Heritage et AL

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.

Ref: Happy staff at Hurley Bendon, Papatoetoe, 1964, photograph reproduced courtesy of Fairfax Media, South Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, Footprints 00071. I was looking through the new publication Real modern : everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s  when I saw the tea towel. Memories came flooding back. My sister and I trapped in the small space of the dark décor in our 1970s kitchen. Doing the dishes. Who gets to dry? Who has to wash? Who decides? In 2013 our family moved into a house with no dishwasher. Great, I thought, now my teenagers can get to lead real lives, they will have to do the dishes. They will have to interact with their parents in a new and inventive way; they will have to talk to each other.  Ref: Souvenir tea towel of Mt Egmont (Mt Taranaki), c.1960, Maylin, Ireland, gift of Angela Lassig 2010. Image reproduced courtesy of Te Papa Press.