minister at the soon to be constructed Knox Church.
He held this position until his death in 1894.
Although he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1872 he was anything but an academic.
His unusual approach to his ministry, while unconventional to the more conservative members of the congregation must have seemed sensibly pragmatic to the more liberal minded.
Dr Stuart was the soul of moderation and conciliation.
He was flexible about Sabbath day observance, proposing evening instead of afternoon church services, and was a moderate on the then very vexed issue of temperance.
He favoured sermons rooted in the here and now, habitually returning to social issues, rather than doctrinal debates.
He even invited clergy of other denominations to preach in his own church.
He was influential in setting up both the boys' and girls' high schools and, after 1868, to the setting up of a university and its subsequent administration.
He was Dunedin's first easily recognisable public figure.
On his death in 1894, 6000 people were estimated to have walked in procession following the hearse while a further 20,000 watched.
Shops were closed for half a day. Condolences poured in from every religious denomination.
At a public meeting shortly after his death, guided in part by the energetic William Matthew Hodgkins - father of Frances - a statue rather than a too-easily forgotten plaque was decided as the most appropriate memorial.
Mr Hodgkins was also influential in encouraging W.
L.
Morrison, a recently arrived immigrant who had set up a sculpture school in Wellington, to submit the model that still exists and won him the prize of 25.
Mr Morrison had never met Dr Stuart and although there were several portraits of his head, he seems to have relied fairly heavily for the pose on one of two portraits by G.
P.
Nerli, hanging in Otago Girls' High School.
This was not an unusual practice.
Most statues were sculpted subsequent to the death of their subjects.
The next question was where the statue was to be placed.
Dr Stuart's death had come shortly after a major programme had been embarked on to tidy up the area we know as Queens Gardens, then called the Triangle.
The statue was placed at the western apex of the triangle in the middle of a recently asphalted area between High and Rattray Sts - rather in the way statues are sited in large public spaces in European cities.
It was thought a very desirable site.
There was considerable empty space around the statue - possibly a little too much - and Dr Stuart was placed on a rather modest plinth, looking towards Customhouse Square and Cargill's monument.
As has been the case with other monuments in a period when the city was growing, the question of moving the statue somewhere else soon arose.
There were the fairly predictable complaints that it was not sufficiently imposing for the space it occupied and that Dr Stuart sat with his back to many passers-by. In 1906, an attempt was made to have the statue moved to a site outside the Settlers Museum, but this failed to get off the ground.
Eventually, in 1922, when the electric tram lines were being extended through the city, the statue was moved a very short distance, and aligned with that of Queen Victoria along the edge of newly extended pavement on the right hand side of Lower High St.
At the same time, the plinth was redesigned, making it heavier and higher than before with two additional basement courses - so that the whole structure was larger in scale.
Unfortunately the final effect of these changes especially to the plinth - which was out of keeping with the seated figure - was to make the statue appear slightly pompous, more the sort of thing one would expect for a general or politician rather than a man who spent his life among ordinary people as originally envisaged by Mr Morrison.
Forty years on, with the tramlines and the lacklustre High St facade having disappeared, Dr Stuart was left marooned in the absurd position of having his back to busy Crawford St and his front facing two car parks.
The only appropriate building - but in his case wildly inappropriate - he could now be looking at or contemplating (were he to swivel his eyes slightly to the left) is a brothel. In 1894, when they had begun to raise money for this project, contributors were very mindful that Dr Stuart must not just become a name on a plaque their children might ask about.
We have almost succeeded in doing exactly that with a larger-than-life size statue.
Clearly, the time has come for a rethink of where this statue of a memorable and most unusual figure in the history of the city should be sited.
It would be impractical to put it back where it started its life.
Such was Dr Stuart's long association with education, a fairly obvious solution presents itself.
It should be re-sited nearer to the university and when I spoke recently on the subject, the museum reserve was suggested and it seems a very good proposal - with something akin to the original style of plinth, of course.
Any doubters about Dr Stuart's worthiness for such a position should consider the following.
In 1894, following his death, the council of the University of Otago noted in a memorial that: "It is not too much to say that the existence of this university is attributable to his untiring zeal, and he contributed very largely to the success that subsequently attended it."
This was said of man who had served on university council, had been vice-chancellor after 1871 and was chancellor from l879 until his death in 1894.
Rodney Hamel is a Dunedin historian.
