by Robert McGregor, Art Deco Trust

Art Deco is a style that is rarely found in concentrated doses because its heyday was interrupted by the great Depression, causing the building industry to virtually close down once current projects were completed. Where concentrations of Art Deco buildings are found, there’s always a good reason for it. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there was an oil boom in the 1920s. In Miami Beach there was a tourism boom in the late 1930s. And in Napier, a small city in New Zealand, there was a massive earthquake in 1931 which destroyed most of the town centre.

The rebuilding of Napier took place in 1932 and 1933, when the Depression was at its worst, so it’s buildings were constructed at a time when virtually no other buildings were being erected anywhere. And although the town was largely rebuilt by 1933, after an amazing burst of activity which made the Depression an irrelevance there, further buildings were added until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, providing examples of late Art Deco design and demonstrating the speed with which design evolved in a period of technological change which rivals any since. For several months after the earthquake, a moratorium on new construction was imposed to prevent hasty rebuilding unworthy of the new town centre and to enable the two government appointed commissioners to deliberate on improvements which could be made. It was decided to widen some streets, to splay the corners of buildings at intersections, to bury all power and telephone lines and to standardise the heights of the verandas which New Zealand shops traditionally have over the pavements to protect shoppers from rain and merchandise on display from the bright Hawke’s Bay sun.
 
The Art Deco style had actually arrived in Napier around 1930, via America which had been the dominating influence on domestic architecture in New Zealand since early in the century. It can still be seen in two buildings which survived the earthquake, as most recently completed buildings of reinforced concrete did. And so the style was already in the minds of the four local architects who took on the task of designing “the New Napier” as it was often called. The two finest examples of Art Deco design are the Daily Telegraph building, until recently the home of Napier’s newspaper, and the Hotel Central, now a night-club. Both were designed by Ernest Williams, who had practised in Napier since 1911, and whose daughter Sheila became, in 1933, the New Napier Carnival Queen in the festival held to celebrate the town’s rebirth. Both have fine interiors, although the Daily Telegraph’s double storey reception office, lit from above by a glass block ceiling, was divided horizontally in the 1970s, to provide more work space. But last year it’s new owner completed its restoration - the floor removed, light fittings copied faithfully from an original now privately owned and the linoleum floor reproduced exactly. This is not the only building in Napier which has been restored by an enthusiastic owner, not because of legal requirements, financial incentives or local government pressure but just because they wanted to.
 
H A Westerholm, the younger partner in Finch & Westerholm, indulged his taste for the Spanish Mission style, popular in California and favoured by movie stars for their own homes. This style was often adopted in new world countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, where the climate’s similarity to California’s made it a practical style, able to be freely adapted to a relaxed, outdoor lifestyle. But this firm also designed in the Stripped Classical style, favoured for banks and public buildings where a ‘conservative yet progressive’ image was required.
 
C T Natusch & Sons, the oldest firm in Napier and staffed by a second generation of Natuschs, included one brother who had acquired three folios of photographs of pavilions at the Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which had been held in Paris in 1925 and which brought Art Deco (then called ‘Modernistic’ style) to the attention of the world. But in spite of that, their buildings were generally restrained in design, looking forward perhaps to the coming rejection of ornament. Their Market Reserve Building was actually designed before the earthquake for the Napier Borough Council which owned the site. Construction commenced early, in July 1931, to counter the onset of gloomy predictions by some local people that Napier would never rise again. Rene Natusch altered the specification from welded to riveted steel for the framework, to ensure that the builders would generate the greatest possible noise, sending a message of hope to the city.
 
The architect considered today to be the most interesting was Louis Hay, whose work was considered by his colleagues to be hopelessly outdated. Hay was an admirer of the work of the two great American architects Louis Sullivan and in particular Frank Lloyd Wright, a copy of whose “Wasmuth Folio” he owned. Almost all of Hay’s commercial buildings remind one of Wright, except for his masterpiece, the opulent National Tobacco Company Building which is strongly influence by Sullivan. More richly ornamented than other buildings in Napier, Hay’s work strikes a chord with travellers who appreciate the hand-crafted aspects of his designs, so different from the buildings of the last 60 odd years.
 
These four local architects joined together to form the Napier Associated Architects, sharing facilities, working in shifts around the clock and striving to bring a unity of purpose to their immense task. But there were other architects too, for nationally owned buildings such as banks and some hotels were designed by architects based in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. The most noteworthy of these are the Masonic Hotel, until recently Napier’s largest hotel, and the ASB Bank, originally the Bank of New Zealand. This last, a Stripped Classical structure, incorporates indigenous Maori carving and painted rafter designs both inside and out. It is without a doubt New Zealand’s finest example of this genre. And in 1934, John Watson arrived in Napier to take up the position of Borough Architect. Having worked in the United States he was fully converted to the Art Deco mania and used it on the new Municipal Theatre designed in 1937, introducing the flavour of the Streamline Moderne variation of Art Deco with chrome-plated speed-lines, nautical  and neon light fittings and bas relief wall panels depicting exultant female nudes trailing chiffon. In spite of criticism in the1950s of the theatre’s physical shortcomings and its “regrettable aesthetics”, the building has survived intact and now has new carpeting rewoven to the original cubist pattern.
 
Watson was also the architect for the many architectural features on Napier’s waterfront. The seashore adjacent to the business area, separated by a concrete sea wall constructed in the 1880s as protection from high seas, was largely unimproved at the time of the earthquake. But the tremors had uplifted the land under the city by over two metres and the sea had retreated, doubling the width of the beach (and benefiting Napier by raising 2230 hectares of tidal lagoon above sea level, giving it room for decades of future expansion, the first stage of which was the building of the new suburb of Marewa, Maori for ‘gift from the sea’ in which over half of the new houses were Art Deco). The beach provided a useful area on which to spread the rubble of the wrecked buildings which were then covered with clay and top-soil and over which gardens were laid out. As the 1930s progressed and the construction of new buildings tapered off, such was the pride of Napier people in their new town that they couldn’t stop building and beautifying. By 1939, the gardens had been embellished by a plaza for skating and dancing, a sound shell modelled on the Hollywood Bowl, a Sunbay to shelter people from cool sea breezes and a spectacular illuminated fountain. It all combined to create an electrically lit wonderland for Napier’s proud citizens and for Depression weary New Zealanders who began to make Napier a summer holiday playground.
 
But by the 1950s, the New Napier had begun to lose its enchantment as familiarity bred contempt. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when the wheel of fashion had turned full circle, that people began to view it with fresh eyes and recognise it for the a remarkable townscape that it is. In 1985, six local people formed the Art Deco Trust which has led Napier’s renaissance with a positive preservation programme that stresses tourism instead of purism. Perhaps the most stunning evidence of its success is the annual Art Deco Weekend, held in February, late summer in New Zealand. Gleaming classic cars glide through the streets, jazz bands send blue notes through the air and vintage aeroplanes buzz overhead. A plethora of events take place in the Art Deco buildings and most astounding of all, almost everybody is dressed to kill in 1920s and 30s fashions.  It must have the visionaries who rebuilt the town quick-stepping in their graves. It’s all as they imagined it would be - even better perhaps for the Deco Dream in the New Napier was cut short by war and post-war austerity, and then forgotten as the fashions of the 1950s took over.

But it’s back again, every February, and how people love it.
 
Post Script — Hastings

Only 20 minutes away from Napier is Hastings, with a similar population. Although the earthquake damage wasn’t as serious there and the water supply remained intact, enabling fires to be contained, most of the facades collapsed and were redesigned and rebuilt. As a result, the streetscape there is also of the 1930s. And Hastings contains the best example of an Art Deco house, designed for jockey Percy Atkins by Hastings architect Albert Garnett in 1935. Still finished in its green tinted cement render, it houses a superb collection of Art Deco furniture and decorative arts.