Colours featured on these buildings are pink, buff (yellow colour) and biscuit (off white). Buff and biscuit were the most common building colours used, with green, red/brown, ochre (orange/brown), blue and pink often used as accent colours.
Using colour in building facades had started to become a worldwide trend at the time of the 1931-1933 rebuild in Napier and Hastings.
So not only were the towns rebuilding the central business district in the latest style buildings, but also with colour, as opposed to the monotone or brick buildings of the past.
It could be said that both Hastings and Napier were not only the newest cities on the globe at that time – but also the most colourful.
An American building colour specialist, Ely Jacques Kahn, stated in October 1931, that "an excess of colour in architecture should not be feared. Good taste and harmony will decide whether buildings, singly or in a group, are to please aesthetically. It was not within the province of arbitrary bodies to declare that a building should be decorated in yellow, in violet, or in other colours. The good judgment of designers must prevent clashes of colours."
A different view was taken by W E Begbie of the Mount Albert Borough Council, who had been on a tour of Napier and reported back to his council "I feel, after observing what has been done in Napier, that it is desirable, and it will be necessary for local authorities to have some control over the design and colouring of buildings.
"One block of buildings which I particularly noted presented quite a pleasant effect, but nearby there was a vacant section on which the owner could erect a structure that is keeping with the bylaws but not in the harmony with the rest of the block. I feel sure that the question of controlling the designs and colours of buildings will be raised sharply in the future, and particularly in Napier."
W E Begbie would be quite right as to colour regulation, but probably not in the manner or timing he anticipated.
Some concerned individuals, which became a movement of people, argued in the mid-1980s, for the preservation of Napier's heritage CBD buildings.
After the Art Deco Trust was formed in 1987, its later executive director, Robert McGregor, encouraged building owners to paint their facades in colour palettes that were representative of the past. He had designed painting schemes for almost every building in Napier's CBD.
As nearly all of the original Art Deco building colour schemes had by the 1980s been painted over and looked, some might say, very dull and drab, it was a large undertaking.
But armed with a painting subsidy from the Napier City Council he encouraged most building owners to colour and accent their buildings with his and others' designs, such as architect Guy Natusch with whom he worked on the original former Daily Telegraph building's paint scheme (since changed).
The result was a city ready to shown off to the world – and that's exactly what happened, and Napier's Art Deco story, as most of us know, has national and international recognition.
Hastings District Council followed Napier's lead and began to encourage building owners with a painting subsidy to colour their Art Deco CBD buildings.
Recognising the value of Hastings' heritage buildings' colour schemes, Hastings District Council's district plan has protective regulations for their CBD façade colour schemes, in a manner not to dissimilar to what W E Begbie envisaged 83 years ago.
Michael Fowler is board chairman of the Art Deco Trust.
Signed copies of Michael Fowler's Historic Hawke's Bay book are only available from the Hastings Community Art Centre, Russell St South, Hastings for $65.
Michael Fowler FCA (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a chartered accountant, contract researcher and writer of Hawke's Bay's history.
