Historic landmark to be recreated in Ponsonby

The Gluepot building at Three Lamps, corner of Ponsonby and Jervois Roads, displaying it's set of lamps. Photo / NZ Herald

An historic Auckland landmark is about to be reinstated after a seven-year project to rebuild three street lamps in the city suburb of Ponsonby.

The lamps sat on top of a pole in a Ponsonby intersection after they were installed in 1873, giving the area the name "Three Lamps".

Now, after seven years' effort to get them recreated the Auckland Council's Waitemata local board has given the go ahead for replica lamps to be made from drawings and photographs and erected on an 11-metre pole at a cost of about $100,000.

The pole would not be on its original site in the middle of the intersection but on the footpath a few metres away.

The New Zealand Historic Places Trust said the original lamps were a starting point for horse-drawn buses which ran into the city from Ponsonby, a resting place for young and old and a rallying place for budding politicians.

The gas lamps were replaced with electricity in 1902 but removed from the intersection in 1934. The originals disappeared but another set of three lamps was mounted on the verandah of the Ponsonby Club Hotel, now the Gluepot Apartments.

The New Zealand Observer weekly newspaper described the Three Lamps as one of the city's historic landmarks and "most prominent monuments to the days when walking to work was the fashion and the horse bus was a luxury".

Although the lamps had long since disappeared, the original plinth the pole sat on had been found and it would be mounted on the footpath outside the Gluepot Apartments.

Three replica lamps would be built and installed, hopefully this year, said Shale Chambers, chairman of the Auckland Council's Waitemata Local Board.

- NZPA