The suburb stands on the southern fringe of the central city alongside Te Aro and to the north of Newtown.

After being settled by Māori since roughly 1350 CE, the Mount Cook area was situated on a fertile hill, just south of Te Aro Pā.

[3][4] During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, Mt Cook became a favoured suburb of Wellington's elite, and many palatial mansions, such as the timber houses known as "painted ladies", were constructed along the Kent and Edward Terrace rivers; After the Earthquake of 1855, many were built around what was now the Basin Reserve.

Densely populated mid-to-postwar Wellington had all eyes on Mount Cook, where the Dominion Museum and the carillon opened for the country's 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi, in 1940.

Mount Cook's attractions and institutions include the Colonial Cottage Museum, the Wellington campus of Massey University and the National War Memorial, and, to cricketers locally and around the world, the Basin Reserve.