Freemans Bay is the name of a former bay and now inner city suburb of Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand. The bay has been filled in to a considerable extent, with the reclamation area now totally concealing the ancient shoreline. Historically a poor and often disreputable quarter, it is now a comparatively wealthy and desirable neighbourhood known for its mix of heritage homes and more recent single-dwelling houses, as well as for its two large parks.

Since the turn of the 20th century, extensive land reclamation (partly using stone quarried from nearby headlands) has seen Freemans Bay itself disappear. The reclamation of the old bay began in 1873 and was finished in 1901. Victoria Park was created on most of the resulting flat area. It is still public land used mostly for sports purposes.

The coastline shifted more than one kilometre to the northwest of the city centre and is now composed of the concrete wharves of Viaduct Basin and the Tank Farm or as it is now renamed, the Wynyard Quarter.

Waiatarau (or 'Reflecting Waters') was the Māori name for the bay that is now Victoria Park, although other names were used to refer to the area; such as Wai Kōtota ('The place where the cockles are harvested') and Te Koranga ('The scaffolds', referring to the racks upon which fish would be hung to dry in the sun). A stream called Waikuta ('Waters of the reed') discharged into the south eastern corner of the bay (bottom of College Hill Road) while the Tunamau ('To catch eels') stream came down from what is now Western Park and met the bay at the bottom of what is now Franklin Road. The headland at the western side of the bay was called Te Tō, and was a seasonal fishing pā used by Tāmaki Māori. Te Tō was occupied by 18th century Waiohua paramount chief Kiwi Tāmaki during the shark hunting season on the Waitematā Harbour.

Freemans Bay is one of the earliest settled areas in Auckland, and was earmarked for development and land reclamation in the 1840s by Colonial Surveyor Felton Mathew who laid out the streets along the shores of the local bays. During the early colonial era, the bay was known by Māori as Waipiro Bay, due to the large amounts of rum consumed there.

Freemans Bay is probably named after Captain William Hobson's secretary, James Stuart Freeman who apparently lived in the area.

While settled as one of the earliest parts of the country by Europeans, the area was never seen as a desirable place to live. The rich favoured the other side of Queen Street, clustering around the governor's mansion (where the university is now located) and enjoying views of the harbour and Rangitoto, this was even referred to as the 'right side' of Queen Street.

On the "wrong side of Queen Street" were located most of the smelly and noisy industries including the abattoir and the gasworks of the Auckland Gas Company. As well as brickworks, by 1883 the area was the location of nine shipyards, three sawmills, a brass and iron foundry, a glassworks, an asphalt works, as well as several coal and lime traders. Also found here were several public facilities like the city morgue, a night soil dump and from 1905 the city rubbish incinerator (known as the 'Destructor', which became Victoria Park Market and was rebranded as Victoria Park Village in 2017).