Heritage et AL

Albany’s King George V Coronation Hall. Photo: Janine Irvine, 2026. Time is what makes Albany’s hall remarkable.  Unlike so many historic halls, long replaced, removed or updated beyond recognition, Albany’s 115-year-old Coronation Hall continues to function as a busy community meeting place. The building has heritage status, and maintenance is shared between Auckland Council and the volunteer Albany Hall Committee. The origins of Albany Coronation Hall Albany’s King George V Coronation Hall opened on 3 November 1911 with a celebratory ball attended by about 250 local residents who, according to Martin Perkinson in his 100th anniversary speech (10 December 2011), “made such a merry night of it that they left the ball just in time for milking” – setting a precedent for social merriment for years to come.  The origins of Albany Coronation HallThe idea for a community hall had been discussed since the 1890s, growing from the formation of the Albany Fruitgrowers’ Association in 18...

Enjoy a visit to the Franklin Arts Centre and Pukekohe Library to see and hear the exhibition 'I ō Tātou Hapori – The Voices and the People of Franklin: Our Neighbourhood.' The exhibition shares a sample of images and voices from the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections and Franklin Local History Collection and is on view 9-30 August 2023.  Listen to the voices of the exhibition on a range of themes below. Memories of school Listen to a range of voices related to school and schooling. Ngā Pātaka Kōrero - Auckland Libraries · Memories of School Voices on this track include: Violet Keith, Patrick Gallagher, Gwen Francis, Mere Thompson, Dorothy Postles, Pritam Singh, Tony Waters.  Farming and Agriculture Pukekohe and the wider district are best known for their rich soils and agriculture. In these clips, we hear from experienced voices on the business of farming and market gardening. Ngā Pātaka Kōrero - Auckland Libraries · Farming and Agriculture Voices on this track include...

Back in 1989 and 1990 the Auckland Public Library commissioned two projects to mark the national sesquicentenary a.k.a. 150 years since 1840 when Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed and recognised as our founding document. This documentary initiative was named 'The 1990 Project', and aimed to record the look and feel of Auckland through oral history and documentary photography.  Image: Stuart Page. Carefully pruned trees, Panmure, 1989. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 273-PAG005-06 . The oral histories focus on eastern suburbs, Glen Innes, and Panmure and were recorded from 1989 through to 1992. Originally recorded on cassette, these interviews have been digitised and are described on Kura Heritage Collections Online . Some of the audio is online: you can hear the  Rev Leiite Setefano talk about travelling from Samoa to Wellington , and  Aneta Jean Hart's account of moving from rural Taranaki to Auckland . In a HeritageTalk recorded during lockdown in April 2020...

If you haven’t had a chance to see the exhibition Don’t leave town till you’ve seen the country on Level 2 of Tāmaki Ngā Pātaka Kōrero Central City Library, we recommend you go to enjoy its visual richness. In the meantime, we offer you an opportunity to listen to a selection of exhibition interviews in the comfort of your favourite chair, or on your commute. The first track is an interview with Principal Curator Georgia Prince giving a background to the exhibition content and selection process. Georgia shares with interviewer Haunui Royal a couple of highlights including Cecil Burleigh’s diary. The diary begins in 1932 when he was 22, and records his regular holiday trips around New Zealand. The hand drawn map charts three road trips he took with his mother in 1948 and 1949. In March 1949 they travelled from Auckland to Waiouru and back, before he returned to sea as a chief engineer. ‘The whole trip was pleasant and interesting.’  Cecil Burleigh. Diary. 1932-1987. NZMS 145...

In looking back over 22 years at the creation of the Going West Books & Writers Festival archive, it would be great to be able to say that it was a well-planned exercise, deliberately designed to create a record of the best, and sometimes eccentric, voices of our writers and thinkers. This is unfortunately not the case. The very existence of the archive was more, in the first year, a matter of serendipity and happenstance. The very notion of a New Zealand writers festival out west, referencing Maurice Gee's novel Going West , was the brainchild of book seller and history lover, Murray Gray – with some substantial support from Mayor Bob Harvey. For 10 years it included a steam train adventure replicating the voyage captured by Maurice in his book and starring luminaries of the literary world. Just once we enticed Maurice up to the west and he read from Going Wes t on the Henderson Rail Platform. What a moment that was! Image: Maurice Gee reads at the Henderson Railway Stat...

What happens when real life politics and art collide? Aucklanders can find out as Dominion Rd - The Musical hits the stage this month. Image: Dominion Rd - The Musical promotional poster. In a case of fiction confronting current events, this brand new musical follows a group of residents on Auckland's iconic Dominion Road. Will they be able to put aside their differences to fight against a proposed development of their street as a 'Chinatown'? Penned by award-winning duo Renee Liang and Jun Bin Lee, and directed by Borni Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, Dominion Rd - The Musical features five well known faces working with local Dominion Road community cast members to form the chorus. The production has been a work in process for over a year and weaves the true stories of the community into a toe-tapping, family friendly creative musical. The inspiration for the characters and the lived experiences of Dominion Road shopkeepers and residents have been drawn, in part...

When the Delta Theatre opened in July 1926 the grand opening was advertised in the Saturday edition of  New Zealand Herald : Ref: excerpt from the New Zealand Herald, 31 July 1926, page 18.  In The History of New Lynn , it was claimed, unusually for the time, that the architect of the Delta Theatre was a woman. However, contemporary newspaper reports on the ‘Leaky Picture House’ vary as to whether Miss Mitchell was the building contractor or the architect . The theatre was closed in 1928 because of subsidence and reopened in 1929, the Auckland Star reported upon its reopening on the 21 May 1929. Ref: Delta Theatre, 1930, New Lynn Print Collection, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries.

This is the second part of this post about leisure in the northern parts of the Auckland region. Missed Part 1 of this post? Find it here . Culture, leisure and entertainment have changed with changing technologies. In the early part of the 20 th  century the travelling People’s Picture company was very popular. It regularly visited Matakana, Puhoi, Wellsford and other places during the summer months. Ref: Excerpt from the  Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette , 8 October 1913, Page 4.

“There is a belief that runs strong in the NZ Cantonese community. It’s the idea that through hard work, education and the willingness to take some risk, our children can have a life better than the one left behind in the Cantonese village. In the year 2013, Aotearoa/NZ is peopled with bright young Chinese women who take on jobs of tremendous importance for which they receive great recognition. Much of what they achieve is thanks to the hard work and sacrifices made by their mothers and the women before them.” Ref: Photograph by King Tong Ho. Most of NZ’s early Chinese settlers came from Canton Province, now known as Guangdong. The project From Guangdong to Aotearoa came about through Sue Gee’s interest in her ancestral origins. From Guangdong to Aotearoa aimed to record the life histories of six remarkable NZ Chinese women. They were chosen because their contribution in the community is noteworthy or because they had interest or knowledge of our Chinese settler history...

Currently on in the exhibition space on Level 2 of the Waitakere Central Library is an exhibition highlighting some of the stories of West Auckland contained in our collection of oral history recordings.   If you are interested in exploring any of these stories in more depth these and other recordings can be listened to in the J T Diamond Reading Room at the West Auckland Research Centre .  Ref: Picnic in Henderson, 1932, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries.