Five protected oak trees will have to make way for the extension to Wanganui's Sarjeant Gallery.
Winter has stripped them of leaves, and left their branches stark against the sky.
The avenue of five is behind the gallery in Queen's Park, with a row of five phoenix palms beside it.
The oaks are number 75 in Wanganui District Council's protected trees list. Two of them have small plaques with that number on them.
There's a set process for handling the removal of protected trees, and in this particular case it is bound up with the gallery extension project.
Submissions on earthquake strengthening for the Sarjeant, building its extension and parking area and the resulting changes to roadways and trees closed last Friday, Wanganui District Council principal planner Jonathan Barrett said.
There were 21 submissions. From what he has read so far, all are broadly in favour of the extension, though some with reservations.
He didn't recall any mentioning the loss of the trees.
Unless they are dead or dying, council's 2008 tree policy states protected trees can only be removed with resource consent. In the case of the gallery work, the resource consent will be for all the changes.
Mr Barrett said the council could not decide resource consent on its own application. The matter will instead be dealt with by an independent planner and heard by an independent commissioner.
The benefit the city would get from the gallery extension outweighed the loss of the trees, he said. Oaks and phoenix palms were fashionable at the time of planting, but there were lots more in the city.
The gallery extension will also need a landscape plan, and that would give scope for more planting to replace them.
There is no special history recorded for the oaks, but Mr Barrett said they may have been a victory planting, possibly after World War I.