Title
1920s New Zealand Wellington Kelburn Viaduct Tramway Real Photo RPPC NZ Postcard
Front
A black and white real photographic view looking up a steep road cutting toward the Kelburn Viaduct in Wellington.
The centre of the composition is dominated by the viaduct itself, a reinforced concrete structure carrying a roadway high across the gully on two tall slender rectangular piers. Its deck is edged with a pierced balustrade of repeating openings, and the pale concrete stands out sharply against the darker hillside. Beneath the arch formed by the piers the road passes through, with cut earth banks and scrub on either side.
In the foreground the sealed roadway sweeps up the gully toward the viaduct, its surface marked with tram rails set into the carriageway and a pale line along the edge. Timber power poles with crossarms and insulators stand beside the road, and further poles carry lines up the slope. Overhead at the top left of the frame run several heavy cables crossing the sky.
On both sides the hillside is closely built with timber houses of Edwardian and interwar type: bay villas and bungalows with corrugated iron roofs, verandahs and finials, several with elaborate cast-iron or timber verandah fretwork, set on terraced sections behind picket and wire fences among shrubs, hedges and small trees. A substantial two-storey villa with a deep double verandah stands at the left, and a large gabled bungalow at the right foreground. Behind the viaduct the suburb continues up the slopes with further houses and a taller building with a tower or turret visible on the skyline at centre right.
The sky is plain and pale with no cloud detail, characteristic of early photographic emulsion. The card is printed on photographic paper with a matt surface and has no border.
Back
Printed faintly in pale red across the upper centre, largely obscured by handwriting:
“Pictorial Postcard
BY J. W. JONES, Wellington”
Handwritten in dark ink at the upper left:
“Kelburn Viaduct.”
Handwritten in ink across the upper portion of the card, continuing the caption:
“over Kelburn tramway”
Handwritten in ink across the body of the card:
“Horse shoe bend just past viaduct. There is also a cable tram up this hill, an incline about 1 in 6”
Handwritten in ink at the lower right:
“Wellington
N.Z.”
The remainder of the reverse is unprinted cream photographic stock with no stamp box, dividing rule or printed address lines. There is no stamp, postmark or address; the card is unposted, having been written on but not sent. The reverse shows light cream toning, a small ink spot at the lower centre, and minor corner wear.
Estimated Era
Circa 1920s. The card is a real photographic postcard produced by J. W. Jones of Wellington, a photographer and publisher active in the early twentieth century. The Kelburn Viaduct, carrying Upland Road over the tramway cutting, was completed in the 1920s, and the structure is shown here new and unweathered with the surrounding cuttings still raw, giving a firm earliest date. The tram rails in the roadway beneath and the sender’s reference to the cable tramway up the hill place the view firmly within the era of Wellington’s electric tram and cable car services. The houses visible are of Edwardian and early interwar type with no later building evident, and the plain skies and tonal rendering are consistent with photographic paper of the 1920s.
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