Birdcage's dark corners have witnessed many dramas

The Birdcage Hotel would be moved 30m up Franklin Rd, according to Transit NZ plans. Picture / Brett Phibbs

In the last 120 years the Birdcage Tavern has seen enough scandals, soldiers and six o'clock swills to rival any pub in the country.

Now crouching beneath the Victoria Park viaduct, the three-storey hotel's dark corners have witnessed plenty of drama.

And it is this legacy which leads tourism publications to urge diners and drinkers to pay a visit to one of the city's oldest pubs. "If you have not been to the Birdcage then you have not been to all of Auckland," the Auckland Restaurant Guide told its readers in April.

One of the few surviving central Auckland hotels from the mid-1880s, the Birdcage has been the focus of courtroom battles, war-time romances and workers' rallies.

The site where it now stands was sold by the Crown in 1853 to spinster Catherine Marks for £74. Nine years later she sold the site and a hotel was erected on the land. This wooden building, the Rob Roy, was demolished in 1885, though its name was passed on.

Architects Edward Mahoney & Sons designed the new Rob Roy Hotel in its place, and it is this structure that stands today.

It has had a name change and extensive renovations, but much of the elaborate original interior survives - unlike other similar buildings of the period. In the early 1900s, the Rob Roy played its own role in the political dramas which gripped the nation. While much of New Zealand was paralysed by the general strike of 1913, the hotel was at the heart of Auckland's working-class resistance.

The Auckland Licensing Committee, fearing public disturbances, forced it to close its doors to drinkers. In response, more than 1000 strikers marched past it to rally their cause in Victoria Park.

During the World War II, the hotel became the scene of more light-hearted debauchery as American soldiers set up camp in the park. Undeterred by early closing times, they gained notoriety for the Rob Roy for hosting their drunken evenings.

Four years ago, an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office put the Birdcage and five other Auckland pubs before the High Court for allegedly misspending money earned from gaming machines. All the defendants were acquitted. Auckland Area co-ordinator of the Historic Places Trust David Reynolds said Transit NZ's proposal to move the pub would be the best thing for it.

"If not moved, the Birdcage would be overwhelmed by the proposed replacement viaduct and the new structure would completely cut the hotel off from the sky, condemning it to a miserable existence, and probably an uneconomic commercial future."