John Holt Memorial Display House (Cornwall Park)

Cornwall Park began with a gift: in 1898 James Nelson Williams donated land, and the council acquired 21 acres in 1901. Established in November 1905, the park is named after the Duke of York and Cornwall, the future King George V, and a drinking fountain marking his coronation was put up in 1911. In the 1920s plans by the landscape architect A. W. Buxton gave the park most of its present facilities, and public works schemes improved it further in the 1930s.

The display house came later. It was given by Mrs R. V. Burr in memory of her father, John Holt, born in Napier on 8 February 1862 and died in Hastings on 27 May 1944. According to a newspaper report published on the day it opened, she had given £3,500 towards it. It was designed by a local architect, D. Scott, and the Mayor of Hastings, R. V. Giorgi, officially opened it on 15 March 1966.

The glasshouse has kept its official name, the John Holt Memorial Display House, but the regional press also calls it the Cornwall Park begonia house, the title of a Hawke's Bay Today article of April 2015. The Hastings Landmarks Trust, whose page is hosted by the district council, lists the upgrade of the display house among its projects, without giving a date. The park has continued to change around it: a Chinese-style Osmanthus Garden was laid out in 1996, and the old tea kiosk was renovated and renamed Te Mākaramū in 2023. The display house remains one of the park attractions promoted to visitors by the Hawke's Bay regional tourism body.

The John Holt Memorial Display House is a mid-twentieth-century heated glasshouse on the Roberts Street side of Cornwall Park. According to the 1966 newspaper report, it is 66 feet 8 inches long, 30 feet wide and 14 feet high, that is about 20.3 by 9.1 metres and 4.3 metres high, giving a floor area in the order of 185 square metres.

The same report notes that it is heated by infra-red radiation, the system already used in Wellington in the Lady Norwood house, the Begonia House of the botanic garden. A small pool sits at each end, one of them with a small fountain. Intended to show exotic and flowering plants in a controlled environment, the glasshouse was the work of a Hastings architect, D. Scott, whose first name is given only as an initial in the sources consulted.

When it opened in 1966 the glasshouse held a display of begonias and gloxinias, which is why it is still nicknamed the begonia house. Wikipedia says that it now contains thousands of potted plants and flowers, and the Hawke's Bay tourism body describes it as filled with colourful exotics.

The Hastings visitor website adds that it showcases seasonal flowering plants and exotic species grown in a controlled environment, so the displays change through the year. The pools at either end complete the presentation. The sources consulted publish no detailed inventory of the collection.

The display house stands on the Roberts Street side of Cornwall Park, an 8.3-hectare park in the suburb of Mahora in central Hastings. The glasshouse itself takes only a short visit, but the park repays a longer stay: a formal rose garden at the corner of Roberts Street and Fitzroy Avenue, a Chinese-style Osmanthus Garden created to mark Hastings' sister-city link with Guilin, an aviary of about a hundred birds, a duck pond, the King George V coronation fountain and the cricket green. The Te Mākaramū kiosk and a large playground complete the park.