A Shop in Napier

The city of Napier, on the North Island of New Zealand, was severely damaged by an earthquake which struck the Hawkes Bay area on the morning of 3rd February 1931. Within the next few years a lot of the city was rebuilt in the style of the day, Art Deco.

This is a typical shop in Napier that may not appear in any of the books but it shows how modest buildings in Napier took on the deco style. The colours are a bit Miami but in a seaside town, albeit in the Southern Hemisphere, they work.

Each February an Art Deco Weekend is held in Napier. The programme for the 2010 event has been posted on the Napier Art Deco Trust website.

Hildebrandt Building, Napier

The Hildebrandt Building in Napier was designed by local architect Louis Hay.

The building itself is very plain but it has a panel with a wonderful wave motif along the facade and the New Zealand and German flags at either end.

The flags are repeated side by side on the corner of the building above door along with 1933, the date of construction.

Holden's Buildings, Hastings

Hastings on New Zealand's North Island suffered greatly during the 1931 earthquake which also greatly affected the nearby town of Napier.

Much of Hastings was rebuilt in Spanish Mission or Art Deco style.

Holden's Buildings from 1934 is a fine Art Deco example. It was deigned by Albert Garnett and carries the year of construction in a beautiful Art Deco styled plaque.

The corner fo the buildings bears the name 'Nutter' and is therefore known as Nutter's Corner.

Moyola, Ranfurly

These leadlight windows are in the Moyola Guest House in Ranfurly, New Zealand.

According to their website, the house was built in 1931 by a family that had come from the Moyola Estate in Northern Ireland. I doubt the windows are original but they are very stylish.

Moyola is run by Edna McAtamney, the driving force behind Rural Art Deco in Ranfurly and David McAtamney who is described as a Farmer-Opera singer. No doubt they are interesting hosts.

Ranui Flats, Napier

This may not be the most picturesque view of the Ranui Flats on Marine Parade in Napier but it does clearly show the driveway in the middle of the building leading through to the parking area behind. It reminds me of much earlier buildings which often had stables or a yard out the back and therefore required a large opening like this to allow horse-drawn carriages access. Ranui Flats date from 1938 so this is a nice throw-back from the Car Age.

A House in Ranfurly

The Napier suburb of Marewa probably offers the best collection of this style of modernist house in New Zealand but there are other isolated exampled elsewhere in the country.

On the South Island there is a modernist house in Kaikoura and this one in Ranfurly.

It is a very modest home and no doubt was easy and inexpensive to construct. But they still took the time and effort to add some decoration and even a little stepped-down kink in the roofline. I find it interesting that even the smaller of the two windows on the front of the house is divided into three sections.

Dental Centre, Ranfurly

On the South Island of New Zealand the town of Ranfurly has reinvented itself as a centre for rural Art Deco.

One of the later buildings on the Rural Art Deco Ranfurly Walk in the Dental Centre which was built in 1950 by Teddy Woods, the first dentist in the Ranfurly area.

This is a nice little building with a stepped roofline, very simple decoration consisting of two horizontal lines running in parallel around the facade and windows set back into the corner.

The entrance is set back from the footpath allowing for a (modern?) ramp to be incorporated without affecting the face of the building.

The porch has a nice feature of a stepped top to the entrance.

I think the signage is a bit Hollywood but they could be a lot worse.

Centennial Milk Bar, Ranfurly

Ranfurly, a town on the south island of New Zealand has reinvented itself in recent years as a centre for rural Art Deco.

It's best Art Deco building is the former Centennial Milk Bar and Refreshment Rooms which now houses a collection of Art Deco objects.

Like Napier, on the north island, Ranfurly hosts an Art Deco weekend each February which attracts so many visitors that the town population receives a 10-fold increase.

Marine Parade, Napier

When Napier was rebuilt after the 1931 earthquake, The Marine Parade area was developed as an outdoor entertainment area.

The Council Architect, J T Watson designed the New Napier Arch (right) in 1938 as a celebration of the new city. Located opposite the Masonic Hotel and the war memorial it marks the entrance to the Marine Parade Gardens.

Watson also designed the Soundshell which sits in the place where local architect Louis Hay had proposed an ambitious Entertainment Centre that straddled Marine Parade. Peter Shaw & Peter Hallett have reproduced the watercolour rendered drawing of the proposed centre in their wonderful book Art Deco Napier - Styles of the Thirties.

The concrete area in front of the shell was once an ice skating rink and the somewhat faded art deco zig-zag design of inlaid concrete that surrounded it can still be seen (at least in 1999 it was still visible).

It must have been amazing in the 1930s.

Boys' High School, Napier

The Napier Boys' High School website is tantalising when it states 'Originally built in brick in 1926, the school has now been fully redeveloped in the Deco style, in keeping with the Napier City theme' but gives no further details relating to the architect or the dates o the remodelling.

In any case, we can get a taste of the style from this view of the entrance gates to the school and the driveway lined with palm trees behind and only imagine the deco splendor enjoyed by the schoolboys while they study.

Gladstone Chambers, Napier

The Gladstone Chambers in Tennyson Street, Napier is a simple single storey building like many constructed immediately following the 1931 earthquake.

The Art Deco Inventory compiled by the Art Deco Trust and Napier City Council lists Finch & Westerholm as the architects with construction being completed in 1932.

Gladstone Chambers has very little decoration along the roofline, normally a mainstay of Art Deco buildings. The lettering in the name, set on the facade, is very simple with a decorative row of semi-circles interspersed with pendant shapes.

Above the doorway and each of the two windows there is a more complex design consisting of rounded shapes layered with two sizes of triangles.

The building also features a decorative grill on the window above the door.

Yet another arrangement of geometric shapes provide the decoration in the recessed rectangular panels under the windows.

At the very base of the building the vents at footpath level are very stylish and as can be see in the photo below are placed below the windows according to the deco rule of three.

Geon Art Deco Weekend, Napier

We had an horrific day in Victoria yesterday (http://www.theage.com.au/national/death-toll-rises-from-bushfires-20090208-80jv.html). Hottest Melbourne day on record, 46.4C, hotter in other places in the State and the worst day of bushfires possibly since 'Black Friday' on 13th January 1939. 100s of houses have been destroyed and 25 people confirmed dead which expectations that the toll will rise.

My best wishes go out to all those who have been affected and their families and friends.

It got me thinking of positive stories that have come from disasters such as this and then an email arrived in my inbox reminding me of the Geon Art Deco Weekend in Napier.

Shortly after a quarter to eleven on the morning of Tuesday 3rd February 1931 a devastating earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale hit the North Island of New Zealand about 15 or 20 kilometres north of the city of Napier.

Many buildings were destroyed in Napier and the nearby town of Hastings. 258 people died in the two towns and the surrounding district. A memorial in Napier honours the memory of those who died.

An Earthquake Relief Fund was established by the New Zealand Prime Minister and architects based in Napier such as J A Louis Hay and others from around the country assisted in the rebuilding of the city. By January 1933, the city was able to hold a carnival to celebrate the new Napier.

Now, the third weekend of February sees Napier host the annual Art Deco Weekend. This year the events run from Tuesday 17th to Sunday 22nd so obviously they use a different definition of weekend in New Zealand.

It is probably more to the point that the Art Deco Weekend has become so popular over its 21 years that they can't fit all the events into a two-day weekend. I suspect it won't be long before it becomes Art Deco Week.

Link: Geon Art Deco Weekend

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Bushfire Update - Monday 9th February 2009

As more news comes to hand it is clear that Saturday 7th February 2009 is one of the worst days ever for Victoria. The death toll is horrendous and the number of people who have lot their homes and all their possessions heartbreaking. The towns of Marysville and Kinglake have all but been wiped out. The response from the wider community has been fantastic and I hope something positive will eventually come from this harshest reminder of nature's devastating power.

We are custodians of this planet and it will survive in some form for a very long time, but will we.

The link for the latest news on the bushfires is http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/bushfires/

The Red Cross have set up an appeal and are taking donations online through their webite - www.redcross.org.au/.

Hastings McLeod, Christchurch

I think this is the former State Fire and Accident Insurance Office in Christchurch now used mainly by the Real Estate company Hastings McLeod.

In any case, the State Fire and Accident Insurance Office (1933-34) was designed by Cecil Walter Wood and there are a few clues that this could be the same building.

The first is this magnificent stylised flame motif that appears below each window.

And the graduated red paintwork on the columns is somewhat flame-like and is perhaps a subtle reminder of the building's former use.

The doorway appears to have been changed with a porch added requiring one of the flames to be covered. The complex deco patterns (perhaps Maori inspired) on either side of the transom window are still visible.

Queenstown Gardens, Queenstown

Queenstown Gardens sit on a peninsula jutting into Lake Wakatipu overlooking the city of Queenstown itself.

The gardens were gifted to the public in 1866 by local businessman Bendix Hallenstein.

This entrance certainly has a deco look to me. The sign is stepped along the top and the posts are stepped on top as well.

The squares on the sign and the decorative elements on the outside of the posts perhaps point to a slightly earlier period but I haven't found a date to confirm it one way or the other.

Regent Theatre, Hokitika

In the mid 1930s New Zealand town of Hokitika needed a new theatre.

The Princess Theatre had been built in the 1880s and was by then in very poor condition.

The Christchurch architect W Melville Lawry designed a new theatre and local builder E H Shirley won the tender to construct the building. The Regent Theatre was completed in December 1935. Two weeks ago it hosted the Hokitika community Christmas Carol evening.

Today the theatre is a Listed Building with a Conservation Plan developed by specilist Conservation Architect, Ian Bowman.

In recent years, a Members Society has been actively chasing 400 members, to match the number of seats in the theatre.

Regent Theatre, Hokitika website: www.hokitikaregent.com

EK Building, Hastings

While Napier has claimed the title of "Art Deco City", nearby Hastings highlights it stock of Spanish Mission buildings. Hastings, however has it's share of deco, including this shop on a city centre corner.

The building has been flatten across the corner to provide a doorway with simple stepped decoration above.

I've called it the EK Building because those initials are incorporated into a panel on the side of the shop above the verandah. This panel is very decorative compared to the rest of the building where, in the main, the decoration consists of horizontal lines and simple decoration cut into the top of the wall.

The other decorative item is this stylised floral element sitting up roofline.

Ranfurly Auto, Ranfurly

I love the lines of this building in Ranfurly on New Zealand's South Island.

The sawtooth roof of the workshops on the left is mirrored somewhat with the stepped down roofline of the front office on the rounded corner of the building with the large segmented window.

A very handsome building and a great example of rural New Zealand deco.

Louis Hay's Office, Napier

The slender red brick building is the office that Napier architect Louis Hay built for himself after his previous office was damaged in the devastating 1931 earthquake.

The windows are interesting and the dark layer of bricks grounds the building but otherwise there is little or no decoration until the roofline.

Centred on the building is an arrangement of lines, squares, circles and finally a diamond bearing the year 1932. You can see these elements in various combinations in Hay's buildings all over Napier.

Above this detail rows of bricks are stepped back creating subtle interest.

The columns are also capped with decoration. Thin smooth rendered sections, painted a light cream or green colour, narrow the brick columns as the approach the sky. A series of twelve bricks are spaced up the column jutting out from the flat surface. The whole column is then topped with a green slab.

State Cinema 6, Nelson

This is the State Cinema 6 complex in Nelson on the South Island of new Zealand.

In the modern world of cinema multiplexes, I think it is great that at least some part of these great art deco buildings have been preserved and converted. Often it is just the facade and perhaps the main foyer but when the alternative is demolition like so many former cinemas then we need to appreciate what we have got.

My favourite part of this building are the curved balconies on the corner.

Dominion Restaurant, Hastings

The New Zealand town of Hastings, like the surrounding area and neighbouring town of Napier, suffered a lot of damage and loss of life during the 1931 earthquake and a major effort was required in the following years to rebuild the city.
The Dominion Restaurant was built in 1935 by Edward Anscombe & Associates and now operates as a fish and chip shop.
A lot of Hastings was rebuilt in Spanish Mission style but as you can see, the Dominion, is pure Art Deco.
The asymetrical windows either side of the entrance, curved on one side and stepped and angled on the other provide a great point of interest while the whole facade is drawn together by the green tiles and zig zag design below the windows.
It was closed when I visited Hastings but even time I look at this picture I wonder whether they have a nice booth where I can snuggle in with a huge plate of fish & chips.