Coronation Night at 2ZB

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 726, 12 June 1953, Page 19

Coronation Night at 2ZB

IKE many other city blocks, the Hope Gibbons Building in Dixon Street, Wellington, was gay with bunting and other decorations for Coronation Day, so 2ZB decided to add to the festivities by feeding its evening programme in to the street through an amplifier system. In. the earlier part of the evening quite a number of cheerful souls stopped to join in the chorus of a popular hit, and the odd serial enthusiast spent a quarter hour on. the pavement keeping abreast of the doings of his favourite radio characters, However, when the impressive Coronation Ceremonies themselves began; a group

of people caught far from home and radio settled themselves for an extensive period of listening. Some of these original few were still there at midnight, and around this nucleus much larger numbers came and went. Around ten-thirty, when the theatre exodus took place, the listening crowd reached quite impressive proportions, as homewardbound citizens stopped to. listen for a while before catching their trams and buses. The accompanying photograph was taken at this time, from the apex of the grass plot separating Manners and Dixon Streets.