I once knew some lads who lived in a house on Randolph Street in Newton, Auckland.
It was this house, in fact:
Only back then it wasn’t so nicely done up. It was a bit run down, and they paid heaps in electricity due to the house being in a commercial zone. The neighbours were all businesses, in soild, sensible commercial buildings built in the mid-20th century onwards.
Because back in the ’90s, Newton wasn’t really a suburb where people lived. Though most of the people who did reside there inhabited rundown old villas.
But it wasn’t always like that.
Newton used to be a bustling inner-city suburb. It looked a bit like this:
There were lots of houses, businesses, schools and churches. It was, like neighbouring Ponsonby, a solid, working-class surburb.
Then in the 1950s, it was decided that Auckland needed a motorway, and the best path for it was right through Newton. The houses were getting old and run down, so it was easy enough to convince people of the need to pull down the slums and replace them with a big-arse motorway.
Why live in crappy old Newton when you can move out to a dry, spacious modern new house in the suburbs, commuting to work along the new motorway?
And besides, the threat of a motorway coming nearby is a pretty good incentive for a landlord to stop doing upkeep on an already rickety old house.
It took a few decades, but eventually the houses and streets of Newton were bulldozed and replaced with a big-arse motorway.
And when you look at it on Google Maps, it looks like this:
Yet if you look between the motorway roads, you can still see the property boundaries of the old pre-motorway sections, as well as the gaps in between where the old roads went.
You can trace the invisible path between France Street and Mercury Lane, reunite West Street and West Terrace, loiter on the corner of Montague and Cobden Streets.
The remaining bits of Newton soon turned from residential to commercial. The old houses were pulled down, replaced by commercial buildings.
Nearby Ponsonby survived. It avoided the motorway (and it was, at one stage, the preferred route from Newton to the Harbour Bridge). Ponsonby’s villas, like Newton’s, were old and rickety. But eventually Ponsonby’s inner city location got the better of it and people with money moved in, fixing up those old villas, plank by plank, until they were sufficiently nice.
Could a Ponsonby-like fate have awaited Newton if, by some miracle, the motorway had gone some other way? Could Newton be a gentrified inner city suburb now?
The few old villas that remain in Newton, including the one in Randolph Street, are getting fancied up, lived in by people with money.
Though on the K Road side, there are still a few old rundown villas, wedged between panel beaters and mysterious businesses in old unnamed buildings.
Of course, a few old villas are used for business purposes, such as the infamous Pelican Club on Newton Road. It’s had so much done to it to protect the privacy of its clients that it’s accidentally taken on a quirky postmodernist look, managing to disguise itself to avoid looking like what it is – a windowless sex box.
And Newton gives us the King’s Arms. A former corner pub (France St & Edwin St), serving the locals, it now divides its time between hipsters who come for the live music, and the old drunks who hang out in the unhip bar in the old part of the building.
While the motorway may have done its best to eradicate the old residential, suburban Newton, the ghosts of that Newton linger in the remaining villas, the street names, the old bluestone curbstones.
And a curious thing is happening. Slowly over the last 15 years, people have started living in Newton again. It’s not in villas, though. This time it’s in apartments and townhouses. The ghosts of Newton have reminded us that at its heart it’s an inner-city suburb and, actually, not such a bad place to live after all.
Robin Hyde’s Nor the Years Condemn is good on contemporary (1930s) life in inner-city Auckland, particularly Upper Queen Street and (I think, although I may recall incorrectly) Grafton.
I also enjoy Paula Morris’s Queen of Beauty for the returning protagonist’s reaction to the gentrification of Ponsonby and the relocation of her family to the suburbs in the manner you describe above.
Sometimes, I think I need only wait and my friends will write my thesis for me and provide me with a bibliography. This is one such time.
My current reading is Tales of Anna Hoffman. about Auckland in the ’50s. Writing in 1998, she feels it necessary to tell her reader that central Auckland was an inhabited place back in the day.
I have to tell you, whilst “Windowless Sex Box” is either a good name for a band, some kind of esoteric martial arts move or an unfortunate Native American name, I intend to somehow drop it into conversation somewhere, somehow. Hipster parties beware; I got the icebreaker for your small talk right HERE.
If I remember right, “Nor the Years Condemn” has long sections set in Freeman’s Bay, rather than Grafton.
Hey, I lived at the Star Newton, which was managed by my father. I went to Newton Central and then St. Paul’s. We used to play cricket in Gundry street and smoke Du Mauriers nicked from mum on the graves in Grafton Gully.
City-Newton was the league team and the Avon was our picture theatre.
Newton in the fifties was alive and kicking. And so were we.
Thanks for sharing those memories, George! It makes me wish I could have experience Newton back then.
Coincidentally, about 10 years ago I lived in the old Star Hotel building. It could have done with a bit more neighbourhood around it!
Wow!
You actually lived there. That’s pretty weird, how was it set up? I remember a big staircase going up to long spooky hallways and about a dozen rooms, a sitting room and two repeat two bathrooms. Luxury.
Downstairs there was the Public bar, the Private Bar and the Ladies Lounge (cat’s bar).
Underneath, the cellars with huge stainless steel tanks that were filled up by petrol tankers like vehicles. Pumping piss not petrol.
Robyn,
I am an old codger and would like to know if you can recall the Name of the Old Pub on the Corner of Newton Road and opposite that new service station beside the Water reservoir on the corner of Ponsonby road.
I believe that was the Star Hotel that is mentioned above. I have no personal memory of it as the Star Hotel – it was just an unnamed retail/commercial/residential building when I lived there.
Hi guys! :D oh my gosh thanks for the info! Its helped out with my project. I was just wondering if any of you have lived there or know anyone (old eps.) that use to live in Newton. I want to interview some people for my project. if anyones interested please email me. cheers!!
Hey George Tinka! wow! awesome! are you able to email me what your dad thinks about Newton how it was before and now? sorry its random. i need this groups help :D it gets interesting!!
Hey, I lived in Devon Street in the 50′s and my Uncle Jack used to drink at the Star Newton and the Kings Arms. I started school at Newton Central.
All the kids had great times racing trolleys down Devon Street. I don’t even know if Devon Street still exists. My mother worked at Buchanans Bread factory
Hi Frances. Thanks for sharing those memories! Most of Devon Street was gobbled up by Ian McKinnon Drive slicing through it, but there are little bits left at either end. The southern end is still called Devon Street and the northern end, which intersects with Newton Road, was renamed Piwakawaka (Fantail) Street.