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Mt Eden area - Maungawhau Heritage Walks
Introduction
| Early development
| Mt Eden Village Walk
| Mt Eden Neighbourhood Walk
| Mt Eden industrial area
| Eden Valley Shopping Centre
Mt Eden Village Walk
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View southwest from Mt Eden
around 1885 |
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Mt Eden Road provided an early
connection between Mt Eden and the city. It was one of the few
roads surveyed in 1842 when the area was divided into small farms,
which were offered for sale.
An early development was William Mason's wind
driven flourmill near Windmill Road but it would be several years before
other local amenities were established.
During the 1870s the character
of Mt Eden was changing with the subdivision of several farm
properties into residential sites. The Crown grant for land between Stokes
Road and Batger Road was secured by Montefiore in 1844. This area
was subdivided by accountant and businessman John Batger in 1884, when
Oaklands Road was formed.
The nucleus of the Mt Eden
Village shopping area was the store established by Alfred Cucksey in 1873. By
the late 1870s it had been joined by a school and a church.
Horse drawn buses were the first form of regular public transport in Mt
Eden. In 1881 a long awaited railway connecting Newmarket with
Helensville was opened. Trains stopped at Mt Eden, Kingsland,
Morningside and Mt Albert. By 1908 tramlines had been laid part way down Mt
Eden Road, and were extended in the 1920s. The tram service
stimulated both residential and retail development.
The cluster of shops extended
both north and south from the Stokes Road corner. Local
entertainment was catered for from the late 1920s with the establishment of the
Crystal Place Theatre.
The Mt Eden Business
Association was formed in 1936, and twelve of the businesses included in the
original constitution are still present in the village. Mt Eden
Village is strongly defined by its relationship to the mountain, by changes in
the road alignment that limit the commercial core, and by the
close integration of residential development and churches with the shopping
precinct.
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The Mt Eden Methodist Free
Church in the early 1900s. |
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Valley Road church
The wooden building on this
site was erected in 1877 as Mt Eden's first school. It doubled as a church
where combined Anglican, Wesleyan and Free Methodist services were
held.
With the removal of the school to a new site in 1879, the property
was purchased by the Free Methodists.
In 1942 it became a Baptist
church, which celebrated its centenary with the erection of a new brick
church alongside the old wooden building.
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| Garage and Marriots Building. |
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Garage and Marriots Building
In 1896 the Mt Eden Bowling
Club was established on this site. In 1926 the club decided to relocate
to Nicholson Park and the property was sold.
In early 1930 and 1931 plans
were drawn up for shops with dwellings attached, and a petrol station
and garage. Soon the automotive needs of Mt Eden were being served
on the corner of Valley and Mt Eden Roads.
The petrol station and garage
was built by C.E. Heron for a Mr Dodd.
The consistency in design
suggests that the same architect or designer was responsible for the garage
and neighbouring shops.
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| Corner building, Essex Road. |
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Corner of Essex Road
This prominent corner building
was erected prior to 1905.
Photos show that this side of Mt Eden Road
was almost completely unbuilt, rural land in the late 1880s.
Designed in a classical italianate style, this building was a significant
addition to the village streetscape, and reinforced this intersection
as the hub of the village.
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Till & Sons building
Mt Eden Road. |
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Till and Sons - 527 Mt Eden Road
Tills Bakery was established
in Mt Eden in 1885 and around 1905 the present Till & Sons
building was erected.
Designed in a classical italianate style, this
building retains its original verandah with posts, and some of its original shop
front detail.
During the 1920s the bakery was a gathering place for some
of the retired men of the district who would while away the hours
chatting. Their fondness for eating peanuts earned them the name 'The
Peanut Club'.
Block from Essex Road to Ngauruhoe Street
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Block from Essex Road
to Ngauruhoe Street. |
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This block consists of a
variety of buildings dating from as early as the nineteenth century. Many
retain original shop front and interior details.
Land was initially subdivided
for housing, and villas were built facing onto Mt Eden Road.
Between
1910 and 1920, with increased demand for commercial premises, new
buildings were constructed on their front yards. These tended to
be single level purpose built shops, without the accommodation at the upper
level evident in the late Victorian examples.
The villas can still
be seen behind most of the shops in this block. The Circus Café is one
of the earliest shops in the block, and retains its original shop
front and interior detail.
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View of the Methodist Church
in 1905.. |
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Methodist Church and Sunday School - corner
Ngauruhoe Street
In 1898 the site of this
church was purchased and the following year a public meeting was held to
gauge interest in erecting a Methodist church on the site. Forty
people responded and fundraising began in earnest.
Architect Arthur
White was soon engaged to design a church and by February 1900 the
building which seated 200 had been completed at a cost of 900 pounds. In
1910 the adjacent Sunday School hall, also designed by White, was
erected.
Renovations to the Sunday School building in 1975 provided for
a larger lounge and kitchen.
Grange Road to Fairview Road
This block retains some of the
original, substantial residences built close to the village around
the turn of the twentieth century.
The stone walls are a prominent feature in Mt
Eden, and some are likely to relate to early rural boundary
locations.
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The Crystal Palace in 1953
with its original cupola. |
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Crystal Palace (II) -
537 Mt Eden Road
In 1928 the Crystal Palace
theatre was erected by building contractor N. Cole for the Hippodrome
Theatre Company.
The building featured a dance hall in the basement
and the entrance was flanked by shops.
The building was primarily
designed as a movie theatre, although its stage could accommodate acts,
speakers and performers.
Windmill Domain - corner Mt Eden Road and Windmill
Road
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The old flourmill near Mt Eden
painted by John Philemon Backhouse. |
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Windmill Domain is named after
Mt Eden's first industry.
In 1844 William Mason established the
Eden Flour Mill. Mason, who had been one of the founders of
Auckland, would have a long career as a politician, architect and farmer in both
the North and South islands.
The mill buildings comprised of a large
scoria windmill, and a timber store and millers house. The mill was
soon sold to Reverend Walter Lawry, General Superintendent of the Wesleyan
Church. It was later purchased by entrepreneur John Bycroft who
ran the enterprise for seventeen years.
During the late 1860s it was
taken over by Robert Robertson who set the millstones to work
crushing bones for fertilizer.
The Mt Eden Borough Council's history of
the area notes that when animal bones were scarce the gruesome
practice of using human bones collected from Maori burial caves was
undertaken. The windmill was demolished in February 1953.
Nga-Ana Peka Rau
In the early days of European
settlement, Mt Eden was a rocky wilderness and much effort was required
to clear the land for farms. There are numerous caves created by lava
flows through the district including Nga- Ana Peka Rau, 'the bat
caves', and Rangi's cave located near Windmill Road.
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| Greyfriars Church. |
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Greyfriars Church (II
B) - 546-552 Mt Eden Road
Originally known as the Mt
Eden Presbyterian Church, this reinforced concrete building was erected
in 1916 and opened in 1917.
The design was the work of architect
Thomas Mullions and it was built by Archibald Grandison.
In 1921 the
basement was converted into classrooms for the Sunday school. The
building was remodelled in 1958.
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The Cowperthwaite Tile Factory
about 1916. |
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Disraeli Street - Cowperthwaite Tile Factory
In 1916 the Cowperthwaite Tile
Factory was established on Disraeli Street, and became the first
factory in New Zealand to produce concrete blocks and tiles.
Production
was initially labour intensive with all products being hand made.
In
1928 the Mt Eden factory closed and the operation was transferred
to Three Kings.
Eden Hall and Poronui Flats - 488, 476 Mt Eden Road
These are some of a number of
small blocks of flats, which were built around the 1920s and 1930s in
Mt Eden Road and surrounding streets.
Another new feature of the
area around this time were the numerous garages and carports
constructed on many residential sites to cater for increasing car ownership.
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Mt Eden Road in 1950s
with the Post Office and
bakery on the right. |
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Former Post Office - 466 Mt Eden Road
Though there had been a postal
bureau in Mt Eden since 1885, the area did not have its own
purpose built Post Office until 1909 when this building was erected.
It
originally housed a mailroom, and public area on the ground floor with
accommodation above. It retains its original frontage but no longer serves
as a post office.
Bakery - 462-464 Mt Eden Road
This building was erected in
1910 and has operated as a bakery for close to one hundred years.
454-448 early shops
These shops were erected early
in the twentieth century. In the 1910s there were single level,
timber shops extending up to the corner of Stokes Road. The two level
Nichols Building designed in a stripped classical style, replaced some
of these earlier structures around the 1920s.
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Cucksey's first General Store
and Post Office on the corner
of Stokes Road in 1898. |
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Cucksey's - 428 Mt Eden Road
In 1873 Alfred Cucksey
established a store in a timber building on this site.
Stokes Road on the
southern boundary was dedicated in the same year. By 1905 newer
larger premises were desired and the brick Cucksey's building was built
to the design of architect J.M. Walker.
The building cost 2,300 pounds and was
erected by builder W. Firth. The buildings adjacent were erected in the
1920s and 1930s.
Pou Hawaiiki and Arataki Haere
The Auckland College of
Education now occupies the site where once stood a small scoria cone
known as Pou Hawaiiki (The Pillar from Hawaiiki).
The hill was
quarried away and with it went soil brought and placed there from the Pacific,
Hawaiiki, by the earliest Maori voyagers.
Ceremonies would be performed
there before fishing and hunting expeditions. An ancient path
that connected with Maungawhau is called Arataki Haere (Path of the single
file). The path is still there and can be accessed from Stokes Road.
Published March 2008
