Napier, NZ, an Art Deco town.

"a small New Zealand town that seems sometimes fictional"

Far from the world's great population centres and from the European and American cities where 20th Century design evolved lies a small city that is unique. Napier, New Zealand, was rebuilt in the early 1930s following a massive Richter 7.8 Earthquake. Subsequent fires destroyed most of its commercial heart. By the end of the decade, Napier was the newest city on the globe.

Nowhere else can you see such a variety of buildings in the styles of the 1930s - Stripped Classical, Spanish Mission, and above all Art Deco, the style of the 20th Century - in such a concentrated area. And Napier's Art Deco is unique, with Maori motifs and the buildings of Louis Hay, admirer of the great Frank Lloyd Wright.

Enhanced by palms and the angular Norfolk Island pines which are its trademark, and bounded by fertile fruit and grape growing plains, dramatic hills and the shores of the South Pacific, beautiful Napier is the centre of the Hawke's Bay region. In Napier, you can enjoy the legacy of its brave rebuilding and savour the spirit of the optimistic Art Deco era.

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...

Art Deco was fashionable. With its past destroyed, Napier looked ahead and chose a style associated with Manhattan, the movies and modernism.
Art Deco was safe. With its emphasis on low relief surface decoration, Art Deco forsook the elaborate applied ornament that had fallen from the buildings in the earthquake and caused so many deaths and injuries.
Art Deco was cheap. 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, and both Stripped Classical and Classical Modern, the styles of Greece and Rome but simplified and modernized. And local architect Louis Hay's work strongly reflects Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style inthe United States mid-west, which developed in the early years of the century.

http://www.artdeconapier.com/default.aspx