Electric street lighting in Auckland

The Lampstands are remnants of early electric street lighting in Auckland, relocated to their current position from elsewhere in the city. They exhibit incandescent bulb lighting technology, which replaced carbon arc lights during the 1920s or 1930s. Carbon arc lights had been introduced to Auckland from the 1910s as the earliest form of electric street lighting, in place of gas, first used in Auckland in 1863. Electric lighting was cleaner than gas and more readily automated, but was initially a more expensive source of energy. The cost of electricity was reduced once it could be generated and supplied in bulk, and after incandescent bulbs were produced in quantities from the 1880s.

Incandescent bulb technology was an improvement on electric arc lighting, being effective with smaller bulbs and at a lesser height above the ground. Incandescent light was initially produced by the glow of an electrically-charged (then carbon) filament, enclosed in a vacuum. In 1877-78, Thomas Edison was the first to experiment with such lighting, after which the process was refined and given commercial application by the British inventor, Joseph Swan. Swan's company merged with Edison's, to form the Edison-Swan United Electric Light Company in 1883. The subsequent mass production of 100w or 150w glass bulbs, mounted on poles or standards made them, by the 1910s, a serious competitor with arc lights for street lighting, especially once metallic (including osmium, later tungsten) filaments replaced less efficient carbon ones. Between 1912 and 1917 the number of incandescent filament lamps for street lighting in the US increased from 682,000 to 1,389,000, while the number of electric arc lamps decreased from 348,600 to 256,000.

Numerous cities, including Wellington, were partly served by electric street lighting by 1900, with the global leaders being Berlin ('Elektropolis') and Chicago. Auckland remained exclusively reliant on gas for longer than many. The passage of the Auckland Electric Lighting Act in 1900, however, signalled a change in intent, with the Auckland Electric Tramways Company Ltd. supplying both street and private electric lighting. In 1908, the Auckland City Council set up its own Electricity Department and began generating thermal electricity from the Patteson Street rubbish destructor in Freemans Bay. A yet greater volume of energy was produced by the King's Wharf coal-powered Thermal Station from 1913, followed by additional power from hydro-electric sources in the 1920s. In 1922, the Auckland City Council and other local bodies agreed to establish the Auckland Electric Power Board (AEPB), by which time ten miles of city streets had been converted from gas to electric lighting. The electrical supply system then only extended through the central city area and small parts of the suburb of Mt. Eden.

The Lampstands

The Lampstands currently located on the corner of Drake and Vernon Streets are likely to have first been erected in Tamaki Drive, on Auckland's foreshore to the east of the CBD. Their erection was probably part of an expansion of electric street lighting beyond the city centre, which was carried out during the 1920s and 1930s. During this period improved lighting for pavements was considered desirable, with pedestrians increasingly sharing the highways with motorised vehicles rather than horse-drawn vehicles. There was also a general emphasis on urban cleanliness and safety, which sometimes involved street widening and slum clearance, particularly in inner city districts. Located immediately alongside the waterfront, Tamaki Drive is likely to have presented particular safety issues. The City Director of Works and Engineer from 1906-1929, when considerable expansion took place, was W.E. Bush. His successor from 1929 to 1944 was J. Tyler.

The lampstands appear to have been removed from their initial location in the 1950s, when incandescent technology was replaced by gas discharge (mercury vapour and sodium) lighting. The latter was devised by British engineers in the early 1930s and became widespread in New Zealand two decades later. Some 220 new concrete standards were set for installation along Tamaki Drive, which was part of the first group of thoroughfares to be targeted for change.

The installation of new standards in Tamaki Drive coincided with a request to improve lighting in Albert Park, which had previously continued to rely on gas lamps. The demand for better lighting in the city park was sparked by attacks on women at night in the early 1950s, pressure from the Auckland University College's student union for better lighting on the park's eastern (Princes Street) side and a desire for Christmas illumination of the band rotunda and other central areas of the reserve. It appears that some of the incandescent electric lights from Tamaki Drive were transferred to the park at this time. In 1967, seven standards of the type now surviving on the corner of Drake and Vernon Streets existed within the park boundaries.

The lampstands stood in Albert Park until early 1968, when 29 lights considered obsolete by the Council were removed. Protests were voiced at the loss of heritage items, including from the chair of the Auckland branch of the Institute of Architects, Mr V.A. Yule. Perhaps as a result of the publicity, three of the lamps were relocated to the corner of Drake and Vernon Streets prior to March 1971. The context for their transfer appears to have been the remodelling of the 1886 Freemans Hotel (then known as the Leopard Tavern), which was internally refurbished to a perceived 'Victorian-era' design in 1968-1971. There is some evidence that the lamps were installed in more than one stage during the renovations. It may have been felt that the street lights added to the nostalgic atmosphere, while providing an additional aspect of safety outside the public house which - as other New Zealand pubs - had traditionally been required to be well lit. As the standards appear to have been misidentified as gas lamps in contemporary newspaper reports, it is unclear if decisions also took account of their relocation close to an important early source of electricity generation in the city - the adjacent City Destructor building in Drake Street.

Today, the Lampstands remain in working order, and have been part of the local streetscape for approximately 35 years. They are considered to form a comparatively rare group of electric street lights of early twentieth-century design. Other examples of NZHPT registered lights include the Canterbury Club Gas Light (NZHPT Registration # 1838, Category II historic place) dating to circa 1900 and relocated in the 1970s, and the William Rolleston Memorial Light, Temuka (NZHPT Registration # 2039, Category II historic place). By contrast, a larger number of structures concerned with electricity production and administration have been registered, including the Arapuni Dam (NZHPT Registration # 4154, Category I historic place) dating to 1929, and the former Auckland Electric Power Board Building, Auckland (NZHPT Registration # 4470, Category I historic place), constructed in 1928-1930. Two gas lamps still survive in Auckland, one outside the former Auckland Savings Bank in Khyber Pass Road, and another in Albert Park.