The sun is shining through the windows on to the warm wooden floors as Threna McDermott walks into the Logan Campbell Kindergarten building for the first time in more than 50 years.
"I can remember good feelings here," she says, with affection in her voice.
She is pleasantly surprised by how similar the place looks to when she was a pre-schooler in 1948.
"The colours on the walls are the same," she notes, as she looks around the back room that was added in the 1940s.
"We must have been here the whole day because they used to put us to sleep in little cots in this area. We would huddle under the blankets. It was so comfortable."
In the front room of the kindergarten, she spots the green gate through the windows facing Victoria Park Rd.
"I remember holding on to the gate and crying because my mother was leaving me here," says Mrs McDermott with a laugh.
"I don't remember details but I remember the feeling."
After more than 20 years of neglect, the historic Campbell Free Kindergarten building on Victoria Park has been restored and is ready to be opened to the public on May 5.
The New Zealand Transport Agency's heritage architects stayed true to the building's original features by looking at old photos, stripping paint on the wall to find a match, and replicating grills, banisters and windows wherever they could, says Kirsty McVicar, the agency's project engineer. "A fire went through here in the 1980s. When we got here, it was all worn down. It was pretty unsafe," she says.
It was also an eyesore on the edge of Victoria Park that had become derelict, vandalised and fire-ravaged. The brickwork was covered in black paint which had to be removed with special chemical solutions. Some of the original roof tiles were saved and used on the lower half.
"We used lathe and plaster, the way these walls were originally done," says Ms McVicar.
A nice detail comes in a little patch of original wall that's been left behind inside, to reflect back the history of this heritage building.
The building restoration is part of the NZ Transport Agency's Victoria Park Tunnel project, and a third of the building will house the standby electrical and communications systems for the 450m tunnel.
Auckland Council owns the balance of the building and wants submissions from the public on the future use of that space.
"We really have no pre-determined ideas or preferences for its use. We want to hear from the community if they have a need for it before we look at the possibility for commercial use," says Pippa Coom, deputy chair of the Waitemata Local Board.
She says the space is not very big, just over 100sq m.
"People would need to have a look around. But they might be surprised by how lovely and unique the space is," she says.
Ms Coom says it could be used for a commercial or recreational community purpose.
Mrs McDermott thinks a cafe or an icecream kiosk would be perfect. "I used to drive by this building and be upset by the neglect. I would always say 'I wish they'd pull that down or do something with it, something that leads to the park'," she says. "I'm really pleased they finally restored it."
A PEEP INTO THE PAST
Threna McDermott remembers days at the kindy where pupils dressed up as storybook characters. She looks at a picture of herself, an unsmiling 3-year-old in a Little Bo Peep costume, in front of an equally miserable little boy.
"We probably didn't get a prize."
But the kindy she knew in the 1940s was very different from the one gifted to the city by Sir John Logan Campbell and opened in 1910.
Turn-of-the-century Auckland was rough and rugged. Thousands of children grew up in wretched conditions and Freemans Bay was one of the city's poorest suburbs.
The free kindergarten education was for what they called "the slum population of Auckland", the children of the "idle and the thriftless", and the "degraded and the wasters".
The Auckland Kindergarten Association saw the need for a kindergarten and convinced Mr Campbell to fund the building costs.
The kindy had a roll of 60 within months, and free pre-school education was provided there until the 1950s.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Auckland Mayor Len Brown and the Waitemata Local Board will officially re-open the Logan Campbell Free Kindergarten building at noon on May 5. The consultation period for the public to provide input into the building's future use starts April 30 and closes May 13 so get your thinking hats on! For more information, visit the Auckland Council site and Have Your Say.