The Borough Council Chambers (Former) was built in 1892 at 110 Main Street in the heart of Greytown. The building has historic significance as a key administrative institution for the area and architectural significance as a High Victorian civic building with a decorative façade built in timber to a design which mimics masonry features - an architectural fashion of the period. The building makes a significant visual contribution to the streetscape of the town’s central hub.

The Wairarapa has a long history of Māori occupation. The area was abundant with natural resources, including a wealth of species of fish, birds and plants. Māori settled in Wairarapa area during the late 1300s, but had moved away by the 1600s. Rangitāne, Ngāti Ira and Ngāti Kahungunu iwi then settled in the area. In 1821 Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Maniapoto, followed by other Taranaki tribes, invaded the region but Ngāti Kahungunu resettled the area in the 1830s. In 1853 40,000 acres of land was purchased by Donald McLean, the Crown’s Chief Land Purchase Commissioner, from Manihera Te Rangitakaiwaho of Ngāti Kahungungu and Ngatuere Tawhirimatea of Waiohine. This land was purchased and surveyed by the Small Farms Association in 1853-54, who in turn sold it to Pākehā settlers.

Greytown was formally established on 27 March 1854 and it became a Borough in 1878. The Borough Chambers (Former) was built in 1892, during a building boom attributed to Richard Seddon’s Liberal government. William Benton (1853-1937) won the tender to build it. He was well-known in the community as a member of the Featherston Town Board, a chairman of the school committee, and a Freemason and Oddfellow. The building was purpose-built as home to the Greytown Borough Council but also provided space for the local library which required a new home after its predecessor was destroyed by fire in the Greytown Town Hall in October 1889.

This two-storey High Victorian civic building with a decorative façade was described at the time it was finished as ‘handsome’. The builder used locally milled timber to a design which mimicked masonry features. The building was described in the Wairarapa Daily Times upon its opening on 8 December 1892 thus: ‘The front has circular headed windows and is tastefully ornamented with friezes, pediments, bracketed cornices, and balustrading, a fine carved vase surmounting the top.’ The centrally placed front door led into a vestibule, hall and library room, office of the Town Clerk and a Council room complete with a mayoral chair on a raised platform. A staircase with carved newel, built by local contractor and cabinetry specialist J Barnard, led up to the second floor which was comprised of two chess rooms, a ladies’ room and a reading room.

The new Chambers became central to the community. Its new library prospered and was described as ‘unequalled in the Wairarapa’ with ‘a large and carefully selected stock of books’. The building also provided space for the Greytown Plunket Rooms. After 85 years in the building, using various spaces on both floors, the library moved out permanently in 1977. In 1989 local bodies amalgamated and the building became the Greytown Service Centre of the South Wairarapa District Council. By 2004 it was in use by Safer Communities and a sports organisation. By 2013 new owners opened the building as the Chambers on Main furniture store, living in accommodation in the upstairs.

Although the façade is largely unchanged, the building has undergone extensive alterations to the ground level interior, upstairs and rear. In 1981 Masterton architect Trevor Hamilton Daniell designed a fire-proof concrete masonry storeroom which extended from the rear of the building to replace an existing ‘sub-standard’ extension structure. He also rearranged the internal partitions. More changes were made in 2010 when Cunning Plans Architectural Designer removed this extension and added a more substantial one with about twice the footprint of the previous one. New owners in 2013 undertook a renovation which created accommodation space upstairs. Further interior alterations and additions were designed by architect James Mackie in 2018 when he removed the internal partitions on the ground floor of the main structure to open it up as a commercial space, undertook seismic strengthening and refitted the interior of the building so they could open as Blackwell & Sons, a shop selling bicycles and cycling accessories.