It used to be a place to get a feed after a night on the town - now a building in Whanganui's Guyton St could be home to a lithography press.
Visual artist Anthony Davies and his wife Andrea du Chatenier have bought the two-storey building. Mr Davies is renovating it.
An internationally known printmaker, he has a special fondness for lithographic printmaking - a long and difficult process regarded as rather old fashioned now.
He said Whanganui used to be known as a centre for printmaking. He was worried when UCOL closed its printmaking studio, which had a "very, very expensive" lithography press from the United States.
"What I didn't want to see was that press going out of Whanganui."