Built around Bank Corner
We don’t have a square, nor an Octagon, but we’ve got a Bank Corner which is pivotal for our city. And it is the point at which we can truthfully say that, for any worries we have about the demolition of the centre city block, as long as the Bank Corner holds up hard and wide like a river – where Tay meets Dee – the heart of Invercargill is intact.
In fact, do what they may with the rest of that block, the integrity of the city can only be enhanced.
Our history is there. The bank corner marks the start of everything said about our past.
For generations commercial street photographers stood on that corner catching those battling the westerly gales into Dee St and those nudged gently around into Tay St, the wind and sun at their backs.
Long before other people had cameras, before there were fast-film developing services, the Elmwood Studio man would be out, rain hail or shine, to catch the passing parade.
Photographs in Invercargill of the Bank Corner are now considered as important to our tourist future as those taken in Queenstown showing the Remarkables.
There are now stories about it. They often begin ‘‘There was this guy, see, going around the Bank Corner in Invercargill. . . ‘‘
Going around the Bank Corner was part of grammar learned at school. We’d say. ‘‘We are walking into the Bank Corner battling that gale force wind and we are walking around the Bank Corner’’ - blown as oft as not halfway along Tay St.
That kerb of pavement, as wide as a river, has carried wedgies and clumpies, stilettos, flat school shoes and trendy thigh-high boots.
Girls going home from school, older sisters out for a lunchtime stroll, and mothers lugging parcels.
The Bank Corner was good for us because, aware of the lurk of a possible camera, we often smiled, bravely it’s true, so if caught we’d be looking our best.
We would no more think of demolishing the Bank Corner than mowing down Mt Cook or razing the Remarkables.
We see an exciting time ahead with this great centre city redevelopment, safely anchored by the Bank Corner.
Southland photograph albums usually contain pictures taken around that corner and our history is there in pictures showing people from the late 1800s into this century when so many cars have replaced the pedestrian count.
But if you look at the past photographs, there are generations of varying hemlines from pre-war, calf-length to utility wartime clothes, the New Look which swept around in the late 1940s, the memorable minis, and the lessmemorable midis and maxis which followed.