Results (
Thai) 2:
[Copy]Copied!
Iconic suburb
From as early as the 1850s St Mary's Bay and Herne Bay were favoured by several prosperous Aucklanders for their harbour views. They built elegant "marine villas" with extensive gardens and private jetties from which they commuted to the bottom of Queen Street. These were largely accessible only from the water as the Ponsonby and Jervois ridges and the area beyond were mostly coarse scrubland. A number of these 'marine villas' still stand, now surrounded by later Edwardian suburban developments.
As College Hill was too steep for horse-drawn vehicles, all traffic from the centre of Auckland came via Karangahape Road. After the establishment of the horse bus service in the 1880s a small shopping centre developed at the end of the route {what is now Three Lamps}. This shopping centre prospered as it was able to serve the larger properties in Herne Bay, the small workers cottages in College Hill and the new middle class houses of Grey Lynn. Eventually the tram route (first Horse drawn and then Electric) was extended along Jervois Road which saw more residential and retail development.
The area now called Three lamps was originally a farm called "Dedwood", apparently named after a friend of the first owners; a Captain Dedwood, who may, or may not, have served in the Armed forces in New Zealand. What is now called Jervois Road was at that time called Ponsonby Road. There was apparently both a Dedwood Road Board and a Ponsonby Road Board as well as references to both a Dedwood District Board and a Ponsonby District Board. Ponsonby definitely sounded more elegant than Dedwood so by the 1870s Ponsonby was apparently used by many people to refer to the whole area. Around 1873 the name was changed from Dedwood to Ponsonby although throughout the mid 1870s public announcements refer to 'Dedwood and/or Ponsonby' just to be safe.
The name change may have sounded better in Real Estate advertisements but it initially caused problems; In the New Zealand Herald, Volume X, Issue 3608, 4 June 1873, Page 2 it is mentioned that the change caused problems with the Area's membership of both the Harbour Board and the Domain Board as their legal documents specified the Dedwood Road Board and Dedwood District Boards.
(The) Superintendent, should have intimated to the rate-payers of the Dedwood district, that by their adopting a less funereal name they would disfranchise themselves .[1] This problem was eventually sorted out and in any case in 1882 Ponsonby, along with Karangahape and Grafton was amalgamated with Auckland City.
In the 1950s and 60s a combination of people moving to new outer suburbs, Auckland City Council policy of "slum" clearances and the construction of the motorway through Freemans Bay, led to plummeting rents and a drastic downturn in the economic fortunes of the area directly west of the CBD. The 1950s and60s saw many Pacific Islanders arriving in the country and they tended to take up residence in low cost areas - Ponsonby was one of them. By the 1970s, the combination of artists, bohemians, gays and lesbians, and Polynesian migrant workers, [1] attracted by the low rents created a distinct culture in the area, with which the area is still largely identified in the popular imagination of Auckland.
However, beginning in the 1980s a process of gentrification and ethnic transition took place in the area. This was reflective of patterns in other Western cities, but here it dramatically altered the suburb by the late-1990s, as the apparent predominate population of Polynesians was replaced by Pakeha as described in the Ian Middleton novel Mr Ponsonby. By the early 2000s, Ponsonby became widely perceived of as a spatial centre of Auckland's so-called creative class.
Upper Middle Class Professionals, usually working in the better-paid professions, as well as the culture industry became an obvious (if not dominant) presence in the area. This also reintroduced many more children into the area; the local schools, which through the 1970s and 80s had had shrinking roles now started growing in size and the children attending them were now predominately white rather than brown.
The retail shops changed in character as well. Ponsonby Road was previously lined with second hand appliance & furniture stores, junk shops, Pacific Island Fruit & vegetable shops and cheap eateries. By the late 1990s these had been largely replaced with flash bars, restaurants, 'gorgeous things' shops, dress boutiques and upmarket hairdressers. In the 1960s most people regarded Ponsonby as little better than a slum now it is seen as a place of consumption of up-market consumer goods (particularly clothing) and dining and drinking experiences for the city's upper middle classes.
The 2000s saw a number of traffic accidents (including one death) along Ponsonby Road, which is both an important traffic arterial and a favourite nightspot. The result was the speed limit along Ponsonby Road was lowered to 40 km/h zone in 2009.[5]
Being translated, please wait..
