An Art Deco Wonderland

Rising like the proverbial phoenix, Napier rebuilt itself after a devastating earthquake, into a monument of Art Deco. Today, its city centre stands as a time capsule.

- Prachi Joshi

Come February, and a small town in New Zealand will once again step back in time to celebrate the roaring twenties. The Tremains Art Deco Festival (artdeconapier. com) that takes place in Napier between February 14 and 18 every year, draws locals and tourists in hoards to its film screenings, walking tours, vintage car rides, antique fairs, prohibition parties, and Gatsby picnics. Everyone dresses up in period clothing; think flapper dresses and cloche hats for the ladies and pastel suits or plus fours for the men.

Napier is set in the scenic Hawke’s Bay area of New Zealand’s North Island. The town centre is one of the best preserved enclaves of Art Deco buildings, second only to Miami’s South Beach. Pastel-coloured buildings with symmetrically patterned façades and embellished with stylised geometric motifs, sunbursts, and chevrons, flank the streets.

Little can someone imagine, that this seemingly idyllic town had to be rebuilt from the ground up after a massive, 7.8 magnitude earthquake levelled most of downtown Napier’s Victorian and Edwardian buildings in 1931. What could still have been salvaged was consumed by fires that started immediately after. More than 250 people died and only a handful of buildings were left standing. As if to compensate for the loss of livelihood, the earthquake also pushed the sea away by almost 5,000 acres, leaving a veritable blank canvas for the citizens of Napier to use. In less than two years, the locals rebuilt the stretch and fashioned it as an Art Deco paradise.