Seaside Art Deco in New Zealand
New York Times
December 15, 1991
Travel section, p19
Our first glimpse of the Art Deco architecture in Napier, New Zealand, came from the back of a taxi. It was gone in a flash, as we swept around the waterfront bluff from the airport into town, but the sight was electrifying — a Faberge jewel set in the industrial tundra of a working port. The semicircular arched entrance within a brilliant azure cube is unmistakably the work of a gifted artist.
We were drawn back to the port for a closer look several days later. Of all the Art Deco architecture for which Napier is rapidly gaining renown, the Rothmans Building is the most luxurious – and eclectic. Designed in 1933 by the local architect J.A. Louis Hay, it takes its inspiration from a combination of Art Deco, Art Nouveau and the Chicago School. Hay was a well-read devotee of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and adapted their influences to a New Zealand milieu. The entrance arch’s “sunbeams” are long-stemmed roses. On either side of the richly carved doors, the roses are combined with tall stalks of the native raupo grass. A voluptuous frieze of vine leaves and grapes ripples across the top of the arch and the setbacks at each side. Inside the foyer, the polished wood is enriched by dappled marble and a domed skylight.
To a growing stream of visitors, this delightful folly represents the pinnacle of creativity that followed perhaps the greatest natural disaster in New Zealand history.
Since the late 1880’s, Napier had been a popular resort on the east coast of North Island and business center for the Hawke’s Bay farming community. The city’s bustling streets and ornate buildings were testament to its prosperity. Vacationers came for its Mediterranean climate and dramatic setting at the base of a seaside cliff. The Marine Parade foreshore was especially appealing for its stretch of conical Norfolk Island pines and thunderous surf. The city was touted as the Nice of the South Pacific.
Then on Feb. 3, 1931, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale erupted without warning around Hawke’s Bay. Violent tremors thrust almost 8,000 acres of land six and a half feet out of the ocean (Napier’s airport is located on this new turf). Napier itself was virtually destroyed. More than 250 people out of a population of 20,000 were killed, many of them felled by the masonry of ornamental parapets and pediments that adorned the city’s Victorian buildings. What the temblor left standing, a fire devastated.
It was the middle of the Depression, yet Napier’s citizens were determined to rebuild the town to its former glory. Four prominent architecture practices formed a cooperative to address the task. Initially, Napier hoped to re-create itself in white Spanish Revival style, as a sister city to Santa Barbara in California. This idea was dismissed as too expensive, although several Spanish-style buildings were constructed. Napier’s architects looked instead to the simple geometry of “modern” styles sweeping New York and Los Angeles, an amalgam known today as Art Deco.
Over the next two years, a phoenix of quiet beauty rose from the Napier rubble. The area is now recognized as one of the most complete and significant collections of Art Deco buildings in the world. By the strict purists’ definition, about half the downtown can be classified as Art Deco; however, 95 percent of buildings date from the Art Deco period, including Art Deco, Spanish mission and stripped classical styles.
There are claims that Napier is comparable to Bath in England as a planned townscape in a cohesive style. The uniqueness of Napier, today a town of 52,000, lies in its construction at the height of Art Deco’s popularity — and the depths of the Great Depression. It is believed that no other town or city in the world can claim this distinction…”