It’s all about Art Deco in Napier, the architectural style that typifies many of the buildings that rose from the devastation of the Hawkes Bay earthquake. The earthquake shook Napier’s business district from its foundations on the morning of 3 February 1931.

More than 250 people died in the Hawkes Bay region and buildings that didn’t collapse in Napier’s city centre initially were then mostly destroyed by fire and subsequent aftershocks.

But like the Art Deco image of the rising sun, Napier’s city centre rose again and by 1933 was almost entirely rebuilt. Four local architecture firms worked together … Read the rest