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, October 21, 2010

The Bowling Green Hotel

This is the corner of Cumberland and Fredrick Streets

The astute among you will note the absence of a name on this building and that is because it has been removed at some time in the past potentially when the pub was renamed Zouga Ballantynes in 1983.

However if we look to the rear of the building we see this

So looking above the extension we can see Bowling Green cast into the building which they obvioiusly couldn't be bothered removing as it was not prominent.

As to the name of the Hotel, historic maps of Dunedin as late as 1921 show a green space in the block which now houses the hospital, which is across the street from the hotel. Therefore it seems reasonable to assume there may well have been a bowling green in this green space after which the hotel is named. Certainly in the urban landscape it inhabits now the name seems a little misplaced, however as it is now operating principally as a DVD rental business and University space the name will fade into history.
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  1. UnknownSeptember 23, 2015 at 4:13 PM

    That sounds very sad as my great grandmother owned the hotel around 1925. There certainly was a popular bowling green there which my great grandfather died on.

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