Friday, July 3, 2009

A stroll along Grafton Bridge


I was out in the wonderful breather of fine weather yesterday, doing some work at the Domain before heading back to the city, and decided to walk across Grafton Bridge. (The photos here are in reverse order of shooting).

Above is the view from Symonds Street. For some time now, it has been closed to vehicular traffic while strengthening goes on underneath. For a while, it's a pedestrian/cyclists' open route.


Along the way, the contractors and Auckland City Council have put up signage summarising the project and a bit of the bridge's nearly 100 year history. Below is a close up of the old photo showing the opening day and the stream of people flooding across.







The bridge from Grafton Road.


This is the motorway built half a century after the bridge. Grafton bridge used to span a verdant, bush-clad gully. Today, it spans a motorway interchange. I took this shot on one knee, poking the camera lens through one of the lower arches in the cement side. Couldn't take a shot above, due to the anti-suicide shield.


123 Grafton Road. When the bridge was first being constructed, this was where the city engineer lived, but the house is likely to be around three decades older than the bridge. Usually, you can't see the house for vegetation. Right now, someone is repiling the house (at least, I think they are, judging from the advertising signage on the site). The trees, bar one, have been removed, and once again the Victorian architecture is shown to the world. This is one of the last of its kind in the Grafton area.


4 comments:

  1. That's a decent bridge, and the house is just lovely!
    We call re-piling re-stumping this side of the ditch lol ;)

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  2. That's interesting, Jayne. I didn't know that (love to find out new stuff). Mind you, the first piles used under some of our oldest houses were stump-like, being from the raw tree timber, not the cut stuff of later periods. I can see why the term might have come about.

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  3. Hi Timespanner, very interested in the Grafton Road area and pleased to see the photographs of 123 Grafton Road. Is 127 Grafton Road still there or has it fallen to the reconstruction of Auckland? Would love to know. Thanks Joyce

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  4. Looking at Google street view, there seems to be a couple of new multi-storey apartment blocks, called "Bridgeside", where 127 Grafton Road is today.

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