A bank re-used

The Writer of the Purple Sage popped across on the clacks today with these images:

Out with camera on Sunday last, I shot this cute building at 366 Gt. South Road, Greenlane, just beside the Green Lane East intersection. No sign to tell me what it was, nor anything in the masonery to say what it had once been... Saw on the door that it is the registered office of Lloyd's Shipping! I thought, if you haven't already written about this, maybe there's a story for you...? Just a thought.

The masonry actually does say what the building was, although not in letters and numbers. This was an Auckland Savings Bank, Greenlane branch, opened 31 October 1934, according to my records, and designed by Daniel Boys Patterson, the ASB's architect at the time, right through almost to his death later in the century. He was still designing banks for them in the '60s.

When Papers Past takes the Auckland Star down towards 1945 later on, we might be able to see if there was much hoop-la with a grand opening and bands and bunting and happy depositors and such. Or not.

The bank sold it in 1996, as they did with so many others around the Auckland region. Now, as The Writer says, one of the tenants is Lloyds Shipping Ltd.