From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection.
Later this month the new Tauranga Library and Community Hub opens at Te Manawataki o Te Papa, Willow Street. It occupies the site of the Civic Centre that housed the library from 1989 to 2022, and is next to the site where the library had been (mostly) housed from 1930 to 1988.
Prior to that the Library was in the Mechanics' Institute building on the corner of Harington Street and Willow Street. Tauranga Borough Council took over the management of the Library from the Institute in 1906.
This was the second Institute on the site. The first, built in 1872 and extended in 1878, was lost to the big North End fire in 1881. Fortunately it was insured, so a replacement was constructed that same year. A room in the old Government Buildings in Willow Street was used as a temporary location while reconstruction proceeded (not the building in the background of the first photo - it went up in 1906).
Before the first reading room was completed the Institute's collection, developed in 1871, was held in a spare room of James Bodell's home in Cameron Road.
Here is a selection of images from our collections of these past Library buildings.
Tauranga Public Library and Mechanics Institute, Harington Street, built 1881), in the right foreground, probably about 1907.
F.H.Hammond's bakery and grocer's shop on the south west corner of Willow Street and Hamilton Street, Tauranga. Subsequently used by Bond & Bond, it later housed the Children's Library before being pulled down in 1970 to make way for the 'new' Tauranga City Council Administration building.
Photo c 1915. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 99-1145
In 1930 an Art Deco style building was erected on Willow Street next to the Town Hall. It housed the Public Library upstairs and the borough's electricity department downstairs. c.1940s.
Tauranga Public Library, still only in the upstairs part of the Willow Street building, and looking crowded, 1959.
Children watch magic tricks performed by magician G. A. Hansen, at the Tauranga Children's Library, now upstairs in the Art Deco building. Published 31 August 1974.
Tauranga Public Library's Newspaper Room, Tauranga Town Hall 1987. The Library's Archives collection was also in the Town Hall.
Shelf tidying the downstairs collections in Tauranga Public Library's 1930 building was a cramped task, 1988.
Tauranga Public Library, the 1930 Willow St building pre-demolition in November 1988.
In 1987 Tauranga Round Table members erected a relocatable building on Hamilton Street as short-term accommodation for the children's section of Tauranga Libraries. This photo shows library staff moving boxes of books from the Children's Library into "The White House".
The new Civic block upon completion, in the Bay of Plenty Times of 27 July, 1989.
Photograph of the same corner site as above, after an extra floor was added in 2006-07. The Library spread into more of the rear portion of the building. [In 2015 retiree Rodney Giddens undertook to provide a photographic record from the roadside of Tauranga’s CBD].
The Devonport Road entrance to He Puna Mānawa. Tauranga Library moved into the former Goddard's Arcade in early 2022 while the Willow Street building was demolished and construction began of the new Tauranga Library and Community Hub, to open on 16 October 2026.
Sources:
Pae Korokī links:
Written by Leslie Goodliffe, Heritage and Research Team Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.
