They weren’t alone in their thinking, with many joining in singing the same chorus of doom for Napier.
Fortunately, Napier could say along with Mark Twain (who had visited Napier some 35 years previous), “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
A report from a newspaper reporter in early April 1931 poetically said, “Napier today is the strangest city in the Dominion.
To enter it by night is an unforgettable experience. An impressionist painter would depict its ruins silhouetted in fantastic shapes in the light of a thousand garish lamps, by whose aid a thousand human beings toil unceasingly at a thousand mysterious tasks.
Such a picture would symbolise energy and hope in every stroke of the brush and might bear the label, “Reconstruction: An impression of Napier after the Earthquake.”
The late architect, Guy Natusch, told me his father, Rene, had changed the specifications of the Market Reserve building (the first to go up after the earthquake) in the central business district from a welded steel frame to a riveted one.
This was an out-of-date practice – but the riveting (as opposed to welding) would announce to the town by its reverberating echoes around town that Napier was being rebuilt.
Work of building demolition in the months after the earthquake, continued into the night – ceasing at midnight.
Two months later after the earthquake, the four men in Marine Parade tent were working 12 hours a day to re-establish their businesses, and the two women that cried quietly in the corner of the tent in the corner, were now shopping in the Clive Square temporary “Tin Town” shops constructed of corrugated iron and wood, and now back living in their homes.
The thousands that had left Napier after the earthquake had returned, and an observation was “Hope and confidence, youth and beauty, are returning to Napier and steadily pushing aside the unwelcome signs of the city’s ordeal. Nothing can now damp the ardour and determination of its citizens to rebuild the town”.
With nearly all the women leaving Napier after the earthquake, and returning, the town was said to no longer resemble a “soldiers’ barracks with a preponderance of men, and the prettiest girls in Hawke’s Bay, are refreshingly contrasted, in their light summer frocks with the drab working suits of the men, whose occupations take them mostly into the brick strewn ruins”.
Perhaps the biggest sign things were returning to normal in Hastings and Napier was from an observer from outside Hawke’s Bay, who stated that things must be getting back to normal as the “old rivalry between Napier and Hastings is lifting its head again, spurring both towns on to renewed prosperity.”
Such was the progress of the rebuilding of Napier, the New Napier Carnival was planned for January 21 to 28, 1933.
Morris Spence stated the purpose of the carnival was “To show the people of New Zealand the way in which Hawke’s Bay and particularly Napier, had recovered from the earthquake”.
The poster shown was developed by New Zealand Railways to advertise train fares to the carnival.
The Marine Parade’s development had not yet been completed, and it is interesting to note the projection of what it might look like in the future.
A large domed building where over the roadway, and a café where the soundshell is now – and the licence taken of what is a stoney beach, as golden sands. And as Napier would do in the coming years after the earthquake, the female form is used to represent the seaside and youthful nature of its town.
The Railway’s marketing was successful – and the train that came up from Wellington to Napier – with 280 people taking advantage of the “low fares,” was said to be the most successful ever organised by the Railways Department.
Napier’s 1933 carnival, complete with a visit from Australian aviation legend Charles Kingsford-Smith, was a forerunner of this weekend’s Napier Art Deco Festival, where thousands of Napierites and visitors celebrate the beautiful town that literally rose of the ashes (And as a proud Hastings person, I also celebrate my own town’s renewal this weekend).
- Michael Fowler is a contracted Hawke’s Bay author and historian mfhistory@gmail.com
- Michael Fowler is releasing his new book ‘Promenading: Napier’s Iconic Marine Parade” on 7 March as a fundraiser for MTG Hawke’s Bay Foundation. Pre-order enquiries to mfhistory@gmail.com
