We could certainly label this Lisbon apartment building as being Streamline Moderne with its racy, curving balconies. The street it is located on is named after a fascinating character known as Abade Faria, or Abbot Faria, born in 1756 in the Portuguese Indian colony of Goa as José Custódio de Faria. Aside from being a man of the cloth he was a revolutionary, and also one of the first to study hypnotism.
Here are two Art Deco apartment blocks found in the older part of the city of São Paulo, Brazil. First, the pink one features continuous curving balconies and some nice fenestration to the right with coloured glass and porthole windows. The white building below is in Japantown in the Liberdade district, situated on Rua Galvão Bueno. It has curvy corners and balconies, and steps in gradually at the top.
Global Art Deco is pleased to have another excellent guest post from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many fine Art Deco buildings.
Devonshire Court is located on the former Victoria Embankment, now known as Margaret Mncadi Avenue. It received a fresh coat of paint over the last year and now has a bright green and yellow colour scheme suitable for an Art Deco apartment tower. Constructed in 1938, the building was designed by William Barboure, who also helped design the 1934 Surrey Mansions together with WE Langton. One unique feature of Devonshire Court is a tunnel for motor vehicles under the south side of the building, which leads through to Devonshire Place. In the tunnel and at the rear of the building is a motor vehicle service workshop. The workshop is no longer in operation but the signage “Carburettors” and “Servicing” is still painted on the pillars of the tunnel. The entrance to the building is original, complete with terrazzo flooring.
Photos and text © Durban Art Deco Society
The Bank Hotel in Sydney can be found at 324 King Street in Newtown, a short walk from the Newtown train station. Currently found solely in beige, it nonetheless features some fine Art Deco detailing on its upper façade, in particular the upper centre zig-zag row of chevrons linked by curves and pleating. Inside there are four different bars to drink in. Thanks again to Keith Barrett for the photos.
The city of Leicester, in the English midlands, is home to Blunts Shoes located on the corner at 128-132 Granby Street. The building was originally constructed in 1933 for the business of Nathan Harris Furnishings and features many fine Art Deco details. It was designed by the architects Symington, Prince and Pike who clad it in Portland limestone and covered it with a stylish pantile roof. The extra part on the left is a carefully blended extension from the early 1960s.
The Eden Teatro, or Eden Theatre, sits on the Praça dos Restauradores in central Lisbon, and is one of Lisbon’s most spectacular cinema buildings, showing films up until 1989. Cassiano Branco and Carlo Florencio Dias were the architects responsible for this Art Deco palace, which opened in 1931. The building features a magnificent, creamy pink coloured marble façade and a floating stone frieze across the top. There is also an abundance of geometric fenestration throughout. The interior was altered when it was converted into an apart-hotel complex in 2001.
This is a small, two storey building in the Portuguese seaside town of Alvor. Alas, only the upper floor maintains the original Art Deco form, in particular the parapet which comes replete with steps, massings and horizontal bars tricked out in blue. Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil.
Located on Venice’s island known as the Lido, these two buildings both appear to be local or regional government offices. Both have beige façades with brown trim and curves incorporated into their designs, as well as strong metal grilles over all of the windows.
A ten-storey curving corner building capped on the curve with a lantern, its lower floors are used for commercial purposes with apartments above. The ground floor is taken up by the fabric retailer Tejidos Marina, founded in 1953, some years after this building was constructed. It is located in the centre of Valencia at Avenida del Oeste 27 (originally known as Avenida Barón de Cárcer) at the corner of Calle de Adresadors.
Though apparently a monochrome grey, this house in central Rio de Janeiro was originally white and simply needs the grime cleaned off of it. It is a singular creation, with details such as zig-zag glazing up the sides of the windows, and a one of the reliefs set in an octagonal cartouche.
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