GREAT SMOKESTACKS DISAPPEARING

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 149, 20 March 1939, Page 7

GREAT SMOKESTACKS DISAPPEARING

' Few Left In Wellington PROGRESS TOWARD A CHIMNEYLESS CITY This generation is the last to see many things that were part of the life of the previous generation. One of the least noticeable disappearances, but most significant, is the big chimney. The conversion of the Wellington Harbour Board’s power-house to the burning of pulverized, coal instead of lump coal and the pending abolition of the municipal destructor are steps toward a smokeless city, beyond which is a chimneyless city. Soon children will be growing up who will know no more of great chimney stacks than hansom cabs. Already in Wellington only one or two really high chimneys remain, and one of them, the chimney of a brick kiln in Newtown, is out of use, and the other, the destructor chimney, is to be rendered obsolete by work in hand. The gradually increasing use of electricity for power, and gas, oil and electricity for heat, have caused the demolition of old chimneys and discouraged the erection of new ones. Hydro-electricity has been the death of two. Ten or 15 years ago Wellington had some magnificent specimens! mostly built in the days when red bricks were a favourite building material. There was the circular brick stack which stood for years beside the present concrete destructor chimney that- had replaced it. Then there were the two brick chimneys that towered above the electric power-houses, one in Harris Street and the other in Jervois Quay.Brick kilns at the top of Cuba Street, and in Taranaki Street, Brooklyn, and Newtown, all were dominated by foursided red-brick spires. Of these only the Newtown chimney remains. Some Smoke Makers Left.

There are still some fairly largo chimneys, besides the destructor chimney and the Newtown structure, but they are unimpressive compared with those that have been demolished. The milk depot!has a tubular concrete chimney that is more noticeable for the volume of .smoke that issues from it than for its size, and the match factory has a chimney that stands alone but is not otherwise conspicuous. The harbour board’s chimney and one or two brewery chimneys still stand, but they are either smaller than the chimneys of the past or are dwarfed by surrounding buildings. The Evans Bay electric power-house is surmounted by two steel chimneys that "are large as steel chimneys go, but they project from the roof like ventilators and are not in the class of the great chimneys of old. Residents of a city like Wellington do not often realize how modern methods of supplying heat and power for industry have improved their environment. The chimneys that used to point to the.sky carried a long plume of black smoke day and night. Even though a bylaw prohibited the making of too much smoke, in the course of mouths and years tons of soot were spread over roofs and streets. It was shovelled off the roof of the Town Hall by the hundredweight, and the owners of the St. James Theatre refrainetl from renovating its white interior till a sawmill across the road abolished its boiler.

Before the change in the method of firing the boilers of the harbour bo'ard power-house, the chimney there was notably smoky. Probably it seemed excessively smoky only because so many other smoke generators had disappeared. The introduction of motorships and oil-burning steamers has reduced smoke on the waterfront. Sources of smoke remaining in the city include the railway yards, the milk depot and some small but obnoxious chimneys. One of the small but prolific smoke-producers is a chimney which belongs to the Dominion Museum and National Art Gallery, the walls of which it is rapidly turning sooty. To recall the passing of the big chimneys is to count the modern city residents’ blessings.