The Balestier Art Deco shophouses are two shophouses located on 230 & 246 Balestier Road in

Balestier Balestier () is a sub zone located in the planning area of Novena in the Central Region of Singapore. The main road, Balestier Road, links Thomson Road to Serangoon Road and the road continues on as Lavender Street. The area is home to rows ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

History

The Balestier Art Deco shophouses were built in the 1950s on former cultivating vegetable farmland and ponds, which cultivated

taro Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Africa ...

, in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style. Unlike typical shophouses, the art deco shophouses were designed to include individual apartments on each floor of the building. The shophouses are located on either corners of an unnamed side road which runs off of Balestier Road, and are opposite the Goh Chor Tua Pek Kong Temple. The shophouse on 230 Balestier Road houses the

Balestier Bak Kut Teh Balestier () is a sub zone located in the planning area of Novena in the Central Region of Singapore. The main road, Balestier Road, links Thomson Road to Serangoon Road and the road continues on as Lavender Street. The area is home to rows ...

stall, while the shophouse in 246 Balestier Road houses the Hoover Hotel, named after the defunct

Hoover Theatre The Hoover Theatre, also known as the Hoover Live Cinema and the New Hoover Cinema, was a theatre located at the junction of Balestier Road and Jalan Ampas in Balestier, Singapore. History Plans to build a theatre along Balestier Road were first an ...

. The shophouses were conserved in 2003, along with the nearby

Balestier Pre-war Shophouses Balestier () is a sub zone located in the planning area of Novena in the Central Region of Singapore. The main road, Balestier Road, links Thomson Road to Serangoon Road and the road continues on as Lavender Street. The area is home to rows ...

. The shophouses have also been included in the Balestier Heritage Trail by the National Heritage Board.

References

{{Singapore-struct-stub Buildings and structures in Singapore