Queen Street, east side, above Victoria Street
1864 or 1865 (unknown photographer) - 2024
Drag the slider to compare two photographs
1860s image: composite of (1) Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1043-054 (2) Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand Ref: 1/2-011114-G. (3) Auckland Museum PH-ALB-94
It would seem that the 1860s photograph was made in 1864 or 1865; the second building from right has signage identifying it as "H. Adams Royal Oyster Saloon"; advertisements for Adams's establishment first appear in newspapers of the time (on the National Library's Papers Past website) in October 1864. During the following months Adams advertised regularly until, around mid-1865, he announced that his business would henceforth be called Adams's London Hotel. (See here on this site for more on Adams's Royal Oyster Saloon and the dating evidence.)
The historical image is a composite, with roughly equal contributions from the three sources noted in the acknowledgement, in the hope of increasing the image's signal-to-noise ratio.
Below: Nearly forty years after the 1860s photograph was taken an illustration based on it was published in The New Zealand Graphic (19 October 1901) on a page with the title "The Auckland of the Old Colonists, Queen Street in the Early Sixties", annotated with the names of businesses in the buildings shown.
