King's Hall, Belfast

The main exhibition and concert hall in Belfast for a long time has been The King's Hall.

It was built in the early 1930s for the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society and hosts the annual agricultural show.

The stepped facade with a series of deco fins hides the semi-circular auditorium.

A simple clock at the centre of the facade sits below lettering spelling out "The King's Hall". And just above that a is a beautiful art deco arrangement acting as a support for the flagpole.

The area is surrounded by a blue railing fence supported by white deco pillars. Even the gates themselves have a great deco style to them.

Mayo Motor Inn, Tulsa

This landmark parking garage in downtown Tulsa is a streamline beauty.

Desgned by Leon B. Senter and Associates, the Mayo Motor Inn was built in 1950 which is late for a deco building. So as you would expect, it is a very simple building relying on a sleek horizontal profile with speedlines providing decoration

I love the sign which although it is large does not overpower the building. I think this is because the vertical sign is used to balance the horizontal bulk of the rest of the building.

It is almost worth taking the car just to park here.

Leading Lights, Port Melbourne

Believe it or not, there are aspects of my lie that are not related to Art Deco.

For one, I am a foundation member of the Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society (PMHPS) which naturally covers the whole area from before the first settlers in the area in 1839 through to the present day.

The 29th March 2008, marks the 100th anniversary of the visit of America's Great White Fleet to Melbourne, and therefore Port Melbourne, as part of their world tour. The US Navy frigate, John S McCain berthed at Station Pier today to commemorate that event.

None of this is deco but I wanted to stay within Port so I came up with the Leading Lights.

They date from the mid 1920s and consist of two beacons, one on land and one in the sea. When the lights from these beacons are aligned, they guide vessels to the piers at Port Melbourne.

The photo above shows the sea beacon while the photo at right shows the inland beacon. The sea beacon can just be made out in the distance.

The Leading Lights have been superceded by more modern navigation aids and the inland beacon now houses a tri-part light which appears white when the ship is on-course without the need to be aligned with the other beacon.

Still, they are a landmark of Port Melbourne and it is kinda fun to have a lighthouse on the edge of a city park. The housing development which has been built at its feet is called Beacon Cove and the street designed to maintain and celebrate the line of sight between the two beacons is called Beacon Vista.

That is Beacon Vista below with the base of the inland beacon in the foreground and the sea beacon in the background.

For the ship buffs, that red funnel over the palm trees is the QEII berthed at Station Pier on one of her last visits to Melbourne.

Shops & Apartments, Asmara

This is an interesting building in Harnet Avenue, Asmara.

A row of shops occupy the ground floor while the upper floors contain apartments accessed from stairs in the central tower.

The Total signage on the front of the building indicates a garage or service station but there is no evidence of petrol pumps on the street and the central doorway doesn't look wide enough to fit a car.

My favourite detail is the support for the thin flagpole on the central column. Usually these decorative elements follow the rule of three but here we see the rule of four.

Four metal bands supporting the flagpole tapering towards the base.

Simla House, Nairobi

Simla House is a very sinple square building in Nairobi, Kenya.

Even so it bears simple, elegant decoration. The name Simla House sits proudly in stylised letters, centred just below the roofline.

Either side of the name there are three short horizontal bands and then on the roofline itself four short vertical stripes, two each side of a longer stripe reaching down to the concrete shade over the upper storey of windows.

Vel-Vet Mansions, Durban

Perhaps the best part of this apartment building in Durban is the hyphen but that is a bit flippant.

Why Vel-Vet rather than plain Velvet. It probably doesn't matter.

Vel-Vet Mansions is one of a series of buildings in Carlisle Street in the Indian section of Durban built in the early 1940s.

Vel-Vet is decorated with lines, squares, diamonds and triangles with the name on the front of the building between the second and third floors.

Other aprtment blocks in Carlisle Street have similar decoration and also bear their names on their facades but Vel-Vet is the only one with a hyphen.

White House, Wanaka

The White House restaurant is a wonderful art deco building in Wanaka on the scenic South Island of New Zealand.

The building is a series of rectangular blocks with stepped rooflines, interestingly higher at the corners, stepping down to the centre. There are also several curved sections at the back.

Decoration minimal consisting just of a couple of short horizontal lines wrapping around the corners, an arrangement of three vertical bars on the centre of the curved sections and a flagpole at the highest point on the building.

The all is heavily stepped probably echoing stairs leading to the upper level.

The double gate mirrors the roofline stepping down from the edges while square peepholes complete the design.

I like the White House restaurant a lot ... no idea what the food is like.

Former Empire Cinema, Muizenberg

In 2003 when I visited the former Empire Cinema in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, it had been derelict for some time and was in a very bad state.

Still there was still enough to see that it had once been a very handsome building.

The horizontal nature of the building is highlighted with the alternating bands of brick and cream render.

A large vertical sign at one end of the building had been removed but you could imagine it lit up beckoning people to the main entrance below the curving canopy presumably announcing that week's comming attraction.

High on the facade there are a series of horizontal decorations embellished with short vertical bars and central stepped arrangement brought together to create an additional art deco feel.

Then we come to the stylized lettering spelling out the name Empire. What a beauty.

A bit of reseach on the web reveals that the Empire story appears to have a happy ending.

The Empire and it's neighbour, Greens, have been refurbished and converted into residential flats as part of a redeveloped Muizenberg beach front.