Description Comments

Argosy Aerial - "Aerials of PN residential land"

Object type

Image

Description: This aerial is believed to depict Maxwells Line and offshoot streets. Maxwells Line runs from bottom left to top right of the image with Laurel Place, Rugby Street, and College Street running off the left and Carter Crescent and Racecourse Road off the right. Also visible is Pioneer Highway in the bottom left corner, Awapuni Primary School in the upper left, and Alexander, Rugby, Raleigh and Wyndham streets.

Argosy Studio (Argosy Industrial Photos) was a photography business owned and operated between 1950 and 1980 by Joe Greening (formerly employed by Elmar Studios). Originally located in Broadway, Argosy later moved to Cuba Street on the corner with Lombard Street.

As well as commissioned work (such as photographing the old railyards or aerial shots for the Council) Greening was known to operate as a street photographer, capturing the likenesses of passersby, offering his card with the negative number so they could buy the image if they wished. Many of these images will be in family photo albums.

A fire in 1965 destroyed many negatives in Argosy's collection but this image was one of the 400 or so survivors. Greening donated many of these surviving images to the Ian Matheson City Archives in 1989 before retiring to Kaitaia. He died in 2001.