Flipping over burgers

From NZ Herald 10 August 1940

Sometimes, history can be about really mundane things. Like – hamburgers. 

Or more specifically – what was the first “hamburger bar” in New Zealand.

By the looks of things, if you think it was Frisco’s at the junction of Great South and Manukau Roads, in the former Junction Hotel building, it isn’t correct. But, on a Facebook page where I have stated this, I’ve been described as “not knowing Newmarket history” and apparently (according to another commenter there), I need to go back to school. 

Yes. All over hamburgers. 

Frisco’s opened as a hamburger bar and coffee house sometime during the 1942-1943 period. Opinions vary over this, and someone who claims family connections pushes it back to 1939, although the directories of the period don’t show this. Instead, they indicate a tobacconist used the building in 1942. (It was also in the One Tree Hill borough council area, not officially Newmarket at all.) 

Still, this doesn’t mean Frisco’s was the first to flip the burgers.

Auckland Star 9 March 1938

That honour goes to Alan’s Hamburger Bar “opposite CPO”, Queen Street Auckland, in January 1938 [Auckland Star, 20 January 1938, page 1(7)], the advent of which caused the NZ Herald to opine:

Enter the Hamburger Young men in green sports coats and suede shoes, puffed rice and baked beans, and, of course, the universal predilection for gangster films, hare long been cited as tangible evidence that New Zealand is slowly but surely succumbing to the doubtful influence of the United States. The opening of a hamburger bar in Queen Street is expected to raise an outcry from stalwarts who maintain that the Dominion should develop its own culture and eradicate outside influences. For the guidance of the less serious minded, however, it is stated that the correct pronunciation is "hamboiger." 

(NZ Herald, 29 January 1938, p. 30) 

Alan shifted business to Karangahape Road by March that year. 

Christchurch Press, 19 August 1939

Down South, an “American Hamburger Bar” had been in business in Manchester Street, Christchurch for some unknown period, before its owner sold up in 1939, according to ads put into the Christchurch Press.

Then we have Eleanor’s Hamburger Bar operating from 19A Queen Street from March 1940, [Auckland Star 2 March 1940 p.1(6)] clear through to sometime in 1942, quite long-lasting for the period. Eleanor’s ads (an example at the top of this post), in case of doubters, certainly do show what is recognisably a hamburger. 

There was another bar on Pitt Street, possibly at 76, by October 1941, and that too lasted for a period. By October 1942, the Civic Hamburger Bar was open at 336 Queen Street, [NZ Herald 8 October 1942, p. 1(8)] and seems to have lasted down through much of WWII. Out in the suburbs, a Liberty Hamburger Bar operated in 1943 from 262 Great South Road, and up at Warkworth, a Mr B Pearce got permission from the local council to open one in in mid 1943. 

So, when you see someone put up a photo of Frisco’s, and say “the first hamburger bar …” … nah. It wasn’t. It lasted a heck of a long time, and left lots of memories, but it wasn’t the first. Life would be so much simpler if folks checked things out for themselves, instead of just believing “the history books” like blind faith.

A blast from the heavens ...

When squally storms turn violently electric, we all know that lightning follows – and sometimes that flash from the sky can strike where we would least suspect. 

On the Saturday afternoon of 18 June 1932 – that place was Avondale’s St Jude’s Church. In the midst of a particularly heavy thunderstorm in the western districts, where, according to a news report at the time, “several flashes of lightning of more than usual vividness were seen”, one bolt struck the cross atop the church steeple. 

The force snapped off one arm of the cross, before it surged down the roof, tearing the iron sheathing, then entering the church’s electrical system, then flowing across to the telephone line at the adjacent vicarage. 

Reverend Arthur Volkner Grace and his wife Agnes had only started their time at Avondale that same year. They were at home on the day of the storm, probably preparing for the Sunday services, when the cap of their phone’s insulator was suddenly blown off, startling the couple. 

“Fortunately, the woodwork of the belfry and the roof of the church were not affected, while the lightning was not followed by an outbreak of fire,” the news reports went on to describe. “At the same time the electric lights in the building were fused, while the telephone in the vicarage was affected … The lighting in the church was repaired a short time later, and there was no interference with yesterday's services, while the roof did not leak to any great extent.” 

What damage was done appears to have been soon repaired by the parishioners. 

Rev Grace later retired to Mairangi Bay in 1936. 

Image: The church and vicarage on 1 January 1929, 4-8432, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries