Art Deco City Napier New Zealand

Earthquake Comeback Style an Architectural Vacation in Aotearoa

Jun 13, 2008 Susan Morris

With its complete urban streetscape of the 1930s, Napier in New Zealand is an important destination on any Art Deco architecture travel itinerary.

February 3, 1931 – an earthquake in New Zealand strikes the city of Napier bringing 258 deaths and near 100% destruction of buildings. Inspired by the strength of the people of California US making a comeback in Santa Barbara from natural disaster, Napier took stock of the architectural style of 1930s American city.

Napier’s total renewal of its urban streetscapes in the Art Deco style is accessible for historical vacations today.

Rebuilding Napier

Napier, sitting on Hawkes Bay on the north island of New Zealand, attracted thousands of travellers in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century as an East Coast seaside resort with the city's consistent sunshine and turquoise sea.

News of the 1931 earthquake’s devastation travelled quickly across the Tasman Sea with alarm. In Art Deco Napier: Styles of the Thirties (Napier 1990; reprint Nelson 1994), Peter Shaw and Peter Hallett report the accounts including, “With one gigantic sweep the earthquake has reduced the whole town to a heap of ruins, still blazing and crumbling at each shake… Napier as a town has become wiped off the map.”

Plans for rows of buildings on wider streets with a brand new central business district (CBD) formed part of the reconstructing Napier in New Zealand. In “‘A Growing Enthusiasm for Modernity’: Art Deco in Australia” in the Art Deco 1910-1939 edited collection (V&A Publications, 2003), Christopher Menz reports that the Napier Reconstruction Committee was formed in July 1931 and the architects involved in rebuilding Napier worked as a collective Associated Architects of Napier for some projects and independently as C.T. Natusch & Sons, Finch & Westerholm, J.A. Louis Hay and E.A. Williams.

Art Deco Architecture in Napier

A walking tour of Napier offers rich architectural sights of the four historical influences in the reconstruction of Napier after the 1931 earthquake:

• Spanish Mission and other influences from the United States and North America
• Chicago School including Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design
• European Art Deco style such as smooth stucco surfaces, geometrical forms and moulded angular relief decoration
• Maori motifs

The original walking map around Napier was “Take a Walk Through Art Deco Napier”, a leaflet first published in 1985, funded by the Hawke’s Bay Museum, the Ministry of Works & Development and the Napier City Council.

The Art Deco Trust

The Art Deco Trust, which self reports a turnover exceeding NZ$1million in 2005 for Art Deco tourism, was set up in February 1985 to promote Napier’s Art Deco architectural history walking tour leaflet. Buy maps and tickets for Art Deco events in Napier through The Art Deco Trust.

Taking an architectural historical vacation in Napier, New Zealand or Aotearoa is an important stop on any historical vacation in Australia and New Zealand and a must for an Art Deco travel itinerary for architecture across the Tasman Sea.

The copyright of the article Art Deco City Napier New Zealand in Historical Travel is owned by Susan Morris. Permission to republish Art Deco City Napier New Zealand in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Aotearoa/NZ Vacation

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