Looking south-east from Constitution Hill across Mechanics Bay and Parnell
ca.1875 (Herbert Deveril) – 2024
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1870s image: Deveril, Herbert, 1840-1911. Deveril, Herbert, 1840-1911: Parnell, Auckland. Ref: PA7-45-15. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23192878
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Around this period Herbert Deveril had been commissioned by the New Zealand Government to take a series of photographs for the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition, and he made this wonderfully detailed image with a 14 by 11 inch camera.* The modern view is far less spectacular alas, the scene being mostly obscured by the foreground trees on Constitution Hill.
The date for Deveril's photograph was probably 1875 or early 1876; providing a clue is the building second-nearest to the camera position, which has signage reading Archard Coal and Firewood Depot. This concern had been a partnership between Frederick Archard and John Brown, but this was dissolved in December 1874 (New Zealand Herald, 20 November 1874, page 1) with Archard continuing the business alone until around August 1875, when advertisements in the press under his name seem to end. In February 1876 one C. F. Harding announced his purchase of the business (Daily Southern Cross, 1 February 1876, page 2).
Below: a series of details from Deveril's image.
The sheets of fabric covering the windows of this shop in Stamley Street are presumably to protect its stock from the sun. Might this building have been Mrs Scott's General Store? (see below) and might that be Mrs Scott in the doorway, or a trick of the light?
Auckland Star, 5 November 1873, page 3
Incidentally, where was everyone when Deveril exposed this plate? With the notable exception of the groups of people at the foot of Constitution HIll (see the second and third details above), the streets seem utterly deserted. Parnell Rise, in the first detail above, looks like a scene from High Noon. As far as I can tell, the figures seen indistinctly near centre in the detail above are the only other unmistakable people in Deveril's image.
For a then-and-now treatment of an 1880s Burton Brothers photograph looking back towards Constitution Hill from Parnell Rise, click here, while for an image-pair very like Deveril's picture above, made over thirty years later around 1909, click here.
* William Main Auckland Through a Victorian Lens Millwood Press, 1977, page 62
