Art Deco Heaven

 We architectural photographers (ahem) know that the early morning is the best time to take pictures. So that (and a congenital inability to sleep in) gets me up early Saturday morning to shoot the buildings of Napier.

Fate has left Napier, a town on the east coast of New Zealand’s north island, with an unusual legacy.  In February 1931 a massive earthquake leveled the town. The subsequent fire finished the job.

The rebuild the townsfolk faced was massive, and Napier could have just vanished. But thanks to the Depression, there was little work elsewhere, so builders flocked to Napier. They rebuilt in the style of the day- and the result is a living Hollywood period studio set.

Napier calls itself the Art Deco City. Buildings features smooth lines, stepped or curved facades with relief or recessed rectangles, diamonds, and swirls; radiator fins and san-serif typefaces on protuberances complete the deal. It’s like a gas station advertisement or Astounding Stories pulp magazine cover come to life, all in the downtown business district.

With a perfect cobalt sky above, sharp shadows bringing highlights to the architecture, and palm trees, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in southern California. On the empty early-morning streets, I wait for a plaid-capped newsboy to hawk me the morning edition.

There’s a large residential section of art deco homes as well, about a kilometre from the downtown. Later in the day I take a stroll through that area, a little saddened- only a few have been kept up in top condition. The rest slowly fade as time marches on.

It’s the same downtown. Shopkeepers have to move with the times. While the second stories of the buildings retain their character, the street level is decidedly 21^st century: fancy coffee shops, accountants’ offices, and adult bookstores have replaced the more innocent business from the period. Streets have been blocked off for pedestrians, repaved with cobblestone and featuring public art.

I pass by a worker watching a demolition in progress. A building is being gutted, an excavator works inside the skeleton. He tells me the building, which isn’t that old, will be torn down later in the day. I ask him why.

“Earthquake regulations, most likely,” he says. He explains that new rules, set after Christchurch’s downtown was decimated two years ago, have placed strict new standards for building owners across the country. They can either spend tens of thousands reinforcing their buildings, or tear them down.

 “Much of the CBD (central business district) will come down,” he says. Heritage building owners find themselves in a Catch-22. They can’t tear down their buildings, but many can’t afford the repair work. The future for them is uncertain.

It seems improbable Napier’s citizens would destroy their heritage- and really, their only international tourist attraction- because of the chance of another earthquake. But just down the road, a new building is rising. It's a modern structure, but the owner has retained the façade of the old Art Deco building that stood there. An architectural compromise that’s not likely to satisfy anyone but the insurance adjusters.

“You can’t live your life walking on eggshells,” says the contractor watching the demolition. “It’s crazy.”

It may be crazy, but time, tectonic plates, and insurance regulations wait for no man.