A pagoda-style ornament on the corner and the remaining signs of a shutdown bar are the last signs of a city centre building's past life.
Purpose built as a garage with showrooms on a long-vacant plot in the 1920s, 27-31 Berry Street spent roughly 40 years as a car dealership as part of A. W. Webb Ltd., which also had a dealership on Jamaica Street. Large windows on the ground floor would normally invite you to look inside at what was on offer, but they're boarded up now, with event posters plastered on top.
In recent years, the two-story building with a flat roof has housed a string of short-lived businesses gone before they've left a mark. Until the 1980s, a Chinese restaurant called Far East served Cantonese and Peking style food, and banquets costing £9 per person. For decades, the building just a few hundred feet from Chinatown continued to host Chinese restaurants, including both New China and China Palace simultaneously.
