The Blockhouse Bay Yacht and Motorboat Club was founded on February 2nd 1944, lasting nearly 50 years before succumbing to mounting financial pressure in 1993.
Many members were taken in by the French Bay Yacht Club in neighbouring Titirangi. The closure of the BHB club prompted longtime member Bill Glen to record and preserve the history of the club. Thus, the ‘Bill Glen Collection’ was born.
Photo of the dunny at Armanasco House When Stephano built in 1890, no pioneer house was complete without its little outhouse out the back. At that time they would have had a long drop, but later the night cart man called around the Bay in the night hours to empty the can.
Keith has built a kauri board and battern thunderbox/dunny/privy/long drop, call it what you will, complete with the standard interior furnishings of kerosene lamp hanging on a nail, a coat hook, the bottle of Jeyes Fluid and, of course, the Weekly News neatly cut into squares and hanging on the wall. There is a carefully smoothed bench seat with a comfortable hole in the middle, with a wooden lid strategically placed over a can. This outhouse has been placed in the back yard of Armanasco House.
The very first shop in the district opened, not in the “Mainstreet”, but at the foot of Endeavour Street in 1912. In those days the street was completely undeveloped and was just a track winding down through the scrub to the beach. The creek at the bottom, where the pumping station used to stand, was then crossed by a log in place of a bridge. The log was later replaced with a black plank bridge.
[Note, first published in the society newsletter December 2017]
Green Bay Interdenominational Mission
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
It does not occur very often that we can celebrate a centenary here in the Bay. Green Bay Mission building in 2018
This year on 1st December 2017 marks the foundation stone laying ceremony for the Green Bay Interdenominational Mission one hundred years ago, with the church being officially opened at the end of 1918.
The Blockhouse Bay Picture Theatre was built in 1925 on the site of the present Foodtown carpark. Ola Guttermorson acted as projectionist for the silent movies, while sisters Annie collected tickets at the door and Helga belted out the accompanying music on the theatre’s piano. The films were displayed on the white painted back wall of the theatre, and might be the latest epic or Charlie Chaplin’s latest farce.
Ola was not a very good projectionist and there were many awkward stops and starts. Patrons, especially the younger ones, became used to the unscheduled breaks and the local lads used to take out their frustration by throwing lolly papers at the poor pianist.
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