The ground heaved sharply upward and children swarmed out of classrooms like bees from a hive. They hung off fences to stop themselves from falling, and watched as the swimming pool sloshed half its water out on to the ground. Then the earth jolted back downward. It was 10.37am on 2 February 1931 – the first day back from holidays.

Guy Natusch, then 10 years old, stood outside his Napier school and watched as the pavement rose up and surged at him. “It was just an extraordinary event,” the 95-year-old remembers now. “It sticks in your mind.”

His teacher had showed “remarkable control” when the quake initially struck, as children shot to their feet. “She said, ‘Sit down,’ and we did. Then when it eased off, we quietly filed outside. I will never forget that.” That’s when the second wave hit.

“We were overwhelmed by the events,” Natusch says. “The teachers marshalled us together and said: ‘Those of you who know the way home can go.’” So he did. But when he got back, the little boy found his home was shattered. “It suffered pretty badly,” Natusch says, with some understatement.

Vehicles lie in a collapsed road after the Hawke’s Bay earthquake. Photograph: Napier Art Deco Trust

When the Hawke’s Bay earthquake was finally over, it would prove to be New Zealand’s most devastating natural disaster. The force was equivalent to the detonation of 100m tonnes of TNT.

Buildings throughout Napier were levelled under the power of the 7.8 magnitude quake. Structures swayed, their walls swelling before falling to pieces in the streets, crushing vehicles and people. The ornate parapets, facades and cornices of the city’s Edwardian and Georgian architecture crumbled. When the rocking finally stopped and the official count was made, 256 people across the region were dead.

The army built makeshift shelters. An emergency hospital was set up at the local racecourse, where doctors operated on victims beneath the grandstand. A newspaper reporter arrived at night to find “a city of the dead, except for the glow of a land fire, and the lights of ships”.

Natusch’s father, a local architect, eventually took his son back into Napier to see what had been wrought. Natusch remembers rubble all around them as they wandered through the streets of their broken city.

But aside from the buildings, he also saw a changed landscape. The earth had been forced up from the sea – more than 2,000 hectares pushed up an average of two metres. The spit that once punctuated the seafront had disappeared; the water had receded back and swampland had been drained, creating an entirely new, blank canvas for the coastal city. And Napier’s response was as creative as it was dramatic.

‘Like walking through a film set’

When tourists visit Napier today, they come to appreciate the results of the rebuild. Pastel-coloured facades are inlaid with car-bonnet like ornamentation. Large arches are adorned with bold, square lettering. A copper dome sits atop a corner clock tower. Even the local McDonald’s is housed inside a building where customers are welcomed through two thick columns.

Napier as it looks today. Photograph: Alamy

The city now has one of the most striking collections of art deco buildings in the world. More than 160 were built in the years after the earthquake; 120 still remain. It is common to hear tourists say that it’s like walking through a film set.

When guide Maxine Anderson, a fourth generation Napier resident, takes those visitors on walking tours of the city, she is regularly asked the same question: “How did these design features get down here in the midst of the Great Depression?”

Much of that rests on the shoulders of Stanley Natusch, Guy Natusch’s uncle, who in 1925 had visited the Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris. It first showcased a new style to the world. It was bold and simple but, in its way, ornate. Its architecture featured simple block-like buildings stylised with distinctive facades. It was also cheap. The style was not yet known as art deco, but it was the one that Stanley thought would suit the great new experiment of Napier.

The rebuilders achieved a miracle. Napier was a small city and the earthquake was devastating Guy Natusch

Plans were drawn up under the guidance of new city commissioners that the government put in place in the earthquake’s wake. Five rival architects, including CT Natusch and Sons (which was a major practice in the region), were brought together to work on a scheme that would unify Napier under a common theme. The new buildings would be partially inspired by the work of architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. There would be hints of Spanish mission style and stripped classical but the dominant style would be art deco.

“In the devastation of the city they were starting from scratch,” says Guy Natusch. “The art deco style was almost a natural evolution … it was just a coincidence, if you like.”

He says that in 1931, just like any time in history, architects would detail their buildings using the decorative motifs of that age. “It was expected that they would use their experience and adapt to the conditions.” The architects didn’t realise they were doing anything other than their job. But nowhere else was there a city being entirely rebuilt in the middle of the greatest ever global financial crisis.

Napier’s clock tower and Masonic Hotel. Photograph: Alamy

During the creation of the new plans, New Zealand’s building code was also rewritten to include much more stringent measures for protection against earthquakes. Reinforced concrete had been used in buildings throughout Napier as a cost effective alternative to brick. Many low-rise buildings that had been built with this method were ones that had proved sturdiest through the earthquake.

Art deco structures are generally built from reinforced concrete and in Napier most were low rise. Such buildings are typically made using a concrete frame. Earthquakes generate inertia in buildings but with reinforced concrete structures and their frames, most of the building mass is at floor level. This helps disperse that inertia into the foundations and into the ground.

The new building code added to this by recommending standards of design and construction. Masonry buildings, for example, had to be firmly bonded, with parts tied together so the entire structure would move as a unit. There are still only four buildings in Hawke’s Bay taller than five storeys. Art deco, it seems, was practical as well as vogue.

Six months after the earthquake, construction of the city’s first new building began – designed by CT Natusch and Sons. The Market Reserve Building was grand and bold with wide window arches. But its creators wanted to be even bolder. So instead of welding its steel frame, as was the norm, they decided to use rivets. It would be louder, a statement. The whole city would know that the rebuild had begun.

While the government offered relief through an emergency earthquake fund and loans, many building owners were forced to continue paying off the mortgage on their old, destroyed buildings, as very few had insurance. They also had to pay off their new building. “It’s a wonder that they could afford to spend anything on beautifying them,” says Sally Jackson, the general manager of the city’s Art Deco Trust. “But they did.”

Concrete structures, such as Napier’s National Tobacco Company building, tend to stand up firmly under pressure. Photograph: Tim Whittaker Photography Ltd/Napier Art Deco Trust

From the creation of that first structure, the rebuild accelerated – within two years, the whole central city had been reconstructed. “They achieved a miracle, really,” Natusch says. “Napier was a small city of 30,000, so the earthquake was devastating.” He puts this impressive feat down to the vision of the commissioners, and the follow-through of the architects.

People soon swarmed to the region to find work in a booming building sector. Factory wages rose along with productivity and by early 1933 the city was celebrating a “New Napier”.

The earthquake’s destruction had allowed the city’s planners to make some changes. Streets were widened, veranda widths were standardised to keep kerbs free from obstruction, and power and phone lines were buried under footpaths. Trams and tramlines that had previously been a financial burden to the council were removed.

A parade works its way down Napier’s main streets as part of the city’s annual art deco festival. Photograph: Napier Art Deco Trust

Debris that had been left by landslides and collapsed buildings became the land on which the city’s seaside promenade was built. Gardens, memorials and a soundshell were all constructed there.

Then, the people who had been evacuated from the city in the earthquake’s aftermath came back. What they saw was a city changed. Gone were the showy buildings that had once characterised the town centre. In their place were bright colours and sharp, block-like creations.

At first it was hard to reconcile. “It was all quite a shock for them,” says Anderson. She remembers stories her grandmother and mother would tell about coming home to Napier: “It was bare, to their eyes. The streets were wide. The wires and poles were gone. Above all, the buildings were coloured. It was a huge change.”

Its citizens became accustomed to their new surroundings. Children like Anderson grew up with them, and their curious pocket of 1930s architecture became the norm.

Natusch, who grew up to design many of Napier’s buildings himself at the family practice, says there was a tendency in architectural circles to view art deco in a cynical light. “Substantially, it is an applied decoration to simple, straightforward buildings … but 50 years later people started to open their eyes and say, ‘Gosh, aren’t these fascinating’.”

It was not until the 1980s that its residents started to realise that Napier was quite unique. “People were finally getting their heads around this style that they had lived with for so long, but hadn’t appreciated,” says Jackson. At that time, some of the city’s “outdated” art deco buildings were being pulled down by developers who wanted to put more modern glass and aluminium office blocks in their place. Citizens planned a protest; a walk through the city was organised to show support for retaining Napier’s distinctive character. Around 200 people were expected. Roughly 1,100 turned up. “It gave the city confidence,” Jackson says. “People saw the importance of the city in terms of its heritage.”

The Art Deco Trust was formed on the back of that movement. It now organises the walking tours Anderson leads and puts on an annual art deco festival which has been going 28 years and attracts up to 40,000 people from around the world. Last year’s event drew $11m (£5.3m) in economic value to the city.

Jackson says the next step is to get Napier recognised as a Unesco world heritage site. She has travelled to other art deco centres, like New York and south beach in Miami, “but they are art deco in the glamour era. Ours is Depression-era art deco,” she says. “Napier has a completely different look and feel.”

When tourists ask Anderson how a small city in the South Pacific came to house the highest concentration of art deco buildings in the world she takes her time to answer. She shows them around Napier, pointing out each building’s unique characteristics and how they were created from the rubble of devastation. There was something good and special to come out the disaster that struck on that school morning of 1931.

“It’s like a renaissance,” Anderson says of the rebuild. “It has given us a sense of identity and a sense of pride.”



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