Heritage et AL

The exhibition  ‘Aotearoa Houses: settlers to hippies’ is currently running in the atrium outside the Central Auckland Research Centre on the  second  floor of the  Auckland  Central Library. On this blog we've previously featured posts on Hippie A rchitecture  and  State  Houses .  Ref: Pegler for Auckland Weekly News, Showing a settler's house at Poro-o-Tarao, with people posed outside, 19 May 1899, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-18990519-6-1.

Sir George Grey Special Collections recently acquired a wonderful collection of colour slides taken by Ron Clark mostly in the nineteen-fifties, sixties and seventies. They are accessible via the  Heritage Images  database. Ref: Ron Clark, Oakura Bay,  1950s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1207-1227 Ref: Ron Clark,  Muriel Clark at the wheel of a Humber Hawk ,  about 1956, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1207-12 Photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are a strong part of the Sir George Grey Special Collections image collection. The Ron Clark slides span the mid-twentieth century, filling a time period gap in Auckland Libraries' photograph collections. Life in New Zealand is captured in wide-ranging ways. There are scenes showing urban and rural activities, family gatherings and outings, interior shots of homes, churches and hospital wards, beach visits, overseas holi...

Dotted around Auckland are a number of residential and commercial buildings designed by Canadian architect Sholto Smith (1881-1936) which are now part of Auckland’s architectural heritage.  While researching Auckland’s War Memorial libraries for the Our Boys  website, I discovered Smith was noted as the designer of the gorgeous, little Albany War Memorial Library - although there is some controversy over whether it was Smith or his business partner, Thomas Mullions who played the bigger part in the design. Ref: Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean, Albany War Memorial Library, about 1986, from nzhistory.net.nz Smith arrived in New Zealand in 1920, when he was 39 years old, and joined the architectural practice of TC Mullions and C. Fleming McDonald.  He became partner after McDonald’s death and together with Mullions went on to design both residential and commercial properties. Among them the Shortland Flats in downtown Auckland which the pair owned as a venture to...