Murals in Beresford Square

Around the former Beresford Square underground men's loo, art has bloomed.

These first two mural were photographed in February this year.

Today, I spotted more.

Auckland needs more pleasant surprises like these.

The resurrected former Woods Grocery shop

Text and images received today from George Farrant, Principal Heritage Adviser Central, Auckland Council. Thanks, George!

A final update...

The resurrected former Woods Grocery shop at 151 Mount Eden Road is now virtually complete in all its glory, and attracting much appreciative attention from the local and passing community - it's not often that a heritage restoration project attracts frequent spontaneous toots of support from passing motorists. The new photo shows the finished shop (constrained tenant signage yet to come, of course), and with the new footpaths being installed for AT by John Fillmore Contracting.

The old building looks great in its original colours, discovered under the later lurid pinks and yellows when I did careful scrapings. The old colours are what is seen in the c.1907 monochrome photo, and unsurprisingly match the earth oxide and chrome greens known to be available at the time. I have chosen a more subdued (i.e., less saturated) version of these same colours for the parts of the wrap-around new building visible on both Mt Eden Road and Esplanade Rd, so as to be related visually but non-competitively, and the result works well. The newer street facades are architecturally empathetic without being imitative, so that the important distinction can be clearly read - see the photo of the Mt Eden Rd junction between old and new. 

On the old building the numerous timber double-hung windows have been fully restored, while on the new parts the windows echo the form of the timber originals in large section aluminium, rather than the originally-specified timber, to save perilously escalating costs. The complementary relationship between these two types of old/new windows is appropriate and looks good, I think.

After long and complex negotiations with Auckland Transport, the necessarily rebuilt verandah was given gracious assent by AT to be a 'posts-only' one, without tension stays off the building, breaking the normal prohibition on this type of structure because of the significance of the restoration project. This allowed its accurate rebuild, now complete and without the added stays that defaced the recent partially surviving and altered version (see the 'pink' photo at the top of this Timespanner post). The rebuilt verandah and its support posts, in all its complex detail, are surely the icing-on-the-cake of the restoration. Note that the exact details at the corner are slightly different - this is due to the now widened carriageways - especially of Mt Eden Rd - and narrowed footpaths, meaning that the verandah fascia is now closer to the building.

Getting the complex upper floor façade details complete and accurate has been an arduous task for all involved, but I am grateful for the unflappable reactions of contractor Silk Construction (thanks Nikhil and Paul) when I presented them repeatedly with yet another list of bits 'still to be done' errors & omissions...

Parts of the shop façade tell an interesting historical narrative, such as the below-windows timber panel detailing around the corner, which show clearly the 'rising tide' of progressively lifted tarmac surfaces due to repeated resealing. This eventually buried the street walls by about 500mm on Esplanade Rd, and even more on Mt Eden Road, rotting the base of the walls, but now remedied. Also evident visually - and conserved intact - is the delightful curve to the originally straight shop window cill on Esplanade Road at the corner, telling powerfully of the forces placed on the shop as the buried bottom of the street walls collapsed, and dropped the outer building faces - most of which needed expensive jacking, reconstruction and underpinning.

The task has been a difficult one for owner Dinesh Mistry, as mentioned in my earlier update, but he has courageously stuck with the restoration even when - as it appeared at one stage - he was close to exhausting his financial reserves (some lobbying with the bank eased this) and might not have been able to complete the significant and unexpected restoration and strengthening costs. Perhaps especially galling for him was that he did originally get a demolition consent for the old shop, before council recognised its value and scheduled it for protection. This consent could have been implemented, but to Mr Mistry's enduring credit, it wasn't.

In the end all was well, and the project remains an exemplary co-operative effort between the owner, consultants, contractors, and council - a real 'good-news' heritage story. Thanks too to Allan Matson for his catalytic advocacy for the restoration when it seemed to be a lost cause at the beginning.

I understand that the retail spaces at street level, and the apartments above are now all leased, which is good news for the owner - there is no better assurance for a heritage building's ongoing survival than full occupancy.

"Woods Grocery" is back, emphatically.

Views above a motorway

Photography by Greg Kempthorne

I received an update email from the State Highway 16 Causeway Upgrade Project folks today, which included these wonderful images of the North-Western motorway (SH16) from the air,  shot by Greg Kempthorne who has very kindly given permission for me to reproduce them here.

Above, the Great North Road interchange, looking towards Pt Chevalier (left) and Western Bays towards the central city). Lower right, part of Waterview.

Photography by Greg Kempthorne

Above: Traherne Island, looking towards Pt Chevalier.

From the email, some interesting statistics:
A snapshot of the Causeway Upgrade Project in numbers:
· 20 million years is the oldest geological material (from the Miocene Age) known to exist under the causeway
 · 47,801 hours is the time taken so far to develop the project’s design
 · 4,800m or 4.8kms is the project length between Great North Rd and Whau River bridge on approach to Te Atatu
· 588 birds from 11 monitored species are roosting near our Te Atatu base, increased from 303 birds in March
· 478 contractors have already been engaged to work on site, in addition to the project team
· 181 aerial photos of progress from Great North Rd to Te Atatu were taken in 15 minutes last Thursday
· 80kph is the speed restriction eastbound by the Rosebank Rd on-ramp for everyone’s safety
· Six companies together form the Causeway Alliance

 Photography by Greg Kempthorne

Eastern part of Traherne Island, low tide.

Photography by Greg Kempthorne

The third-built (fourth in line along the river from source) Whau Bridge. The first was the Great North Road one (originally wooden, 19th century), then the railway bridge in 1880, then this one in the 1950s, and finally the Ash-Rata bridge in the late 1970s.

Lower Queen Street: a mass of trams and cars

Another early photocard, this one coming via America, showing Quay Street, looking up Queen Street. Endeans Building on the right, next to that the CPO, with Dilworth's Building across Customs Street in the centre. Right, buildings on the site of the Downtown Centre today.

A City Council traffic officer guiding the traffic. Royal Oak, Mt Albert and Auckland Zoo trams. On the front Mt Albert tram, an ad for Gracie Fields. The time on the clock could be either 11 am, or 11.55 am.

Lovely sign for Paragon Outfitters Ltd, "Mercers & Outfitters" on the Endean Building. Lots of foot traffic outside the post office building.

The train advertisement from the 1935 Queen Street view is in this one too, along with an ad for Winstones.

Looking down Victoria Street West

Another card, this time purchased from an English dealer. Dating it is interesting -- the card is a photocard, meant for an album, so has no date. The carrier box just underneath Macky Logan Caldwell at the right, however, was in the middle of the street until 1944, when Auckland City Council voted to remove it and put it on the northern side. The box could have been shifted again to the south side, by the time this image was taken. So, late 1940s? There still seems to be tram lines on Queen Street, so it's before 1956. (Opinions welcome from readers!)

People, cars, verandahs, ornate street lights ...

In the 1910s, there was a taxi stand on Victoria Street East (see below) -- in this image, that has been replaced by a men's loo. That's gone now, as well. Up the top, council workers seem to be forming the footpath we have today at the base of Albert Park.

Winkelmann image, 10 November 1919, reference 1-W1673, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library

The carrier stand, moved to the footpath. Probably not too far away from disappearing into history as well.

Details on buildings long gone.

Queen Street in 1935: "a great new world"

I bought this card off Ebay from an American dealer the other day. Finally in my hands, I love it on a lot of different levels. The text on the back is intriguing enough. Fred Blair seems to have known a Mr Crocker of the Florida National Bank in St Petersburg, Florida. He wrote on the back of the card, "No American facilities here as yet -- a great new world with a beautiful semi-tropical climate."

The street scenes on this card would probably give Auckland Transport's boffins a dose of the vapours.

"Travel by Train -- Safety & Comfort."  A neon sign? If so, it must have looked a treat lit up. A reminder of the romantic age of steam.

The tall building, semi-obscured by the photo's dimming, is Milne & Choyce.

Folks can't park like this today without having a hefty panel beating bill ...

Parapets and people. A bloke far below, reading something ...

US military forces in New Zealand 1942-1945

Oriental Bay, Wellington, with American Marines, ca 1942. Reference Number: 1/2-045134-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.

Looking for stuff today, I found a Google Maps entry from nzhistory.net on Map of sites used by US military forces in New Zealand, 1942-45. Worth checking out, and a good overall summary for each site, including military camps, hospitals,commandeered/rented offices, storage areas, receiving and radio transmitting stations, and magazines.

Steam at Oamaru

More images courtesy of Bryan Blanchard from Pleasant Point Railway -- this time taken at Oamaru, during the FRONZ get-together this weekend at Oamaru Steam and Rail Society. 

From Bryan's email: "B10 built in 1924 at Leeds, that has just been finished restored after a  major over haul - It won the major Locomotive restoration award  - one of the awards presented there, last night."

Black duck at Rocket Park

Back in March 2009, I blogged about the Oakley Creek waterfall-decorated box at Rocket Park, Mt Albert. Leigh Kennaway spotted and photographed this update (thanks, Leigh): a stenciled back duck added to the image.

Wonder where else the duck will turn up?

Richardson Road's vanished pukeko

12 February this year, Richardson Road in Owairaka was graced by a pukeko ...

... and now, it's gone (image above by Cathy Casey, with permission. Thanks, Cathy!) The business is moving -- but now Richardson Road is pukeko-less. A pity.

Update, 7 June 2013: The pukeko is heading west, to Colwill School.

Tod's box in Parnell

Earlier this month, a bit of colour was added to the St Stephens/Parnell Road corner beside the cathedral complex. The indefatigable Rendell McIntosh of Parnell Heritage gave me the head's up on its preparation and installation -- and this week I finally had a chance to photograph it.

I have been asked today to give credit for the installation of this mural to the Waitemata Local Board, which I'm very pleased to do, considering how much work that Local Board are putting into the area and especially recognition of the area's heritage.

Amongst the images used are representations of the "Parnell Heritage Rose", and a caricature portrait of Robert Tod who named one subdivision of Section 1, Suburbs of Auckland as "Parnell" when flogging it off to prospective buyers in 1841. The name caught history's fancy, and spread over the next decades to include all the area from Mechanic's Bay to the bounds of Newmarket.

My friend Margaret Edgcumbe has very kindly provided the following info for this blog. (Thank you, Margaret!)

Robert Tod (1798 -1864) was a Scotsman from Glasgow who spent time as a merchant in Egypt and Syria before migrating to the Antipodes in 1837.

In Syria in 1832 he met John Vesey Parnell (1805 -1883), one of the leading members of an independent Protestant mission to Baghdad. It was a brief and mainly commercial acquaintance. Tod, as the local agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society, supplied the mission with translations of the scriptures in the Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages, but by 1834 they had been forced to admit defeat and leave Persia for India.

In 1841 Tod came up to Auckland from Wellington, and made substantial investments in land. At the first sale of suburban land on 1 September 1841 he bought Allotment 63 of Section 1, Suburbs of Auckland - slightly more than 3 acres - for the sum of £244. 10s. 4d. In the next issue of the New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette, 4 September 1841, he advertised that he was putting that same land (above Mechanics Bay, and with matchless views of the harbour and shipping) up for auction. It had been neatly divided into 36 sections and named the “Village of Parnell”.

Other members of the Baghdad mission - Groves, Cronin and Calman - were commemorated in the street names of the “village”, while the Patrick of Patrick Terrace refers to the youngest Tod brother, Robert’s main partner in Syria and Baghdad. Unfortunately, these name choices did not strike any chords with the people of Auckland, and they were soon forgotten and replaced (by Eglon, Fox and Marston Streets, and Augustus Terrace).

But the city fathers did apparently like the name of Parnell, possibly because of its associations with the prestigious Anglo-Irish dynasty, so it was gradually applied to the whole of the area along the Manukau Road towards Newmarket, and then to the Highway Board District in 1863, and to the new Borough in 1877.

Until recently the favourite candidate for the origin of the suburb’s name has been the father of J V Parnell the missionary, the politician Sir Henry Brooke Parnell. Bishop Cowie, for instance, stated categorically that the name had been “given in the early days of the colony, from one of H.M.’s Secretaries of State, afterwards Lord Congleton.” (William Garden Cowie, Our Last Year in New Zealand, 1887.)

As for Tod himself, he was completely forgotten once he returned to South Australia in 1847. Because of the perceived Irish connection many later historians have even referred to him as “the Irishman Richard (sic) Tod.” 

Caricature of Robert Tod, by S Gill 1849, courtesy of the State Library of South Australia.