A Burton Brothers panorama of the central city
1884 (Burton Brothers | Alfred H Burton) - 2022
On a fine day in June, 1884, Alfred Burton climbed the five sets of steep stairs leading to the top of the fire bell tower that stood on the eastern side of Albert Street (between Victoria and Wellesley Streets) and exposed six plates as he rotated his camera through 180 degress or more. Of these six plates, five are in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, with one missing. Auckland Libraries have a record of the missing plate in the form of a copy of a print (made by James Richardson, probably in the 1920s). The plates are in varying states of preservation; time has not been kind to one in particular (at lower right in the array below) with extensive damage to the negative. Click the images below for larger versions and record details.
Below is my attempt at digitally 'stitching' these plates to form a continuous panorama. Click on the image for a fullscreen version; here for a larger scrolling version; or here for a zoomable, high-resolution version.
Alfred Burton—or any other photographer working before the advent of digital imaging—would have only been able to display a panorama made in this way as a sequence of prints mounted side-by-side, with abrupt changes of perspective between each image; below is an example, an 1874 Burton Brothers ten-plate panorama of Dunedin. Presumably the Albert Street panorama would hve been presented similarly. Click on image for a larger version.
Panorama of Dunedin, Otago, NZ, 1874, Dunedin, by Burton Brothers. Purchased 2015. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Te Papa (AL.000607)
Then and Now
As for making a then-and-now comparison, there was no way that I could elevate a camera to anything like the height of the long-vanished fire bell tower; by using a mast I was able to get a camera to a height of about six metres, and the result is shown together with the Burton's panorama below. Click on the image for a fullscreen version, or here for a larger scrolling version.
360 degrees
Below is a full 360-degree spherical panorama of the modern scene viewed from street level. Click and drag to look around. (This is best viewed in fullscreen mode; click on the fullscreen button to toggle.)
The work going on in Albert Street is the construction of the Te Waihorotiu Station (Aotea), part of the City Rail Link project, to whom I'm indebted for permission to access the site.
The Albert Street fire bell tower
The fire bell tower that stood in this section of Albert Street was built in the early 1880s and was about 23 metres high. It can be seen at upper left in this 1880s Burton Brothers photograph looking west from Albert Park.
Burton Brothers (Dunedin, N.Z.). Victoria Street, Auckland - Photograph taken by Burton Brothers. Sharland and Company: Photographs relating to Sharland and Company, manufacturing chemists. Ref: 1/2-030175-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22820834
Below, a detail from the image above.
Below, the tower also appears in this later (1906) detail from a photograph made from St Matthews Church tower by Henry Winkelmann.
1906 image: Henry Winkelmann | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0091 (detail)
Remnants of the tower were discovered during the City Rail Link construction work in Albert Street; read about it here.
1903: Henry Winkelmann climbs the tower
On the afternoon of Wednesday the 25th of March 1903 Henry Winkelmann clambered up the fire bell tower seeking, as he so often did, an elevated vantage point for his camera. Four plates that he exposed that day are in Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. The plates are stand-alone, non-overlapping views, even though Winkelmann records them in his ledger on a page devoted to panoramas of Auckland. In the composite image below they are scaled and superimposed on the Burton Brothers panorama.
The gaps between the plates seem to me to cry out for additional, overlapping images which would together form a panorama. Indeed, it's hard to believe that Winkelmann would not have made such a panoramic sequence, especially as we know he was already producing panoramas by this date. And yet it is only these four plates that Winkelmann notes in his ledger.
My understanding is that Winkelmann's ledger was created to catalogue a large portion of his negative collection that he offered for sale to the Auckland Old Colonists Museum (later transferred to Auckland Public Library). By then the 1903 plates were twenty five years old; had the putative missing plates been somehow lost or overlooked? What became of them (if they existed—and I'd wager that they did) is a mystery.
Below, Winkelmann's plates superimposed on Burton's 1884 panorama; click for a larger version.
1903 images: Henry Winkelmann | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections (left to right) 1-W1038 1-W1037 1-W1036 1-W0926
The first three of Winkelmann's plates (left to right, above) register pretty closely with those made by Alfred Burton nearly twenty years earlier, the fourth less so; it seems that Winkelmann may have repositioned his camera slightly for that shot. In any case it's interesting to compare the views of the mid-1880s with those of 1903.
Click on the three images below to toggle crossfade transitions between the 1884 and 1903 images.
Below, a detail from Winkelmann's ledger recording his fire bell tower plates (fourth line below heading 'Particulars').
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0000 (detail)
Documents | dating the 1884 plates and identifying the photographer
A report in the New Zealand Herald, 3 July 1884, Page 4, mentions Burton's fire bell tower panorama:
New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7060, 3 July 1884, Page 4 | Papers Past website link
Burton had arrived in Auckland on 26 May 1884 on the ship Te Anau:
New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7028, 27 May 1884, Page 5 | Papers Past website link
And on 3 July 1884 the Auckland Star carried this:
Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 410, 3 July 1884, Page 2 | Papers Past website link
So: Burton's panorama must have been made after 26 May 1884 when he arrived in Auckland, and "a few weeks" before 3 July 1884. Almost certainly then, the panorama plates must have been taken during June, 1884.
In his own words: Burton's newspaper notice (referred to in the first newspaper report above):
Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 410, 3 July 1884, Page 3 | Papers Past website link
Below, a detail from the Burton Brothers negative register recording the fire bell tower plates.
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Selected details
Lastly, a few selected crops from the 1884 panorama.
Intersection of Wellesley and Federal Streets. The building at right was a Baptist church that stood on the north-eastern corner of the intersection.
Buildings in Elliott Street. The Wellesley Street corner is at top.
Looking in the direction of Maungawhau/Mount Eden. Partington's Mill is at top right, while at lower left is a glimpse of the premises of Josiah Martin, a noted Auckland photographer at the time. Then-and-now treatments of photographs by Martin of Queen Street can be seen here, and here.
The rooftop structure at centre must presumably be part of the establishment of photographer R. H. Bartlett, whose Queen Street premises were located here at this period. In an 1871 issue of the New Zealand Herald (19 July, page 2) it was reported that "We yesterday inspected the atelier of Mr. R. H. Bartlett, the photographer, who has lately been making very extensive improvements in his establishment. The glass bouse in which the business of taking photographs was conducted has been greatly enlarged, and another room has been added in consequence of Mr. Bartlett's increasing business." The buildings seen here of J. & J. Dickey and Garlick & Cranwell were on the eastern side of Queen Street in the block above Wellesley Street.
The then-new three-storey Auckland Savings Bank building in Queen Street (completed in early 1884) is at lower left. The stone building at top-centre, the Grenadier Barracks (once part of Albert Barracks) on the corner of Princes and O'Rorke Streets, had housed the 58th Regiment, Auckland Grammar School (the latter from 1871 to 1878) and was later used as a Police barracks. It was demolished in 1898.
Horses and carts in Darby Street. Queen Street is at top, Elliott Street at bottom. There appear to be roadworks in Queen Street (it was ever thus).
The only building visible in both the 1884 and modern view is the former Sargood, Son and Ewen Building in Victoria Street West (about 1883, though only its façade has been preserved), seen here at centre. It appears in another Burton Brothers then-and-now treatment here.
One of only a few human figures seen reasonably clearly in the panorama, this woman standing in a doorway on what appears to be Lorne Street, has paused for long enough to be recorded by Burton's camera.
City Rail Link website's archaeology page for the height and date of construction of the fire bell tower.
Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand for the history of the stone barracks building, corner Princes and O'Rorke Streets.
Auckland Grammar School Archives website, ditto.
Special thanks to
Keith Giles
Lissa Mitchell
John B Turner
