Masters Building Demolition

I had the day off, so I went into town to find something interesting to sketch. They were dismantling the Masters Building on Egmont Street. A lot of people stopped by to watch and some commented that they would miss that building. There's a lot of discussion about preserving the heritage buildings but most aren't earthquake safe. Some need saving but they need to be functional to make the idea realistic. It's maybe more important to make sure that the new buildings that replace these ones have a bit of style and character. It will help them stay occupied and not just be another box. All these older buildings that people love, used to be modern buildings that people love when they were first built.

Local character turned early morning takeaways

In a move that adds new meaning to the old saying 'There goes the neighbourhood', some of the old houses in my area are actually being driven off down the road.

In this case a 100+ year old Victorian 'corner angle bay' villa was cut into 3 parts, jacked up onto 3 hydraulic trailers then taken away in the dead of night.

The old place is apparently destined for a country plot somewhere up north. This is great of course – at least it isn't being demolished – but the continued removal, destruction and replacement with concrete tilt slab apartment blocks is changing the local character forever.

It was quite fascinating to follow the process. First of all they disconnected the power lines from the street. Then the foundations were carefully dismantled and these clever hydraulic truck trailers
(a sort of Chev Impala lowrider re-interpretation of a Kenworth trailer) are positioned underneath. The chimneys are dismantled, and away they go – in the middle of the night of course – because you can't go driving houses around in peak hour traffic can you.

I'm aware of several other old villas around the corner set to go also (view the sketch here). I wonder if this is something happening across the country, or is it just the character inner city suburbs of Auckland like Ponsonby and Grey Lynn?

Do you, like me, think it's strange that most of our heritage buildings have no historic rating or protection at all?