Cast In Stone: Bank of New Zealand

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.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Bank of New Zealand Clyde

Sunderland Street, Clyde, Central Otago

So we already have an entry for Bank of New Zealand but I liked this one a lot because realative to other bank buildings it is a tiny "shack".

It is only an agency with the main bank branch being in Alexandra some dozen kms down the road.

Once again I am sure this is a left over from gold mining days when Clyde was a popular mining town and this would be the receiving point for that gold no doubt.

Today Clyde is a sleepy holiday town with the bank agency serving the still vital service of providing a quality coffee hit when that is your most important agenda item in an otherwise relaxing holiday day.

Just as a contrast here is the Alexandra branch which is a Cast in Stone building and still inhabited by BNZ

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Bank of New Zealand

This is Main Street, Lawrence

For a town with a current population of 500 this is a substaintial bank building, however the reason for its existance is due to the discovery of gold at Gabriels Gully just a few kilometers up the road, this no doubt drove the need for a substaintial bank to receive the gold that the miners found. At the height of the rush Lawrence had a population of around 11,500 which to put that in perspective it was twice the size of Dunedin. We are talking around 1860 - 1870.

Bank of New Zealand was originally established in 1861 with the first branch opened in Auckland in October 1861 followed quickly by the Dunedin branch in December 1861. This decision to establish a presence in Dunedin would I suspect been almost entirely driven by the Gold Rush here in Lawrence and the associated commercial activitiy that this kicked off at the nearest port, namely Dunedin. It is also interesting to note that it was not long after this in 1872 that BNZ opened a branch in Melbourne with this Melbourne link being a recurring theme of the commercial activity of these times.

These days with the previously mentioned population of 500 Lawrence has no BNZ branch and this building is now a cafe, catering to passing motorists on their way to and from central otago as exemplified by the motorcycle group in the photo.