Eichardt's Hotel, Queenstown
1886 (Burton Brothers) - 2023
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Eichardt's Hotel, Queenstown, 1886, Dunedin, by Burton Brothers. Te Papa (C.015920)
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Eichardt's Hotel apears little changed between these two dates, but in fact the building lost virtually every element of its exterior architectural decoration over the years after the 1886 image was made (see below). The present restoration is very faithful to the Victorian original, although there are a number of subtle differences in detail and scale.
Below, a panorama of the scene in 1951 (my digital stitch of three photographs). Click on the image for a then-and-now transition.
Eichardts Hotel, Queenstown. Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs. Ref: WA-28802-F, WA-28804-F, WA-28805-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
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Below: The photographer made another exposure of this scene. At first glance, there's little difference between the two images; the figures standing outside the hotel seem, with a few exceptions, frozen, and we must imagine the Burton Brothers photographer posing them, or at the very least exhorting them to hold still both during the exposures and in the interval between changing plates.
Click on the image to toggle between the two versions, or click here and here for fullscreen treatments of two details from the plates (note the figures of two women with infant children at far right in the latter).
Te Papa C.015920 and C.011424
