You can't beat Wellington on a good day... in 1924
On a warm weekend in the summer of 1924, a professional photographer carried a large glass-plate camera halfway up the slopes of Te Ahumairangi (Tinakori Hill).
Wellington City Recollect, Ref: 50010-56
Making use of the vantage point offered before its hillsides were planted in pine trees, they were there to capture a detailed image of the Wellington CBD for the Government Publicity Office, an early promotion department within Internal Affairs that helped advertise New Zealand to tourists and potential migrants.
Four years later, the pioneering local historian Louis Ward used the same image in his work Early Wellington, one of the first books to document the colonial period of the capital's history.
Using our new interactive digital platform, Shorthand, we investigate some of the features of the photograph and describe these within the context of a period of tremendous growth that took place in Wellington during the 1920s.