Halsbury Chambers, Napier

The Halsbury Chambers in Napier, New Zealand's Art Deco city, is a modest single storey building. Located in Tennyson Street, the building is rich in decoratioin, proudly displaying its name above the entrance. It was built is 1932, the year after most of Napier was destroyed by a major earthquake that struck early on the morning of Feb 3, 1931.

To me the design echos an earlier time but the arrangement of rectangular decoration and the simple stepped roofline give it a distinctive deco feel. I was lucky the day I took this photo as the sportscar makes it difficult to date the photo. Possibly it was taken shortly after the chambers opened unless you notice the head of the parking metre lurking in the shadows of the doorway. The photo was actually taken in Feb 1999 when Napier hosted the 5th World Congress on Art Deco.