Hello Alan
Now that says Street doesn't it. So when did Road become Street I wonder?
Do you know if it is possible to find any street maps of Auckland as it would have been in the late 1920's & early to late 1930's?
I can't think that Walter would give his address as Liverpool Road if it didn't exist. He wouldn't get any post would he!
Hello again.
Over the last 12 months I've been a regular visitor to this part of greater Auckland assisting a distant relative who is experiencing heart problems. Mow his lawns etc, and while there I spent some four days researching in the Henderson Library of that area of West Auckland right out to the Manakau Harbour heads, and visiting historic sites of pioneering interest. I had not researched it before, but had an interest in the area as one branch of our family were trail blazers out that way from the 1860's.
Therefore last night I went looking for material on your late depression era, info and maps of Glen Eden formerly known as Waikomiti but without much luck. The ones I have collected of interest to me predated that time. The maps will be there, it's just a case of looking in the right places and digging them out.
Unfortunately the [heritage] photos of that area that I found on line were also not of your time zone. Over the next few days I will look again to see what I can dig out. I have one survey map of the greater Titirangi area c1900 which I could forward to you and another of the 1940's..
You will note in previous posts that in it's earliest days it was called Liverpool Road, and was very near to the few shops and Railway Station, that was very important to the development of West Auckland. The Road was relatively short, and when post war the area took off for residential housing the subdivision of title holdings intensified.
Again I would suggest that we go back to the period.
Road / Street was really immaterial as was numbering of properties.
In earliest times letter and parcel post was held C/- addressee, at the nearest postal office, and when sufficient local pressure was applied, some form of postal delivery service was contracted out to contractors. In the 1880's it was quite often held by a local parent, who got their children to deliver to the householder, or a local carrier or coach service, that combined it with their other business interests.
Here in the Waikato where my family have been for over 100 years, the families post was first collected from the Post Office at the nearest Railway Station, or delivered by a contractor, every few days, before the RURAL DELIVERY service got underway six days per week.
Those NZ Postal contractors, up until say the 1970's would deliver milk, bread, paper, groceries, spare farm machinery parts, chemists prescriptions, and within reason, any thing else the contractor was prepared to collect and deliver.
Our local ones had 250 - 300 postal clients each, and knew were every one was located, even though agricultural farm employees were constantly changing farms as they gained experience and job opportunities.
YET it was not until the 1990's that a RAPID numbering system was introduced based upon the number of kilometres along the roads you were on. The need here being the creation of centralized emergency call centres, large distances away from "local knowledge".
My Grand Parents three miles out from the CBD, on a street on the fringe of what is now a large city, were not assigned a street postal number until the 1950's yet there must have been about 20 houses on it.
All the best.
- Alan.
