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Why Art Deco?

Why was Napier rebuilt in the Art Deco style? Well there are many reasons.


The Art Deco style was at the height of its popularity for buildings in 1931. Its clean simple lines and base relief decoration suited the needs of the new city.


It was also very fashionable. With its past destroyed, Napier looked ahead and chose a style associated with Manhattan, the movies and modernism.


The Art Deco style is considered to be safe, with its emphasis on low relief surface decoration, Art Deco forsook the elaborate applied ornaments that had fallen from the buildings in the Earthquake and caused so many deaths and injuries.


Art Deco was also cheap to create. Its relief stucco ornament was an economical way to beautify buildings during the low point of the Great Depression.  


Other architectural styles for the period were also used - the Spanish Mission style from California, Stripped Classical and Classical Moderne. The styles of Greece and Rome but simplified and modernized, also local architect Louis Hay's work which strongly reflects Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style.