Early Christchurch Electric Vehicles

The diasporical and widely appreciated The New Zealand Journal has recently featured a short post entitled Christchurch City Council Belt-Tightening?, in which it's wondered if there might be any advantage to the Council ordering up from storage its electric truck fleet from the early 1920s, which could have the advantage of enabling the Council to meet its greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The post includes this Alexander Turnbull Library image by The Press newspaper photographer Samuel Heath Head.


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By 1915 the Council's Municipal Electricity Department in Armagh Street was charging car batteries overnight, when cheaper off-peak rates were offered between 10 pm and 7 am. The two 100 Kilowatt generators were driven by a pair of steam engines powered by the Council's refuse destructor. In 1921, at the peak of their popularity, the M.E.D. was charging the batteries of 51 vehicles, of which 40 were privately owned, with the other 11 belonging to the Council. The City Council's Municipal Electricity Department even offered hire-purchase agreements to assist companies and individuals to purchase electric vehicles.


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In this elevated westerly view of Bealey Avenue near the Carlton Mill Bridge can be seen the city's entire fleet of electric vehicles. The photograph can be dated to 1926 by the construction of the extent Fleming House at the corner of Park Terrace (Left).


Above: photographed on Park Terrace is the circa 1922 American Walker electric lorry of Wardell Brothers, the Cashel Street Grocers. To the Left is the extant 1915 Summers house. Below: also at the same location is the electric lorry of Sharpe Brothers, aerated water and cordial manufacturers. Both of these photographs were also taken by Samuel Heath Head.



Photo credits:

1926 electric vehicle fleet; Municipal Electricity Department archive, Orion New Zealand Ltd

Sharpe Brothers lorry; Alexander Turnbull Library, reference number: 1/1-011062-G

Wardell Brothers lorry; Alexander Turnbull Library, reference number: 1/1-007411-G

Christchurch Street Number Allocations

Subsequent to a reader enquiry concerning the location of an early house we're motivated to pontificate on a matter that's long been a source of confusion to local researchers.

Until about 1881 street numbers were not allocated to Christchurch buildings. Addresses listed in the electoral rolls for that year still used the 1849 allocation of Town Section numbers.

With the increasing subdivision of the original quarter acre sections, the old system ceased to be a practical option. A numbering system for East-West streets within the four avenues was then introduced with the lowest numbers beginning from their intersections with Town Belt East (now Fitzgerald Avenue).

However, by the turn of the century those streets had begun to extend eastwards into the suburb of Linwood and a new system of numbering was required. This was brought about by reversing the numbers so that the lowest began in the West at Rolleston Avenue, and in the case of Gloucester Street in particular, ran through to number 784 where that street terminated in what is now the suburb of Avonside.

Cashel Street appears to have been the first thoroughfare to have been renumbered in 1904, with for example, what had begun with the address of Town Section 855 becoming number 226 in the early 1880s and then 87 Cashel Street from 1904. Remarkably the original circa 1856 building on this site (below) survives, without recognition, in what is now part of the City Mall.

To add to a researcher's confusion not all numbers were re-allocated. Thus in the case of Worcester Street (which appears to have been the last to be renumbered in 1910), what had been 5 Worcester Street, which was the third house on the South side near to Fitzgerald Avenue, becoming number 278. But 5 Worcester Street was then allocated to the house on the Northern corner of Worcester Street and Rolleston Avenue, with the numbers 1 and 3 being inexplicably omitted.

We've yet to ascertain dates or patterns for the re-numbering of the North-South streets, but a database is underway to match Town Section, old and new numbers, however the idiosyncracies of the newer numbering system aren't making it an easy endeavour.

1878

1946

2009
Photo credits

Detail from an 1878 photograph in the collection of the Christchurch Photographic Society.

Detail from a 1946 photograph in the collection of the Canterbury Museum.

Lyttelton's Trilby Fish & Oyster Saloon

Charles Luney opened his second restaurant, the Trilby Fish & Oyster Saloon, on the lower East side of Canterbury Street in 1904.

It boasted a separate ladies' dining room, thereby preserving the refined sensibilities of the town's matrons from the rough and ready manners of the seamen and wharfies who frequented the popular Fish & Chip eatery.

But perhaps Luney's most significant offering to posterity was his eldest son; Charles Seymour Luney (1905-2006). Into his late nineties the city's most renowned builder continued to preside over the enterprise, which constructed many of the more significant buildings of his century.

Barely recognisable in its current incarnation, the early 1870s building is now an apartment duplex.