Heritage et AL

Image: Kinder House 1978. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1213P-034-08. Photographer: Susanna Burton. Image: Kinder House 1978. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1213P-034-11. Photographer: Susanna Burton. Nestled behind a screen of trees, on the corner of Ayr and Parnell streets, lies Kinder House. From the outside, it is imposing. Walls of basalt rise two storeys. Thin slits in this curtain open with elegant white window frames. The building is crowned by a steeply pitching shingle roof. As the name suggests, from its 1857, completion Kinder House was first occupied by the Reverend John Kinder. In 1855, Kinder had been appointed as the Headmaster of the Church of England Grammar School (also known as the Parnell Grammar School). This school was one of the earliest on the Auckland isthmus. It first occupied a site on Karangahape Road, before moving to Parnell, on the opposite corner from Kinder House. The house was occupied by successive Headmasters of the school ...

Image: The scoria field where Auckland Training College would relocate is visible in the right of the frame. Henry Winkelmann, Epsom and One Tree Hill from Mount Eden, 1923, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0400. In 1925, a building was erected at 72 Epsom Avenue. Where previously the area was littered with gorse and rocks, and popular among local children for playing games, the scoria field was now to accommodate Auckland Training College.   Image: The ‘red’ building, as it was known to some trainees, was erected in 1925 and demolished in 1976.  Henry Winkelmann, Auckland Teachers Training College, Epsom, 1926 , Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0681. Auckland Training College officially relocated from Wellesley Street to 72 Epsom Avenue in 1926. But teacher trainees entered the building for the first time in 1925, having carried equipment there from Wellesley Street.  The trainees celebrated the occasion with dancing and singing, the Co...

From humble but enthusiastic beginnings, RainbowYOUTH has grown to become one of the most successful youth organisations in New Zealand. Ref: RainbowYOUTH, RainbowYOUTH Collection, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries. In 2017 an exhibition was created from the Auckland Libraries RainbowYOUTH archive collection, which consists of seven recorded oral histories , images and ephemera sharing the origin and development of the 28 year young organisation , and the stories of those involved from the very first small Auckland gay and lesbian group to the highly successful present day queer youth community support network. The RainbowYOUTH Exhibition is on now at Leys Institute Library , Ponsonby, until June 3.

Last year in the Special Collections reading room I came across a slim volume titled Religion and theosophy, a lecture delivered on Sunday afternoon in the City Hall, Auckland, New Zealand on Sunday afternoon, March 26th, 1893 by Lilian Edger, M.A. Intrigued by the title I wondered about who the woman was who had given this lecture. After a little digging I found Lilian Edger was a scholar, lecturer, author, educator and prominent Theosophist. More well-known is her older sister Kate who was the first woman in New Zealand to gain a university degree. Lilian was also an outstanding scholar, obtaining her B.A. at 18 and her M.A. with double first-class honours a year later from Canterbury College. Ref: Theosophy in New Zealand, New Series v.7:no.2, April-June 1946, page 47, Auckland Libraries, SERIAL 212 T39.

The South Auckland Research Centre has recently processed two collections, which provide an insight into the history of two local schools: Manurewa Central School and Finlayson Park School . Manurewa Central School opened as Manurewa School in 1906, after the Woodside School Building was shifted to its new site on the corner of Hill Road and Great South Road. The building was later demolished in 1972. You can read more about the move and opening in the 31 August 1906 entry on Manukau’s Journey – a Manukau timeline . Ref: Opening day, Manurewa School, 3 September 1906, photograph reproduced courtesy of Manurewa Historical Society, South Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, Footprints 01209.

This week marks Ni vosa Vaka-ITaukei ni vanua o Viti or Fiji Language Week for 2015. This is timely as we can happily share the news about some nineteenth century Fijian language items in Sir George Grey Special Collections that have recently been individually catalogued.  These Fijian language items were part of a larger collection of nineteenth century pamphlets in English, Polynesian and Melanesian languages collected by Sir George Grey . They include grammars, primers, vocabularies, and religious texts. The pamphlet shown below is an arithmetic textbook published in Levuka in 1865. Ref:  A vu ni vika vakaviti, p.1, 1865?, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 372.72 AVUN.