Mon Desir (Auckland, NZ)

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Apartment complex built on the site of the "Mon Desir" Hotel.
The name Mon Desir came from a 19th century villa which occupied this site. When the nearby Lakehouse overlooking Lake Takapuna burnt down around 1910 the proprietors leased the Mon Desir which was surrounded by lush semi-tropical gardens and faced directly onto the beach. Following several years of extensions the Mon Desir was rebuilt in the 1960s as a complex of semi-detached one story buildings evoking the feel of the South Pacific. The completed building was quite glamourous in a Jet-set/James Bond sort of way and won several awards.
It was intended initially as an exclusive resort but went into quite a decline after the 1970s becoming a fairly notorious place by the 1980s.

The new development of mid-rise apartment blocks from the 1990s are fairly well designed and attempted to incorporate many of the mature palms and other plantings of the Victorian garden and its 1960s redesign.