Welcome to Auckland’s original ‘Municipal Destructor’. Everyone, like me, know it as Victoria Park Market – a super popular open air market through the 80's to 2000's – a great place to buy your crystals and tie-dies etc! I've always known that it was originally the city rubbish dump – when the city was waaaay smaller). There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times. The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restau...
One of Auckland's oldest surviving pubs, the Birdcage Tavern (1884) is about to move — 40 metres up the road, while a motorway tunnel is created beneath the site. A motorway viaduct already runs within metres of the building visible at the top left and surrounded by a major intersection on ground level.
The building will be bumped up the road on runway beams by hydraulic arms — then moved back again once the tunnel is completed sometime in 2012.
The building will be bumped up the road on runway beams by hydraulic arms — then moved back again once the tunnel is completed sometime in 2012.
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