Here Once Stood...

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

Here Once Stood...

THE fine building shown in the adjoining colui s replaces two characteristic and semi-historic structure-, of Auckland’s pioneers. In other days its commanding site on the corner of / bert and Wyndha^ l Streets held the old Clanricarde Hotel and, farther west, the somewhat famous Dublin House.

A quaint friendly place was this same Dublin House, known well of sailors and wayfaring men. It had two great verdantgreen tin shamrocks on its face, and the fame of its interior was a devotion to the hearty feeding of Auckland's pioneers and printers and folk from the far seas. The old eating-house (so-called) was not purely Irish in its occupancy, but was nearer to the Jordan than the Liffey. Its landlord was one Lazarus. But he did not deal in crumbs from the rich man’s table. Dublin House kept its doors open till the dawn and, about three o’clock in the morning, had a side of roast beef on the dresser for the inky way-farers from the “He. aid,” then on Wyndham Street. To-day, the gay Clanricarde Hotel, with its red brick facade and rum-stained bar, has disappeared as dust into the mists, while the fragrant kitchen area of Dublin House has become the deep hundred-ton concrete bed for THE SUN’S giant rotary printing press. But again, as in bygone times, the upland thoroughfare from the hec-i of .he city resumes the character of the Fleet Street of Auckland. Once more there are three newspapers in Wyndham Street. Journalists instinctively love the old haunts of their clan.