photo by Adam MacLay. Alexander Turnbull Library
By the early 1900s, cycles and their cyclists were everywhere. A couple of Super 14 squads worth of men & boys stand outside the Sydenham Football Club Hall displaying their cycles before, perhaps, retiring inside for a few beverages. Mr CH will be along shortly to help out with an exact street location! Hastings Street? (And probably to tell me Sydenham was dry then - which will truly astound me).
Or per chance, the lads were about to play a game of cycle rugby with a half time show by the bicycling band?
And should push-bike power fail to budge an immovable object, the trusty steam traction engine could be prevailed upon to haul the Oddfellows Hall from its Lichfield Street location in the central city to a site 3/4 of a mile away in Sydenham in 1903. Skids rather than trollies were used under the Hall as they didn't want to unnecessarily raise its height and snag the telegraph lines overhead.
The Weekly Press, 25 Nov. 1903, p. 45
Christchurch City Libraries
A small child on a tricycle provides an attentive audience and managerial supervision.
A small child on a tricycle provides an attentive audience and managerial supervision.
