Wednesday, June 26, 2013

The Occidental, Vulcan Lane, Auckland

One of Auckland's oldest pubs, built around 1870 on the corner of Vulcan Lane and Queen Street. At some stage an Art Deco building was built in front obscuring part of it's curving facade. From what I can find it was built by an American sailor and modelled on San Francisco's Occidental Hotel. It also housed a museum of 'absorbing interesting specimens of the pictorial art, defunct wonders and comical conceits'


According to the Historic Places trust the 'establishment was very popular with merchants, traders, speculators, artists, litterateurs, sportsmen and even 'the loafer''. I frequented it in the 80's when it was a hangout for students and punks, and today you're likely to join business people and tourists at the bar for one of the many Belgian beers on offer.



4 comments:

  1. You are spoilt with lovely old structures with fiddly bits. Some great foreshortening going on there.

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  2. Murray were you the artist or the loafer? :-)

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  3. Amazing sketch, I love the perspective, looks like a view from inside a car in movement.

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  4. I definitely would have been the Loafer Scott! Mário I'm not sure how it ended up so warped, I think that the building is on some crazy angles already must have inspired me.

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