Looking west across Queen Street
1916 (Henry Winkelmann) - 2022
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1916 image: Henry Winkelmann | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W1573
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Partly seen at left in the 1916 image is the venerable Union Bank building, completed in 1864 (an early photograph of it by John Kinder is here).
The building at centre was replaced by the Century cinema (King George Pictures was presumably a precursor) demolished in 1985. Much earlier, from the 1840s, this was apparently the site of a hostelry called the Blue Bell Inn, seen in the 1843 painting (below) looking down a nascent Queen Street toward the Waitematā Harbour by Edward Ashworth (the Blue Bell is at centre-left, below the Court House and stocks). From the mid-1880s there was a boarding house and restaurant here, known variously as Cox's, later Ah Chee's, Dining Rooms (see here, and here).
Ashworth, Edward. (1843) Queen Street, Auckland, 1843. Auckland Museum call no. PD76.
Alas, it seems that the Blue Bell Inn was too early to be recorded by a camera; the earliest image of this block seems to be the one below, probably from the mid-1860s.
1860s image: Auckland Museum | Queen St at Victoria St, unknown photographer, PH-ALB-94-p9-1
A then-and-now treatment of this image is here. The block can also be seen in photographs of an 1883 Queen Street procession here.
