Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Queenstown Gardens, Queenstown

Queenstown Gardens, NZQueenstown Gardens sit on a peninsula jutting into Lake Wakatipu overlooking the city of Queenstown itself.

The gardens were gifted to the public in 1866 by local businessman Bendix Hallenstein.

This entrance certainly has a deco look to me. The sign is stepped along the top and the posts are stepped on top as well.

The squares on the sign and the decorative elements on the outside of the posts perhaps point to a slightly earlier period but I haven't found a date to confirm it one way or the other.

Detail on gate post of Queenstown Gardens, NZ

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3 comments:

  1. HelsJanuary 10, 2009 at 11:57 AM

    Hey David, I follow your blog and love most of the buildings you have located and preserved on film. History has shown that some of these buildings will be destroyed and lost forever :(

    In my blog I have been thinking about Deco architecture being very suitable for some institutions (theatres, transport centres, blocks of flats) but less obviously suitable for war memorials. Yet I found MANY Deco war memorials (all built 1928-39), particularly in Australia, Britain, New Zealand and Canada. Do you have any ideas on why that might be? More refined? Less emotional? Less expensive?

    How can I direct readers from my blog to yours, so they can see the many wonderful cinemas? Do you have a linking mechanism?

    thanks
    Hels
    http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/

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  2. David ThompsonJanuary 10, 2009 at 11:53 PM

    Hi Hels,

    Thanks for you kind comments. I don't know about your question regarding war memorials being deco but I would guess that it may be as simple as that was the style at the time so that is what was used.

    Did you see my post on the Durban War Memorial? http://artdecobuildings.blogspot.com/2008/06/cenotaph-durban.html.

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  3. David ThompsonJanuary 11, 2009 at 12:07 AM

    Hels,
    Thanks for the prompt. I've enabled the link mechanism so please feel free to link to any posts you find useful.
    Regards,
    David

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