URBAN LEGEND

A Parisian-style apartment is right at home in a heritage building on Auckland city’s waterfront

The soaring steel-framed windows in Jane Mantell’s downtown Auckland apartment allow a year-round stream of sunlight – and they’ve looked out on some unforgettable moments in the city’s history. Outside the Endeans Building at Number 2 Queen Street, soldiers farewelled loved ones as they departed for the First World War. It was the spot where “Massey’s Cossacks” lined up on horseback facing waterside workers during the Great Strike of 1913. A stream of royal visitors began processions through cheering crowds from here.

And, most recently, Emirates Team New Zealand’s 2017 victory parade wended its way past with the America’s Cup.

Jane has witnessed just one of those great events, but creating her home on the first floor of the heritage-status Endeans Building has stirred many of her own memories. As a teenager, she lived in the building next door, where her parents Annie and Colin Mantell had fitted out an entire floor.

Now that her eldest daughter Paige, 17, is the same age as she was, she hopes her two daughters will love the experience of living in the ever-changing central city as much as she did.

“I think the girls have moments where they would like to be living out in the suburbs near their friends. But as they get older, I think they will appreciate it more.” It appears they already are; in the winter school holidays, 13-year-old Anita could walk to movie theatres and the ice rink at Aotea Square.

It wasn’t a simple transition from the suburbs to the city – Jane couldn’t afford a house in a central location and she kept missing out on warehouse spaces at auction. >

“EVERYTHING IS SO EASY TO GET TO. THERE ARE BEAUTIFUL RESTAURANTS NEXT DOOR; THE FERRIES ARE ACROSS THE STREET”

THIS PAGE Jane hosts dinner parties with the grand Britomart building as a backdrop, around a dining table that was once a makeshift bar at Mantells Mt Eden and is now graced with Stephane Rondel legs; New Zealand furniture designer Michael Draper...

THIS PAGE The 3m-long kitchen bench is concrete reinforced with glass, to make it lighter for builders to carry it up the building’s internal stairwell; Jane was afraid of not getting the concrete the exact shade of white she wanted, so opted for grey...