Watercolour from a war

A postcard purchased a few days ago -- produced by the University of Otago from an original watercolour held by the Hocken Library: Edward Arthur Williams' (1824-1898) Manukau Harbour from Onehunga, 1864. At the time he did this, he was a Lt.-Colonel in the British forces sent here to quell the Maori uprising in the Waikato, serving with the Royal Artillery. The view is likely overlooking the lower Normans Hill area to the right. Just out of the scan range to the left, the beginnings of Onehunga's wharf area, and the future Gloucester Park.

According to Una Platts in her book Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists: 

Ensign in the army 1842, colonel when he arrived in New Zealand. Took part in Waikato and Taranaki campaigns. His marvellous collection of drawings and watercolours of the campaigns came in a roundabout way to the Hocken. He sent letters and sketches of this period (1864–65) home to his mother and eldest sister. The collection was sent by his son Brigadier General E. G. Williams CMG to Mrs Forster in New Zealand in December 1931; from her they went to her sister Gertrude Good, Ramanui, Hawera; she sent them to T. K. Skinner, New Plymouth, and thus they came to his son Professor Skinner, the ethnologist, who gave them to Hocken.

According to a Family Search page, Edward Arthur Williams was born in Woolwich, Kent, 17 February 1824. He entered the British Army in 1842, was awarded Companion Order of the Bath in 1866, achieved the rank of Colonel in 1867, Major General in 1880, honorary rank of Lt-General in 1885, Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery in 1890. He died at Eastcombe House, Blackheath, 20 June 1898, with an estate valued at £10,197.

Three Lamps, Karangahape Road, Lower Queen Street and the wharves on postcards

Three Lamps, junction of Ponsonby, College Hill and Jervois Roads. 

One way of dating this undated card: the advertisement for the Tole Estate. Ads in the newspapers for this sale, fronting Ponsonby Road, date from 1907. The 1902 memorial to Trooper Stanley Rees Scott can be seen.

A place to meet and chat, in the middle of the road. Wouldn't want to try that now ...

The 1903 Ponsonby Club Hotel, which was replaced during the 20th century by the Gluepot.

Karangahape Road. The card is postmarked 1905, and also has philatelic interest in that the sender used only a 1/2d stamp, and the card had to have a 1d stamp added in under payment penalty.

Note the white dog ...

... who I think is keenly interested in the black dog strolling in behind the tram on the left. I liked this card because of the chap on horseback riding along what is now one of Auckland's busiest thoroughfares.

Lower Queen Street, outside the Central Post Office. No date, but as the post office is complete, sometime after 1912.

R & W Hellaby had their butcher's shop here. A pleasant day to catch a lift on the back of a lorry cart.

Changing the pole alignment for the tram's return trip, possibly to Grey Lynn.

Looking up Queen Street, and more trams heading for the Custom Street focus. A very pedestrian friendly environment, but it still paid to watch for you stepped out.

Postcard date stamped 1908.

Loading lumber ...

In another 10 to 15 years, these horses, wagons and carts would all be replaced by motorised trucks. The city would cease to reek of their droppings, but we'd have other pollution to worry about.

Two cards from the Auckland Exhibition 1913-1914

Difficult to buy postcards from the Auckland Exhibition, because there are folks out there who pump up to prices to crazy levels -- up to $100 plus in some cases. I've managed to get a couple at saner rates in my time, though.

The exhibition opened 1 December 1913, and ran during the last summer before World War I. The toy railway here was billed as a miniature scenic railway, a "tiny engine and three carriages" (only two seen here), which did a tour of "Domain Hill". Might have traveled where the Auckland War Memorial Museum is today.

Can't say anyone looks all that excited with the thoughts of the trip ahead.

I've seen a few of these kind of cards around where families had their photos taken, and then inserted in the view as if they were flying over Auckland and the exhibition grounds. I actually found this one at a stall in Blockhouse Bay.

Early Pukekohe

King Street, Pukekohe. Avondale probably looked a little like this back then. As with Pukekohe, Avondale was a rural service centre for its district as well as West Auckland.

What attracted me to this postcard off TradeMe, though, was the woman and the two youngsters, laughing and skipping (?) along the footpath. Was this something put on for the photographer, or did he just catch a candid shot?

Manukau Library on their Footprints website dated this image as c.1911. But, Charles Randall Lusher, Watchmaker & Jeweller, left Manaia for Pukekohe in May 1912, after being in business there for 17 years. (Hawera & Normanby Star, 3 May 1912) He was green superintendent of the Pukekohe Bowling Club by October 1913, and was on the council of the local Chamber of Commerce by August 1916. Early 1924, he was selling Edison phonographs, both cylinder and disc types. His parents were Randall and Georgina Lusher, who arrived the the country c.1862 (Georgina died April 1926). He died 18 March 1938, at his King Street, Pukekohe residence.

My postcard may well have dated from the pre-WWI period, but it was postally used around 1970, with a 3 cent Lichen Moth stamp on it -- and sent to Pukekohe. Perhaps someone found it elsewhere, and decided it looked great to send.

The still lamented Victoria Arcade

We had a beautiful building on Queen Street once, called the Victoria Arcade (1885). I wish in my first fifteen years of life, I'd been aware of it enough to have looked up and seen it for myself. But, sadly, I didn't.

It was designed in 1883 by architect Alfred Smith, built in 1884 by Allan McGuire, for the New Zealand Insurance Company. Smith started his Auckland career with Charles Le Neve Arnold in 1882.

An opportunity has been afforded us of inspecting some very fine architectural and other drawings executed by Messrs Smith and Arnold, architects. Amongst the more important works we noticed a beautifully finished perspective, in sepia, of the sanatorium, erected for the well-known Mr Holloway of London, and a very fine set of drawings of the Army and Navy Club in Pall Mall, of which Mr. Smith was the architect and for the successful arrangement and completion of which he made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Failing health -- the result of too close application to his work -- has compelled Mr Smith to try the milder climate of New Zealand. Mr Arnold, his partner, was formerly in the office of Mr. Norton of London and Florence, architect for the Yarmouth and Newcastle Aquaria, and he was subsequently pupil and draughtsman to Mr Lawson, of Dunedin, whom he assisted in many important works. We understand that Messrs Smith and Arnold intend to practice their profession in our city. 

NZ Herald 2 February 1882

Early in 1883, the New Zealand Insurance Company obtained a lease for city endowment property between Queen Street and what was then the post office and custom house sites, in the block between Shortland and Fort Streets. The company offered a prize of £250, open to architects "in all the colonies." 45 plans were received, including five from Melbourne. The proposal for a tower for the building seems to have been common to many of the plans the company received. Smith's design won out, resembling the Charlemont Hotel at the foot of Wakefield Street (also gone)

The principal entrance is at the corner of Shortland and Queen Streets to a vestibule 20 feet in width, leading to a grand staircase, and the elevator, behind which is a sloped to the basement. On the Queen-street side of entrance on ground floor is a single shop, and on the Shortland-street side a double shop. On the Queen-street frontage to Fort street corner (where there is a double shop) there are six shops, inclusive of Fort-street corner. There are on the Shortland-street frontage, next to the Post Office, two shops. Then an arcade running through to Fort-street, the frontage to which on either side is occupied by a series of shops, The space above is an open court used for a lighting area. There is also a small court for lighting purposes to shops on eastern side of arcade. The Fort-street frontage, east and west of the arcade, is also devoted to a series of business premises. The basement is so arranged that the cellars are lighted and ventilated; both from the street and arcade. The elevator, which runs up to the gallery of the tower, communicates with the basement, as also with a staircase at the opposite corner, provision being also made for a hydraulic lift. Round the shaft of the elevator is a handsome staircase to every floor. The first floor contains 23 offices, and the second and third 22 each. The roof being high pitched will afford an excellent range of room, suitable for artists or photo, graphers, or any occupation requiring special lighting. 

NZ Herald 8 August 1883

Detail from drawing of east side of Queen Street. Ref 4-337, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library.

On 30 August, the partnership of Smith and Arnold dissolved. Charles Le Neve Arnold went on to become relatively prominent in Auckland's architectural history, becoming a preferred architect to John Logan Campbell. Arnold joined the Auckland Institute of Architects in 1885. His association with John Logan Campbell, president at the time of the building of the Auckland Golf Club’s clubhouse at One Tree Hill, seems to have begun by the early 1890s, when both were on the committee deciding upon plans for extensions to the Auckland Art Gallery for the Mackelvie collection in 1891, and he also did design work later for Campbell & Ehrenfried. In 1893, Arnold designed and superintended the building of the St Mary’s Parish Hall beside the Anglican church of the same name in Parnell, and was on the sub-committee for Building & Lighting for the 1898 Auckland Industrial and Mining Exhibition. He is credited with the design for Huia Lodge in Cornwall Park, with producing a design for Admiralty House in 1900, Auckland Chamber of Commerce in 1903, and in partnership with R Atkinson Abbott won first prize in a competition for a design for the Auckland Grammar School (1913), the Dilworth Ulster Institute School of Agriculture in Papatoetoe (1916), Memorial Chapel at King’s College (1922) and shops for George Kent & Sons in Newmarket (1922).

Smith, practicing alone,  met with trouble.

There is considerable dissatisfaction among the local competing architects at the decision arrived at. A premium of £250 was offered by the company for the best design for a block of buildings, four storeys high and the cost of which was not to exceed £25,000, whereas the premium has been awarded to a design, which from the practical test of tendering will cost, with foundations, £40,000. They hold that having complied with the conditions, by keeping their designs within the limits assigned, £25,000, they are now unjustly treated by the present decision. It must be said for the company, on the other hand, that several alterations have been made in the accepted design, involving an increase of cost to the extent of several thousand pounds. Among other change there is an extra bay in Queen-street; a projection to the Queen-street facade; enlargement of the grand staircase large strong-rooms bath-rooms; caretaker's rooms on fourth floor, fittings, etc. 

NZ Herald 23 February 1884

Things didn't go too well for Smith right from the start. By March 1885, he withdrew as architect to the insurance company.

Sir,

As you have alluded to my withdrawal from the post of architect to the New Zealand Insurance Building, and as the public are already spreading reports not very flattering to myself, I shall be much obliged by your allowing the following facts to appear in. an early issue, as some of your readers may feel interested. The present contract for erecting the New Zealand Insurance Company's block of buildings in Queen, Shortland, and Fort Streets, for which my plan was chosen in competition with forty-seven other architects, took effect in March last year, and according to the terms of said contract the building was, and ought to be, completed by the end of August in this year. All the detail and full-size drawings have been supplied a long time, and it is very creditable to Mr George Boyd, of the Newton Pottery Works, who has been entrusted with the ornamental brick and terra-cotta work, that this portion of the work has all been prepared, and is ready for fixing, even to the terminals of the gables. The building itself, however, has been advancing by very slow degrees from the first, and, notwithstanding my unceasing remonstrances to the contractor of want of proper tackle and force to carry out such a building, month after month has gone by with no improvement, until I got quite wearied, worried, and sick. Knowing that I could not possibly do more than I had done, and that there was nothing else left for me to do than to see that my drawings were properly carried out, and having found that Mr Roberts, who I recommended from the first as clerk of works, was a capable man, and I could trust him to have the work carried out properly, I asked the directors to allow me to withdraw, and they have kindly allowed me to do so. In all other conditions of contract with builders that I have seen power is given to the employers, in case of want of diligence on the part of the contractor, to hire men themselves, and deduct their wages from my monies due to the contractor. Here no power is given at all, and the tenor of the conditions is not at all calculated to induce a contractor to do his duty. They want revision badly, and I trust, for the sake of those who build, this will be done. I am, etc, Alfred Smith. Auckland, 22nd March, 1885. 

NZ Herald 24 March 1885

In April, Smith transferred his practice to R Mackay Fripp. The building was still unfinished.The tower was only just being completed in October 1885. As for Smith -- he fades back into history at that point.

The Victoria Arcade soon after completion. Ref 4-259, Sir George Grey Special Collections,

 Auckland Library

The NZ Herald reporter's words, back in 1884, regarding the Victoria Arcade's attraction to those in the arts proved prophetic. This, from Art New Zealand, No. 134, Winter 2010:

What was realised by few, perhaps, is that Victoria Arcade-quite apart from any aesthetic merits it may have as a piece of Victorian architecture - was a very tangible link with a whole past era of art in Auckland: a period stretching from the mid-eighteen-eighties through to the early decades of the new century. A roll-call of painters who had studios at the Arcade would include the names of Frank and Walter Wright, Robert Atkinson, Charles Blomfield, E. W. Payton, Kennett Watkins, Louis John Steele and G. C. Goldie, And a bird of more exotic plumage, Girolarno Pieri Nerli, seems to have made a stay there, albeit a brief one. The list reads like a litany of the most notable artists of the period. While there were other buildings with artists' studios (Palmerston Buildings, for instance) there was not one that had so long an association with art in Auckland. In addition, Victoria Arcade, from the mid-thirties, was to house the Auckland Society of Arts itself, after the ill-considered, and later much regretted, sale of its own building in Kitchener Street.

Decorations outside George Fowlds' store, Victoria Arcade, for the visit of the Duke & Duchess of Cornwall, 1901. Ref 236-7558, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library.

It was demolished in 1978 by the Bank of New Zealand for a corporate headquarters which I visited in 2001 while preparing Heart of the Whau. This in turn has been replaced by the Deloitte Centre, which has also replaced the Jean Batten Building, in 2010. Thus, we lose gems of our heritage in this city.

A view to Upper Queen Street

Another card repatriated from America, looking up Queen Street from outside what was then, and still is, Smith & Caughey's. I'd date the card as being 1905-1906 period.

Tonson Garlick & Co, furnishing company, having a "Gigantic Cash Furniture Sale". Here was I thinking only modern stores advertise "gigantic sales".

This part of the image offers clues as to a date for the photo. The Governor Grey statue is in place in the middle of Queen Street, near the intersection with Greys Street (now Greys Avenue), but it predated the Town Hall (see below). This image seems to predate the Town Hall as well -- I think I can see the plantation trees through the verandah posts on the right, instead of the Town Hall's iconic structure.

Also, there's no sign of the terraced shops going up the left side of Queen Street towards Karangahape Road. Those date from 1908, according to NZ Historic Places Trust.

Auckland Weekly News, 25 January 1906, AWNS-19060125-13-1, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library

This was what drew my attention to the card: the American Dental Parlors (1905-1933), first on the site of what is now the Civic Theatre, then from c.1925 just opposite the Town Hall. W R Parkinson was a grocer immediately underneath the dental parlor, who put his shop up for lease in October 1906 -- so this limits the age of the image to being from August 1905, when the dentist opened up, to late 1906.

NZ Herald 14 September 1905

Frederick John Rayner (1875-1931) set up the Dental Parlors, although he was a Canadian educated in Chicago. He settled in Auckland in 1900, bought one of the first motor cars in the city, and was the first president of the Auckland Automobile Association. His American Dental Parlours offered the Auckland public a fully electrically-generated system of dental treatment and waiting room comforts, possibly among the first dental surgeries to be operated by electricity in the country. He was able to achieve this by having his own generator on the premises. By 1910, he advertised that 1000 patients were treated at his offices each month. Rayner built Auckland’s first cabaret, the Dixieland Dance Hall, and established the Hippodrome Picture Company which ultimately became the Amalgamated Theatre chain.

View of the American Dental Parlors, March 1925 (Winkelmann), 1-W314, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library.

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.