In August 1915, an Englishman named Mr Howey opened his Hydro health spa on the New Brighton Workingmen’s Club site, across the road from the current He Puna Taimoana Hot Pools.
A long narrow building with single white enamelled bathing rooms off a tiled corridor, and saltwater pumped via a pipe from the sea.
Howley Hydro Sea Water Baths offered various treatments including a massage, a hot to cold salt or normal water bath concluding with the consumption of a glass of warm sea water.
Its proximity to the beach provided a health boost from the therapeutic effects of sea air followed by relaxing pot of tea at the nearby Le Café or Kia Ora Tearooms.
The chief means of transport in the 1920s to New Brighton was No. 5 tram, leaving the Square most two or three times a daylight hour and arriving twenty-five minutes later.
The Howeys Hydro Hot Baths mantra was:
Doctors may use their skill in vain
To cure an ill or kill a pain
Greater relief no sufferer hath
Than Howey’s ‘Order of the Bath’
Owner of the Hydro hot salt water baths James Howley died in 1933 aged 78 and the business ended shortly after around 1935.