Heritage et AL

On the last Sunday in September the Awhitu Central Church will celebrate its 140th anniversary. Travellers who pass through Awhitu Central on their way to the Manukau Heads lighthouse will be familiar with this iconic building.   Ref: Bruce Ringer, Awhitu Central Church, 20 August 2017.     The Awhitu Central Church was opened as the Awhitu Presbyterian Church on 23 September 1877 (in accordance with the wishes of the donor of the land, George Garland, it also accommodated both Anglican and Methodist congregations). It is today the last active church of four Presbyterian churches which were opened on the Manukau Peninsula during the 19th century, although two other equally picturesque buildings survive. When the Awhitu church opened there were already two Presbyterian churches in the nearby Pollok settlement. One had been opened by members of the Scotch Presbyterian Church on 22 May 1870, the other by members of the Church of Scotland on 14 June 1870. The fo...

The Manukau Harbour is the second largest in Aotearoa. Loved and enjoyed by many, Te Manukanuka o Houturoa has always been a source for food gathering and has long provided the means for navigating the expansive coastline. Photographs from the Auckland Libraries heritage collections form the basis of this exhibition which is on now at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in Titirangi, Auckland. Ref: John Thomas Diamond, The shoreline on the Cornwallis Peninsula with John Diamond rod fishing, 1957. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, JTD-08E-00513-2 This exhibition will travel around the edges of the Manukau Harbour as if spread by Te Hau a Uru, the wind that blows from the west, from Titirangi to Waiuku. 7-28 September 2017: Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi. 30 September-14 October 2017: Nathan Homestead, Manurewa. 17 October-4 November 2017: Waiuku Library, Waiuku. Ref: James Richardson, Stereograph of the Nihotupu Creek, 14 April 1923. Auckland L...

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...

Nowadays English author John Masefield is chiefly remembered for two short poems with nautical themes: “Sea Fever” (“I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky”) and “Cargoes”  (with its strikingly exotic opening line, “Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir”). Image: John Masefield, portrait. From: Nelly Scott's Masefield Collection. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, NZMS 1139 . In the first half of the 20th century, however, he was popular throughout the Commonwealth not just as a poet but also as a novelist, children’s writer, playwright and memoirist. Appointed poet laureate by George V in April 1930, he remained in that post until his death in May 1967, making him the longest-serving British laureate after Alfred Lord Tennyson. Auckland Libraries has a fine collection of signed books and letters by Masefield, gifted to us from the estate of Paeroa-based teacher and local historian Nelly Scott Climie. She first met Masefield in 1931 wh...

Auckland Libraries acknowledges the late John Eady Snr ONZM who passed away on 10 October 2017 John led the iconic Lewis Eady music business - established by his grandfather Lewis, 137 years ago - with an unwavering passion for supporting the music community in both Auckland and throughout New Zealand. He donated and loaned pianos, supported countless charitable events and emerging musicians, as well as donating the beautiful Kawai Grand Piano and large numbers of books and musical scores to the Lewis Eady Music collection at the Auckland Public Library. It is interesting to discover how a part of a library's collection originates. In the case of Auckland Libraries' music collection, it started when a visionary librarian connected with an Auckland city councillor. In 1926, Mr L. Alfred Eady, an Auckland city councillor, attended a library conference in Dunedin. There he heard Mr John Barr, Auckland’s chief librarian, speak about the need for public libraries to have mus...

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...

Auckland Libraries received an important donation in 2015 when the negatives formerly in the original New Zealand Herald offices, in their historic Albert Street base, were gifted for digitisation. We worked closely with Lauri Tapsell at the Herald . Library staff from Sir George Grey Special Collections and the team of library experts in the wider Heritage Collections, Preservation and Digitisation teams worked together to make the mystery negatives accessible online. The boxes with cryptic labels have been unpacked, cleaned and repackaged in preservation enclosures. They now add up to 16,416 records on our Heritage Images database. In August 2017, Auckland Libraries will celebrate with New Zealand Micrographic Services the project which has seen the glass plates carefully cleaned and the images digitised. This project has proved to be more than the ‘NZH’ and more than ‘glass plates’. Images from other titles including the Auckland Weekly News were included. And as well as glass...