File:Wellington Post Office Fire, 28 April 1887 (border cropped).jpg
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| Description |
English: Postcard illustration the Wellington Post Office on Fire, 28 April 1887
On 28 April 1887, a sensational and spectacular fire occurred at the Wellington Post Office building. At 4.45am, a cleaner named Mrs Davis saw flames spreading quickly through the ground floor and raised the alarm. However the fire brigade did not arrive fast enough, and flames quickly funnelled through the wooden interior of the stone building - bursting through windows and turning the wooden clock tower on the roof into a pillar of fire. According to one account, ‘the fine clock with chimes struck the hour of five when enveloped in flames, and came down with a hollow thud as the onlookers gave vent to exclamations of sorrow.’ By 6am the building was completely gutted; only two rooms were left untouched, and many records were destroyed. The building was eventually restored in 1888, but by 1908 the department had outgrown the building. The government then acquired the remainder of the block and in 1912 a new GPO building was opened. This postcard shows a sepia drawing of the fire by Walter Leslie (1855-1915), who sent it to the patent office a mere five days after the event. Leslie was born at Sunbry, Middlesex, England and moved to New Zealand from Australia in 1878. He published `Parliamentary portraits' in 1888, and also drew cartoons under the pseudonym ‘Phiz’. Archives Reference: PC4 Box 1 1887/16 |
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| Source | Wellington Post Office Fire, 28 April 1887 |
| Author |
Walter Leslie (1855-1915) Archives New Zealand from New Zealand |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by Archives New Zealand at https://flickr.com/photos/35759981@N08/16529534664. It was reviewed on 6 January 2016 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0. |
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 12:42, 28 April 2016 | | 1,184 × 1,780 (439 KB) | Ww2censor (talk | contribs) | File:Wellington Post Office Fire, 28 April 1887.jpg cropped 10 % horizontally and 11 % vertically using CropTool with lossless mode. |
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