Stretching 3 kilometres across three Wellington city suburbs—from Mount Cook’s Basin Reserve, through Newtown, to Wakefield Park in Berhampore—Adelaide Rd is named for one of the New Zealand Company's ‘first ships’, the Adelaide which arrived in Wellington on March 7 1840, bringing immigrants to Aotearoa New Zealand.

This monochromatic print shows three weatherboard wooden villas cheek-by-jowl along Adelaide Road. The horizontal and vertical lines of the houses’ construction, the weatherboards, shingles, balustrades, stair railings and support posts are defined and differentiated in clear detail, a well-suited subject matter to the medium, a monoprint. The artist’s understanding of shadows and mastery over a subtle tonal range allows a masterful depiction of perspective within the short depth range of this work.

There is no information held on the artist, identified only as McNabb, in Wellington City Council’s registration archive.