Helen Laurenson: Museum's Centennial Street must be saved

Auckland 1866 exhibition at the Auckland Museum. Image / suppllied

Despite the current enthusiastic celebration of Auckland's annual Heritage Festival with its more than 180 varied events, the news of the disappointing removal of Centennial Street from the War Memorial Museum yet again reinforces the longstanding myth that Auckland is not interested in its own history.

Auckland's commercial and suburban growth and its pressing need to provide housing and transport services for its burgeoning population has been a significant factor in the tension between past, present and future - between what is preserved and what is demolished - what is remembered and what is forgotten.

In the decades following World War II, when radical inner-city demolition destroyed spaces and structures, there was concern for the city's disappearing and forgotten past - for its vanishing landscapes, its people, and their stories. Efforts were made to research, record and conserve that heritage when Milne & Choyce, Auckland's oldest department store, opened 'Centennial Street', based on the city's early commercial and retail area.

Before work was begun on the 'Street', the War Memorial Museum was contacted about the proposal and agreement reached that the model would ultimately be given to that institution. Dr E.G. Turbott, then the museum's director, commented that the new display was welcomed and its establishment timely, 'for Auckland had lacked any adequate treatment of its history, and was, indeed, rapidly losing the opportunity to save historical items with the passage of time'.

This was not just Milne & Choyce's and the Museum's enterprise, however, for many exhibits were willingly given or lent by Aucklanders themselves. Half of the items displayed were already held by the War Memorial Museum, for they had been part of the Old Colonists' Museum collection, formerly located in the historic building that housed both the Art Gallery and the Public Library on the corner of Wellesley and Kitchener Streets.

By 1955 it had been noted that more than 30,000 people visited the Old Colonists' Museum each year, yet it was closed and disbanded late in 1956 as a growing urban population required that more floor area be allocated to the Library and Art Gallery.

As the pace of Auckland's growth increased, a network of motorway systems was imposed upon the city and suburbs, urban land was re-developed, and the landscape of Auckland was transformed. The 1950s and 1960s brought change on an unprecedented scale as houses, schools, churches, halls and shops that had been part of the social and cultural life of communities were destroyed or relocated.

In 1966, as modernity relentlessly bulldozed through relics of Auckland's early settlement and cut a swathe through its historic landscape, many Aucklanders acknowledged their commitment to the city's history, and sought to record and retrieve its past. 'Centennial Street' was among those efforts, with its nostalgic impression of the early township's main street.

The struggle between modernity and memories, forgetfulness and obligation to the past has continued in Auckland. An early example was Partington's mill removed from the city's skyline in 1950. As Victorian and Edwardian buildings and precincts were demolished by developers during the 1980s, in a wave of speculative construction that ended in a spectacular economic collapse, His Majesty's Theatre together with the adjacent Brown's Mill, was felled, despite major protests by Aucklanders. Other notable buildings followed.

Let us not get rid of yet another reminder of our unique history as a city. When 'Centennial Street' was conceived and built, it was not only a delightful re-creation of early Auckland, shared by many people at the time, it was a reflection of the struggle the city was going through in the mid-twentieth century. Its future today sadly reflects that little has changed in the ongoing tension between past, present and future in Auckland.

Helen Laurenson is the author of Going Up, Going Down: The Rise and Fall of the Department Store, published by Auckland University Press. She is currently editing The History of Mount Eden for the Epsom & Eden District Historical Society.