Heritage et AL

Auckland Libraries acknowledges the late John Eady Snr ONZM who passed away on 10 October 2017 John led the iconic Lewis Eady music business - established by his grandfather Lewis, 137 years ago - with an unwavering passion for supporting the music community in both Auckland and throughout New Zealand. He donated and loaned pianos, supported countless charitable events and emerging musicians, as well as donating the beautiful Kawai Grand Piano and large numbers of books and musical scores to the Lewis Eady Music collection at the Auckland Public Library. It is interesting to discover how a part of a library's collection originates. In the case of Auckland Libraries' music collection, it started when a visionary librarian connected with an Auckland city councillor. In 1926, Mr L. Alfred Eady, an Auckland city councillor, attended a library conference in Dunedin. There he heard Mr John Barr, Auckland’s chief librarian, speak about the need for public libraries to have mus...

Sculptures, murals and statues are dotted around Auckland with information about many of these public artworks available on Auckland Council’s Art and Heritage Database . A display on level 2 at the Central Library showcases some of these items, from Fatu Feu’u’s Aotea Centre mural to Greer Twiss’s Pigeon Park sculpture. Statues and monuments from the Auckland Domain are featured including the Pukekaroa Palisade where Princess Te Puea planted a tōtara tree during the city’s 1940 centennial celebrations in order to reaffirm the mana of the Tainui people in the area, and the connection between her family and the Domain. Her great-grandfather Te Wherowhero had lived in two houses on the Domain site between 1847-1858 before returning to the Waikato as the Māori King. Ref: Pukekaroa Palisade, 2016.

The Women’s Suffrage mural in Khartoum Place celebrates suffragettes who fought for women’s franchise in New Zealand – which they won in 1893 , and women in this country became the first in the world to gain the vote. Artists Claudia Pond Eyley and Jan Morrison designed the 2,000 bright tiles of the mural marking the centenary of this achievement. A Navy band led over 300 guests down Queen Street for the 1993 opening, and the Air Force hung a cargo parachute across Khartoum Place which dropped at the exact dramatic moment for the unveiling by Irish President Mary Robinson and Governor-General Dame Catherine Tizard. Ref: Auckland Council, Khartoum Place pre-1993.

Auckland was the smelliest city in New Zealand according to a visiting reporter in 1871. Raw sewage ran into Queen Street’s main drain, the Ligar Canal, “an open, evil-smelling sewer in the very heart of the city” .  A writer in the Daily Southern Cross said the “stench was worse than asafoetida or sulphureted hydrogen, or an American skunk, or all three combined… daily and nightly the abominations of this great city are discharged, to swelter upon the shore, within twenty yards of its chief street.” He believed the city fathers should be sacked immediately because they “will… not open [their] purse-strings… to resolve the issue of sewage disposal.” Ref: James D Richardson,  Looking north west along Queen Street, Auckland Central showing the Ligar Canal..., 1857, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-387. 

The Auckland Heritage Festival is about to begin again. The region wide festival starts this Saturday, 26 September, and runs for the subsequent two weeks until 11 October. This year’s theme is “The iwi, people, kōrero, and stories that shaped our region, Tāmaki Makaurau”. Ref: 2 015 Auckland Heritage Festival logo.