LIVING HISTORY
WORDS Francesca Logan PHOTOS Supplied
Nostalgia is a heavy feeling: it lives in innocuous things. I grew up running about in the bones of an old warehouse building from the 1900s, the now called NG Building. When I was young, the NG Building lived sandwiched in a row of Edwardian and Victorian era warehouses. Ours was the biggest and, in my opinion, the best. It had a basement filled with old things; bins of unmarked silver trophies, old wooden fruit boxes, and so many signs that promised me that there were “Toys Upstairs”. But try as I might, I could never find the “upstairs toys” probably because I was 50 years too late.
Throughout a large part of the 20th Century, what was then called the Bains Building was a department store, boasting fine china downstairs and a plethora of toys upstairs. Although not as famous as the iconic Ballantynes, it was still a popular shopping destination. People would (and still do) come into the building to reminisce about their time here.
In 1905, 212 Madras Street was known as Marriner’s Buildings, home to Cotton Brothers Ltd Importers. They imported everything from bicycles, rubber, and seeds, to phonographs, films, and Thomas Edison™ home kinetoscopes. It’s funny to think that the photo to the left, taken in 1913, is only a year away from the start of World War One, and next year, all the wondrous things from overseas would come to a halt.
Madras Street used to be at the edge of the city; it was once lined with rows upon rows of warehouses. Even at the most basic level, the lofty ambitions of the city were evident as warehouses were designed in Italian Renaissance and Neo Georgian styles. The level of care and craftsmanship built into the most utilitarian buildings really demonstrate the priorities of Christchurch’s earliest citizens.
Of course, the Christchurch that they aspired to disappeared after the earthquakes. 140 Heritage buildings were demolished. It’s harder to feel nostalgic in our new and somewhat empty city. With every passing year, we forget what it used to look like; old pictures of Cathedral Square and the city streets may as well be another country for me.
Without history, without the physical reminders from our history, it’s easy to feel disconnected. As heritage buildings disappear from our landscape, so too does the evidence that our ancestors lived here. It is easy to view older things as unimportant as they can be impractical for our modern ways of living and require adaptation to fit; it is much easier to throw it away and replace it with something new and custom-built. But then you end up in a society without an identity. The less you know of your own past, the harder it is to recognise its echoes in your present, and the more likely you are to destroy the physical connections you have left. The only way forward is to protect what we have left of the past and use what we learn from it to improve our future.