Jim Hay (1888-1971) opened his Gloucester Street department store on Friday the 13th of December, 1929. In 1938 the shop expanded on to Colombo Street and four years later, with the purchase of the 1910 Hayward building, Hay acquired an Armagh Street frontage. His upper floor office in the top (1957) image overlooked Victoria Square.
Hay's subsequently became Haywrights in 1968 and then Farmers in 1987. The old building was demolished in 1997, but the new Farmers department store is but a fraction of the size of its famous predecessor
When a circus came to Christchurch in 1933, Hay’s department store hired its elephant to advertise a sale.
Hay’s, with its slogan ‘the friendly store’, was renowned for innovative window displays and promotions. It had a rooftop playground, complete with ‘Aunt Hays’ (Edna Neville) organising children’s activities. In 1948 the store began annual Christmas parades featuring nursery-rhyme characters. Nana, Dad, Sam, Jessica and I were all part of the Christmas parades (how cool are we?!) and my favourite childhood memories involve the enormous Santa that sat on the roof of Hays (for 40 years) at Christmas time and it had a finger that beckoned you to come shop at Hays....
But I digress...
While Nana worked at Hays Dad worked part time during the school holidays... as the egg laying chicken at Easter. Oh yes, he certainly did. He said he would sit inside the chicken for a week and whenever people would come along and put a shilling into the slot he would make chicken noises and then he would roll an Easter egg down a chute so it looked like the hen had laid an egg! Sometimes he would sit outside this big huge chicken and just duck inside whenever kids would drag their parents over to it and he would perch in there with his egg all ready to roll... If only there was a picture of him doing this, sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment