Tag Archives: Art Deco

How Tragedy Turned Napier into Art Deco Wonder

How Tragedy Turned Napier into Art Deco Wonder

“For Murray Houston, 3 February 1931 started out like any ordinary day. The now 91-year-old New Zealander was sitting inside the small wooden schoolhouse he attended in the coastal town of Napier, when the…

Living Museum is all Camera-Hogging Art Deco

Living Museum is all Camera-Hogging Art Deco

“It’s a near-cloudless afternoon, and I’ve spent the past hour weaving dreamily around dozens of sun-dappled, immaculately preserved 1930s buildings. Art deco was all the rage when these storefronts were erected; the streets are…

Living Shrine to Deco

Living Shrine to Deco

Within two years of Napier’s devastating 1931 earthquake the city, which had chosen to rebuild in the Art deco style, was being dubbed the “most modern town on the globe”. “Much of the innovative…

Symbol of Renewal

Symbol of Renewal

“If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier’s is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age,” describes the The Observer’s Nigel Tisdall. “For this was an earthquake…

Geometric on the Bay

Geometric on the Bay

The 1931 Napier earthquake devastated the Hawkes Bay region, but two years later Napier was rebuilt and an Art Deco masterpiece. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Rebecca Lancashire pays a visit and “wanders the city…

Treasure Out of Ruins

Treasure Out of Ruins

The Art Deco 1910-1939 exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts describes Napier as “one of the purest Art Deco cities in the world.” An IHT article gives a detailed tour of Napier’s architectural…

Deco-dence in Napier

Deco-dence in Napier

“I feel as though I’ve popped a 78 on the phonograph and stepped into my grandmother’s photo album. This is the bee’s knees.” Boston Herald comes to Napier for the annual Art Deco Weekend….