The Art Deco Capital Of The World

May 14

6:07 a.m.

That was the time the first train rumbled behind the apartment. At least that train didn’t blow its horn. Lookin’ at you with the stink eye, 7:03. Can you imagine being woken up by that every morning? This apartment is only for people who say they can sleep through anything. Jake!

The streets were empty on this pretty autumn day. We are definitely here in shoulder season and loving it. No crowds, no reservations needed at popular restaurants and the weather is still pretty great most days.

Our Art Deco walking tour started at 10 a.m. with a short film about the devastating Feb 3, 1931 earthquake. It was NZ’s worst natural disaster, claiming the lives of 256 people and leveling nearly all of the buildings in the city center. Lasting for 2.5 minutes, it clocked in at a 7.8 magnitude.

Fires burned in Napier for two days after the quake, attributed to bunsen burners in the chemist shops falling over and starting fires. Many buildings withstood the earthquake only to be demolished by fire hours and days later.

The earthquake prompted a very thorough review of NZ’s building codes, which were found to be inadequate.

Reconstruction of the city happened at a very fast rate. Former wood and brick buildings were replaced with reinforced concrete.

As most of the rebuilding took place in the 1930s when Art Deco was fashionable, Napier’s architecture is considered to be one of the best examples of it and the city has become known as the Art Deco Capital of the world.

To give architecture a futuristic look, Art Deco artists used vertical lines and geometric shapes (arcs, circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, etc.) in repetitive patterns. They are often symmetrical, simple, streamlined and pleasing to the eye.

As we walked around the city, we saw examples of Art Deco motifs. These included zig zags, sunbursts, and fountains.

Each shape has a different meaning. Sunbursts represent new day and optimism. Fountains were used as a symbol for eternal life, speed and power. A fan shape was often incorporated for elegance, sophistication and glamour.

There are lovely examples of ancient and ethnic cultures combined in the same Art Deco space, too, which is unusual in Art Deco design. Here, to incorporate local culture, Māori motifs and colors were added in the ceilings and walls of the ASB Bank. The outside design is an Art Deco striped classical style. The inside has many other beautiful Art Deco architecture. Other buildings also used Māori designs in the facades. One of the prominent Napier architects, Louis Hay, admired Frank Lloyd Wright, so he patterned many buildings after his Prairie style design.

The Masonic Hotel welcomed Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1954 on their coronation tour of NZ. The original hotel was destroyed by the fires following the earthquake and was rebuilt. It features a Spanish mission style. Step backs around the building let light in to brighten up the interior. An entourage of antique cars arrived while we were standing on the corner with our tour.

In the new city, urban planners were fearful of street poles falling over on people, so street names were integrated into the concrete as corner stones instead. Today, some poles exist for street signs downtown, but not in the main area. The sidewalks still include street names inlayed in the concrete.

Here’s the main Napier shopping promenade and street today. It features a rich array of Art Deco buildings. We walked with our tour group down the street.

The Spanish mission style of architecture can also be seen at the currently closed Criterion Hotel.

Refurbishing halted when investors ran out of money. They’re still aiming to turn it into a boutique hotel. It’s currently for sale as are so many of these famous landmarks in Napier. The town looks a bit in need of another facelift and TLC as the Art Deco styles of some buildings have been left to deteriorate. You can see the old merged together with the new shops of the modern day as the city fights to preserve its architectural history.

Wave hello to Sheila and her dog, Raven 👋. The city commissioned the first installation of this bronze statue in 2009. It’s modelled on Sheila Williams, daughter of Ernest Williams, one of the notable architects of the post-earthquake rebuild era.

The statue also features a greyhound – although Sheila had horses, not dogs, images of exuberant women with elegant dogs were a popular theme during the Deco period. Sheila was also the Carnival Queen of the ‘New Napier Carnival’ in January 1933 to celebrate the town’s recovery from the earthquake.

The second bronze piece is of a boy who has climbed a verandah post and is waving at Sheila under the current business operating there, Flight Center.

This waving boy sculpture was unveiled in October 2014. Residents always wondered who Sheila was waving at, so they commissioned another piece from the same artist who did the first, a South Islander from Lyttelton, the town we visited outside of Christchurch.

The main reason why Napier chose Art Deco as the primary architecture style back in the 1930s was because it was fashionable and Napier wanted to be modern. Originating in Europe and most popular from 1920 to 1940, the Art Deco style was at its peak popularity for buildings in the early 1930s.

The Daily Telegraph building is classic Art Deco and one of the city’s most famous.

This building was the third home for Napier’s newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. The first burned down on 18th December 1886, while the second was a victim of the 1931 earthquake. The replacement opened two years later.

After the tour, we explored more of the town and then went back to the apartment to relax and enjoy the beach view.

We had a fantastic dinner at Restaurant Indonesia, which specializes in Rijsttafel, a meal of many side dishes accompanied by rice.

This restaurant also made their own chillis and soy sauce, which was thick and syrupy. Mitch had the vegan Rijsttafel, which was delicious. I got the Indonesian chicken and noodles because my tofu days are over for a while. I’m going to turn into a soybean if I eat any more tofu. It was an unexpected, delightful meal with a very nice owner.