Destination: New Zealand : Kiwi Deco : On the North Island, the resort town of Napier is a virtual museum of Art Deco architecture

In a country with so many spectacular natural wonders, Napier is a man-made anomaly; it’s the only New Zealand town that’s ever tempted me to stay.

Spread around a hilly bluff wedged into Hawke Bay, about a 5 1/2-hour drive southeast of Auckland, this warm and sunny city of 50,000 has been a popular New Zealand vacation spot for more than 100 years.

Lush vineyards, sheep stations and apple orchards stretch from the rugged Pacific coastline to the rolling foothills of the Ruahine and Kaweka mountains. Palm trees and Norfolk pines push cheerfully into sunny skies. Salty air drifts over a seaside promenade of formal, manicured gardens and fountains that earned the city the nickname “Nice of the Pacific.”

But today, Napier’s biggest draws are the more than 100 American-influenced Art Deco and Spanish Mission buildings--the styles in which nearly all of Napier’s downtown structures were rebuilt after a 1931 earthquake ravaged the area. The quake killed 258 people and exposed more than 7,400 acres of land once covered by six feet of seawater.

I first visited Napier two years ago, more for the nearby wineries and coastal hiking than to view what one British architecture expert described as one of the most complete and significant groups of Art Deco buildings in the world.

After all, architecture had never before lured me to a New Zealand destination. But two months ago, as I began the drive from my Auckland home, I was looking forward to rediscovering a unique city that reinvented itself at a time when the Great Depression had virtually shut down the rest of the building industry worldwide.

Even on a cold, rainy winter morning, downtown Napier seemed buoyant. Thanks to city grants and preservation efforts over the past 10 years, rows of newly painted, two-storied Art Deco facades cheerfully lined most downtown streets. Repairs and restorations seemed to occupy every block. Since my last visit, there were a few more Art Deco T-shirts and postcards available, a few more cobblestoned pedestrian malls where visitors can buy local arts and crafts such as pottery and hand-knit woolen sweaters, antiques and jars of jam.

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But this is far from Art Deco Miami--no European fashion models posing for photographers, no roller-skaters or musclemen bopping to the latest salsa beat, no throngs of tourists chugging through the streets.

Instead, Napier is as stripped down as some of its Art Deco buildings--simple, sunny and refreshingly solid. Below the stucco facades and suspended verandas, the commercial bustle of small-town New Zealand still reigns. Butchers lay slabs of beef and lamb chops in shop windows. Fish ‘n’ chip restaurants advertise fresh snapper and terakihi , a flaky white fish similar to grouper. In a local cafe, the talk focuses on the exploits of the national rugby team, the All-Blacks. Suited office workers and a few farmers in sweaters and gum boots choose among meat pies, buttered scones, Earl Grey tea and the worst cappuccino I’ve ever had.

Indeed, the town’s popularity among New Zealand and overseas visitors pales in comparison with the country’s biggest attractions--Rotorua, Auckland and the Bay of Islands on the North Island, and Queenstown on the South Island. Napier draws about 60,000 overseas tourists a year, while each of the others attracts from 200,000 to 750,000. But tourism is establishing a greater foothold here, and the best barometer of that interest is the historic Desco Centre building on downtown’s Tennyson Street. The former Napier Fire Station now houses the Art Deco Trust, which is both the local watchdog for preservation efforts and the Art Deco information center for tourists.

The Art Deco Shop, in the same building, offers a short, informative and engrossing video on Art Deco elements and motifs, walking brochures, guided 90-minute tours through about 15 blocks of the central business district and driving maps of Napier’s Art Deco residences.

It was Feb. 3, 1931, when a massive earthquake and ensuing fire struck New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay region, creating one of the country’s worst natural disasters. To build a harmonious modern city from the ruins of a Victorian town, an association of local architects turned to America and the popular styles of the ‘30s for inspiration and discovered the perfect designs and technology for Napier’s future.

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Celebrating the new spirit of the 20th Century, Art Deco gave Napier a sense of hope and optimism. The reinforced concrete structures of these styles provided a cheap way to rebuild after the Great Depression. The simple and solid designs offered safety to a city where so many earthquake victims were killed by masonry falling from ornamental parapets and pediments. Decoration was retained as an essential element of Art Deco style, but as part of a building’s structure or function, not an addition to it.

The guide for my Napier walking tour was Robert McGregor, the enthusiastic executive director of the Art Deco Trust. As we started our walk, the town’s Art Deco charms came in snatches: a Mayan flower decoration; ziggurat and sunburst designs; leaded, stained-glass domes; a law office’s elaborate floral motifs and interior doors and staircase; and the harmonious blend of Spanish Mission, stripped Classical and Art Nouveau styles.

But later, we stopped to marvel at several buildings. One of my favorites was the Municipal Theatre on Tennyson Street. The exterior of the 1938 building features two squat Egyptian pillars and three sets of double glass-and-stained-wood doors. Inside is a celebration of the Streamline Moderne style, which I recognized from the movies of the 1930s and 1940s: chrome speed lines, nautical light fittings, neon and tubular lamps and a curved walnut-veneered ticket box. The theater, which is now being upgraded, is scheduled to reopen for performances next year.

A few streets away is the vibrant, cream-and-terra-cotta Spanish Mission-style Criterion Hotel (now a bare-bones, backpackers accommodation). This is one of several Spanish Mission buildings in Napier and nearby Hastings. The similarity of climate between Napier and Southern California had prompted construction of both Spanish Mission and California Bungalow buildings in the area even before the earthquake. Inspired by news and photographs of Santa Barbara’s successful post-earthquake rebuilding, some proposed embracing the same style of architecture--but the idea was killed in favor of less expensive Art Deco alternatives.

Napier’s ASB Bank, refurbished since my last visit here, offers the best integration of Maori art and European design I’ve seen anywhere in New Zealand. The lintel over the main entrance points out the similarity between the Art Deco zigzag and a kowhaiwhai pattern, a Maori fern frond design. As I stepped into the busy bank to escape the rain, I looked up at a ceiling of coffered skylights flanked by a Maori mask design and another red, black and white kowhaiwhai pattern.

Just across from the ASB Bank, a promenade leads down to a rocky beach, past neat, well-tended gardens and several public structures--a band shell and colonnade among them--that also reflect the town’s Art Deco theme.

Napier’s best known and most photographed structure is the bold, rich-blue Rothmans Building, an irresistible masterpiece of simple form and luxurious decoration located a five-minute drive north of the city center, among a cluster of old warehouses and empty lots in the Ahuriri district.

Built in 1934 by the city’s most famous architect, Louis Hay, the former National Tobacco Co. building’s centerpiece is its arched entrance. The entryway is lavishly decorated with sculpted concrete roses and bulrush, sunbursts, polished wood, mosaic tiles and brass banisters. Inside, the building is no less extravagant with its polished marble, domed skylights and leaded stained-glass lights.

With the help of a driving-tour map, I spent part of the next two days cruising through neighborhoods of Art Deco homes and visiting the town’s Park Island cemetery to see the Art Deco memorial at the mass grave for earthquake victims. Then I drove 12 miles south to the smaller (and considerably less charming) town of Hastings, which was also severely damaged in the earthquake and rebuilt with more of a Spanish Mission influence.

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Not all my time in Napier was spent admiring Egyptian-inspired pillars and plum-hued parapets. I stayed at Anleigh Heights, a bed-and-breakfast home with sweeping views of Napier and its coastline. At the recommendation of my hosts, Allan and Anne Tolley, I visited several wineries in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand’s second-largest wine-growing area.

Among the 20 wineries flung between the Pacific and the western river valleys, the most popular is Mission Vineyards, which was established in 1851 and is the country’s oldest winery. But the ones I liked best were Sacred Hill, a converted chicken shed overlooking the Dartmoor River; Ngatarawa Wines, a refurbished 19th-Century stable in Hastings; and Te Mata Estate, the bold and stylish contemporary home to a pioneer of international-standard red winemaking in New Zealand.

Bad weather and high tides kept me from hiking five miles along the coast to view a colony of 15,000 gannets at nearby Cape Kidnappers. The site is the world’s only known mainland nesting area for the birds, and the walk was one I’d wanted to make for years.

But as I started my return home to Auckland, my thoughts were on Art Deco Napier. The sun had broken through morning clouds, highlighting the clean, vibrant colors of the city’s stucco facades. Even in its early morning emptiness, the city seemed alive, enticing and refreshingly unpretentious--virtues that made me glad I’d returned.

GUIDEBOOK

Napier

Know-How

Getting there: Daily nonstop flights between Los Angeles and Auckland on Air New Zealand and United Airlines begin at $998 round-trip. One-hour connecting flights from Auckland to Napier on Air New Zealand are $119 round trip when booked at the same time. Driving from Auckland to Napier takes about 5 1/2 hours; rental cars are available in Auckland and Napier from about $35 a day.

Where to stay: Anleigh Heights (115 Chaucer Road N., Napier; tel./fax 011-64-6-835-1188), a boutique hotel in a historic Edwardian house, $58-$97 nightly for two, including a full English breakfast.

Mon Logis Hotel Prive (415 Marine Parade, Napier; tel./fax 011-64-6-835-2125), offers bed and breakfast in the style of a small Parisian hotel, $90 per night for two; Napier also has a range of quality motels and motor lodges for less than $50 a night.

Where to eat: Anatole’s Cafe, County Hotel, 12 Browning St., Napier; local tel. 835-7800. Pierre Sur Le Quai, 62 W. Quay, Ahuriri; tel. 834-0189. Bayswater, Hardinge Road, Napier; tel. 835-8517. Buck’s Great Wall Restaurant, Marine Parade, Napier; tel. 835-0088.

For more information: Napier Visitor Information Centre, 100 Marine Parade; tel. 011-64-6-834-4161; fax: 011-64-6-835-7219. The Art Deco Shop, Desco Centre, 163 Tennyson St., Napier; tel. 011-64-6-835-0022; guided city walking tours three times a week.

The New Zealand Tourism Board, 501 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 300, Santa Monica, 90401; tel. (800) 388-5494.