Fire Swept Through Napier City After it was Flattened by an Earthquake

Earthquakes can leave a lot in their wake, and the biggie that destroyed the city of Napier 75 years ago is no exception.

The massive destruction and loss of lives left a legacy of sadness and grief as well as the opportunity for renewal, where the double-edged sword of the phoenix rose from the ashes. While one hand of nature took the lives of many, the other gave land, and her ambivalent trade of 'life for land' was not a fair one. Almost overnight we were gifted land by the forces of nature as if she needed to give something back in exchange for what had been taken, even though the price at the time was way too high.

Looking back a long way, Napier was chosen for settlement because it was the only sheltered port (on the East Coast) between Wellington and Gisborne, and although the port land was limited for further building, those early settlers would never have imagined that 50 years on they would run out of room. So by 1904 the reclamation of Napier South began, and within four years the houses and streets were completed. By the late 1920's land was running short once again and further reclamation was under consideration! Ironically, on that hot morning of February 3rd 1931, nature reclaimed in an earth shattering one and a half minutes many times more land than had been gained artificially in four years.

The upward tilt averaged two metres in height, leaving 2700 acres of swampland at the southern end of the Inner Harbour high and dry, and raising the 7000 acre Ahuriri Lagoon to sea level.

By 1933, the town had been rebuilt in an unbelievably short time of two years, making it the world's newest and most modern city at that time.

Even more amazing is the fact that this happened at the lowest point of the Great Depression, when the building industry had almost shut down worldwide.

Back then, the rebuild needed to replace the ruins of the fiery quake with a modern city, to give some meaning to the tragedy. Although Napier wasn't built entirely in the new Art Deco style, it was certainly the predominant one ahead of the Classical Revival and the Spanish Mission styles, and it was fashionable. It needed to be modern because the past had been wiped out and couldn't be recaptured.

Another reason for the Art Deco style was the safety factor, and the new buildings needed to be constructed in concrete, which also lent itself beautifully to moulded shapes and ornamentation. The style was also particularly cheap which suited most building owners because many had no earthquake insurance but still had to pay off their new building in the height of the great Depression. With the shortage of money, they still managed to beautify them, and each owner and their architect made their own decisions about the look of their building, which resulted in the unifying Art Deco theme.