Heritage et AL

I have often wandered past a couple of prominent empty lots, one between Shortland and Fort Streets and the other bounded by Albert, Victoria and Elliot Streets in the CBD and wondered how it was that there could be car parks in what must be some of the more sought-after plots of land in Tāmaki. Other than the occasional night market pre-pandemic, what has been going on with these open-air car parks?  Turns out I’m not the only one - this has crossed other’s minds too and is a popular question. A quick Google turned a heap of results, and it looks like these are the most heavily reported on carparks in the country. A colleague had similar thoughts a few years back and wrote about the Albert Street site of the Royal International Hotel.  Image:  Artist's impression of the new Royal International Hotel on the corner of Elliott Street and Victoria Street West, 1960s, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1580-24. Artist unknown. Image:  Auckland Star building, Shor...

What has many editions and only one? Tāmaki Makaurau’s long-running newspaper, The Auckland Star. A researcher’s worst nightmare is knowing of a source that no longer exists, and the Star is a source like no other in that it was once published as several editions every day, yet nobody bothered to collect them all. Auckland Council Libraries holds a near-continuous run of the daily periodical from its origin as the Evening Star in the 1870s to its present incarnation as the Sunday Star–Times . However, a decision was made over a century ago to only retain a single daily copy, a mere sampling of the Star’s copious output. This decision still impacts historians and researchers today and raises important questions: why did the Star print so many daily editions and what are we missing by their absence? Image: The Auckland Star masthead with various edition stamps underneath dating from 1926 through 1975. Despite covering the same geographic area—urban Auckland—the long-running newspa...

We are used to seeing newspapers with compelling news stories, and photographs, on the front covers. However, this is a fairly recent change for Auckland's daily newspapers. The now-ceased 'Auckland Star' newspaper only started featuring actual news, rather than public notices and the like, on the front page from 22 July 1946. Ref: excerpt from the Auckland Star, Volume LXXVII, No. 171, 22 July 1946, page 1.

The New Zealand Herald  is now available from 1863 up to 1945 on Papers Past ! This is the culmination of a collaborative project  between Auckland Libraries , the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa and APN (the publishers of the New Zealand Herald ) to fully digitise 82 years of the New Zealand Herald from 1863-1945. Prior to this latest release, content for this newspaper was available up to 1924. Ref: excerpt from New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23680, 12 June 1940, page 12 All of this wonderful content is now available and fully searchable through Papers Past , an online newspaper database run by the National Library. Papers Past contains more than 3 million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals from between 1839 and 1945, including 83 separate newspaper titles. For the Auckland region, Papers Past now includes the archived issues of eight newspaper titles. The essential morning and evening papers...

Working at  Research Central , one does tend to fancy oneself as a bit of a Nancy Drew at times. As we locate missing relatives and solve mysteries, we hope don’t start too many world wars in unsuspecting families. Whilst scrolling through microfilms on a job for a customer, I came across an interesting photo in a 1948 copy of the Auckland Star. The caption reads: “Juliet Hulme and William Brown make a colourful picture in their bright tartan slacks when they arrived at Whenuapai this morning.” The issue was dated Tuesday 23 March 1948.  Could it be .... I wondered. Was this the murderess Juliet Hulme, aka Anne Perry, aka Kate Winslet in ‘Heavenly Creatures’? And why was Juliet and the boy, who appeared not to be related, wearing matching tartan slacks? Juliet did have a younger brother called Jonathan but it seems he arrived in New Zealand much later in the year with their parents. Naturally, I went ahead and sleuthed.  Ref: Auckland Star, cutting from 23 ...