SPREAD OF HOARDINGS

Taranaki Daily News, 31 January 1931, Page 7

SPREAD OF HOARDINGS

GROWTH IN NEW PLYMOUTH.

DISFIGUREMENT TO COUNTRYSIDE

“As an old resident of New Plymouth who has always taken an interest in th© town and the scenic preservation of th© district, I have been very much distressed by the disfigurements from hoardings,” said Mr. W. H. Skinner, New Plymouth, to a News reporter yesterday. He had always felt very strongly, continued Mr. Skinner, against the advertisements, frequently hideous, which defaced the countryside about New Plymouth, one of the prettiest countrysides in New Zealand. As for the hoardings which were all about the town, they •were most disagreeable and often in questionable taste. Before entering the, town over the , Waiwakaiho bridge there is a large hoarding advertising benzine. In the Fitztoy township two shops have large advertisements streaming across the corrugated iron walls of the building. An advertisement runs along a fence. On the main road just above the Fitzrby railway station bridge five hug© hoardings altogether glaringly advertise various goods. Near, the top of th© hill across the Te Henui stream a w atherbeaten hoarding still patiently advertises Kukelik. At the corner an advertisement for oil covers the side of a shop. The main best of hoardings is at th© New Plymouth railway station corner. National goods, cigarettes, mustard, wines, clothes arc advertised in huge hoardings, each 12 feet by 9 feet. Seven of them are arranged on the railway station side of St. Aubyn Street. Seven others front th© vacant section opposite. An advertisement for gin runs along a fence near a hotel just above th© station, and by Dawson Street an advertisement for bread is painted over the side of a shop. There are notice-boards for tanks and timber yards, and a timber merchant advertises frfeely along a chain or so of his fehc© nedr Belt Road.

Some distance round the bend of the tram loop are three iron sheds freely painted with advertisements, and at a petrol depot there are four hoardings for oil and benzine in a space of 10 square yards.

A large hoarding in yellow advertises benzine half-way up the road leading to Omata, and to the left of the road leading to the breakwater is a large mounted hoarding in white, with several smaller ones at the benzine depot behind it.. Across the corrugated iron side of a shop at Pioneer Road runs an advertisement for cigarettes. An oil depot advertises itself on its property. An advertisement for beer runs along the fence Of a hotel and, curiously enough, there is a hoarding advertising motor-cars alongside the railway line.

In the countryside about Taranaki there are numerous hoardings on solitary hills, round corners near the road. The most conspicuous of all, probably, are the large hoardings just before entering the town on the main road entering New Plymouth from Inglewood. The borough council controlled the erection of hoardings in the borough, said the town clerk (Mr. F. T. Bellringer), except for the hoardings on railway and Government property. He understood, however, that few new licenses had been granted in the borough for hoardings recently, and that they consisted. mainly of hoardings of long'stand.i n Of. r—o’