Quaint Little Stores and Buildings in New Zealand

Bill's entry "The News agent" in the B&W section gave me an idea to start this thread. "Dairy" and small street corner general stores which were a dominant part of the unique New Zealand landscape, are slowly disappearing as big franchises are inadvertently shutting down more and more small retail shops. I don't think that they'll all vanish, but I'll try and take shots of some quaint ones anyway. I also would like to invite any other 'kiwis' (or tourists) in this forum to add anything else interesting you've come across in your travels in NZ.


I'll start off with these two (they're the only one's I've got in my library), but I intend to keep an eye out for more in the future.





Lyttleton Cafe
I can imagine this little building was a local corner store at some point before it morphed into a suburban cafe. This one was taken back in 2010 just before the big earthquake hit Christchurch. I haven't been back since so I hope these buildings are still standing. The light blue building is a "fish and chip" shop so where there's food the seagulls are never far away!







Akaroa Garage and Petrol
We were driving along the back roads and exploring the various hidden bays in Akaroa (2010) and out of nowhere stood this time-defiant petrol station... complete with a freshly painted public phone booth the great Dr. Who would've been proud of! It was closed over the weekend... I wonder if they sell CDs and chocolate bars in there?

 

Thanks guys, it's a quirky interest of mine and I'm glad some of you like this sort of stuff too.

Yes, that's a phone box (bright red with the green roof)... still working I believe

 

Here's another one I found that you might like Brian - also from my holiday in Christchurch back in 2010. What caught my attention was the beautiful arch windows. This is a genuine historic brick building which I hope is still standing (but I doubt it). Many of these glorious buildings that did survive the earthquake had to be torn down because of structural safety issues in the aftermath.





As I was scrounging through my albums looking for buildings, I found some photos I took of the iconic Christchurch Cathedral (which is now gone). After efforts to see it restored, the city planners decided to demolish it completely... but many protested. I'm not sure what they're doing to it now. It's too disheartening to post so I think I'll leave it for now. I've got this new theme going in my head anyway so I'll try to add more cheery shots once I get a chance to travel this coming Christmas holiday.

 

Cool!

You'll be heading into our summer, so bring some warm clothes and use sunblock when you get here. First thing you might notice is that the light here is very intense compared to the UK. It's like somebody bumped your TV settings and boosted the saturation. Our sky is bright blue for a reason... besides fresh clean air, the atmospheric ozone layer is pretty thin on this part of the globe. Burn time is 15 minutes... so do take care. You'll have plenty of things to photograph!

 

The "Old Bank"

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The Bank of New Zealand building in Wellington, 1901 - streets were strictly a horse and carriage affair.


A higher vantage point likely to be post WWII, late 1940's.





The Old Bank Shopping Arcade, 2011. I hope it hangs around for several more generations.

 

Then and Now Montage

I can't remember where I saw it, but a photographer made some wonderful montages of pre-war and post war photos of European city landmarks. I've always wanted to have a go at it, so I'll start with something close to home.



Not a spectacular building by any means, but here is a historical photo of the Tauranga Post Office (1906).





Here's a photo of the same but extended building taken an hour ago, 106 years later (2012).






And here's a montage of the two photos...



The tricky part was getting the perspectives identical. I printed out the old photo and took it with me as a visual guide. The street level has also changed through the years and where I was standing to get the correct building profile is a lot lower today than in 1906. I had to take the shot with my arms fully extended upward with the NEX-5N screen tilted down. For this task I took my trusty SEL 18-55 kit lens. I'm not familiar with the focal length of those old bellows glass-plate cameras but I assumed that it would be somewhere around the 35mm to 50mm equivalent. After a few zoom tests, the 35mm setting turned out to be near enough.

 

Cheers guys...

I'm not exactly sure when the building extension was done but I've seen a historic photo of the building as it stands today, dated 1947. I'm guessing the building was expanded even earlier than that... so well within the same period of construction norms.