Cuba Quarter Buildings, Wellington NZ

Various pix Cuba quarter/downtown buildings in Wellington, NZ brought together in this post. Most of these have sold one way or another, but let me know if you like one and maybe it’s here on my wall or can be a print

Quality pigment ink giclee prints of some are available – see below.

Prints

Quality giclee prints of 6 are available for $55 each, all professionally printed by Picaflor Fine Art Prints on 350gsm photorag etching paper with cardboard backing, packed in clear archival show bags:

• The 5 in the header are printed at 412 x 223mm (image and paper size) to fit the black or white Daytona Frame Multi range, or for mounting in a shadowbox frame
  
• 228 Cuba Street is 9″x11″ external paper measure (the frame shown is from KMart, not included in the price)

Any postage extra at standard NZPost rates.
Email alistairsart@gmail.com. 

And a bit of history (geek alert!). Many of these buildings were built in and from 1906 when the Council trams were extended to the top of Cuba Street. The tracks were removed in 1964

Sketches https://wordpress.com/post/alistairsart.com/3432

104 Cuba Street (was Mr Bun) – Heritage NZ says it is “a two storey 1920s commercial building, … notable for its unusual Art Deco façade, particularly the prominent central oriel window on the first floor”. Sadly, Spark (or the landlord) painted the facade corporate charcoal (does grey make us want to buy phones?) then moved out, cultural vandals – one day someone classier will restore it

Cuba Superette, 301 Cuba Street -1 of my top 5 buildings not to be in if the ground moves. I like the wrought iron (Italianate?) balconies

149 Cuba Street – Lazule jewellers premises, now minus the facade sign.

Bats Theatre in the Oddfellows Building at Kent Tce

Iko Iko, well-known gift shop in the Mall, love the azure blue Art Deco facade

Hunter Building with its great early 1920s stained glass window, the old law faculty when I started at Victoria Uni in … the old days.

Weir House hostel in Kelburn -ditto. Huge first year away from home there in 1972

The Albemarle is a favourite, partly because of its dome and elaborate facade – gestures of wealth and optimism in 1906 – and its story: Edwardian temperance Hotel and headquarters of a workingman’s strike in 1913; downmarket boarding house in the 1950s; rooms by the day for the homeless and by the hour for the oldest profession by the 1970s. Currently an earthquake risk and unoccupied but redevelopment has finally started (yay).   https://wordpress.com/post/alistairsart.com/3349

288 Cuba Street – built from wood in about 1906 in a New Zealand Italianate style (upstairs verandah without Juliet), initially to sell dyed calico. Its history since has been unremarkable, excepting only that Carmen Rupe, a famous and fabulous transgender woman, ran a trinkets and knick-knacks shop here in the 70s. Later it was home to Kiwi Art House Gallery, now further down Cuba St. https://wordpress.com/post/alistairsart.com/3559

Peoples Palace – https://wordpress.com/post/alistairsart.com/3562  

290 Cuba (Li’s Chicken) https://wordpress.com/post/alistairsart.com/3547 A minor landmark in Wellington for student fastfood and location at the top T of Cuba Street, in very poor repair at present (eg the facade signage has fallen off). The current owners bought this print and say they have plans to tidy it, let’s hope. I squeezed the image into 1/2 width-ways to fit the panel.

Heritage NZ: “290 Cuba Street is a good representative example of a 1900s timber shop/dwelling. This building has architectural value due to the retention of original materials and most of the façade/shop front”.

Oils on flat acrylic backgrounds mostly; Footscray Ave, Hunter Building#1, Aro St, Queens Wharf gates; Weir House; Bats and the large one are oils; Hunter Building #2 and Aro Street houses are B&W acrylics