Introduction

Imagine a time when life was so certain that when you built a building for your business you were confident enough in the future that you put the name of the business into the very fabric of the building.

This is not a time of mergers and takeovers of globalisation and restructure, this is when life was more local and certain.

There are a number of such buildings around and so this blog is an attempt to record some of them and more importantly a bit of the history of the business which by and large are no longer with us.

If you know something about any of these business please add a comment. You can do this without having to sign up for anything and can be anonomous if you prefer.



Thursday, August 5, 2010

Donaldsons (Hotel)

This is the Cnr of Dowling and Princes St
At the top of the building it says Est 1862 Donaldsons and it is very hard to imagine the building is not related to this John Donaldson http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc04Cycl-t1-body1-d2-d47-d30.html however the time line seems wrong seeing as the John Donaldson quoted was building in this spot in about 1875 ish where he was operating a pie shop and hotel. I had always known this building as Donaldsons hotel (now turned into apartments) however it seems very unlikely that there were two Donaldsons building hotels on these corners. Perhaps the inscription does not refer to the age of the business but the age of Donaldsons enterprises.
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