Michael Fowler: Louis Hay and the Prairie Style

The former Napier Fire Board building in Tennyson St, which needed reconstruction work after the 1931 earthquake. Photo/Tony Speakman, professional photographer and graphic artist

After the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake and resulting fires destroyed most of the brick buildings and the remaining stock of wooden ones in the Napier Central Business District, a businessman, Mr Peters, made a suggestion.

He favoured following Santa Barbara in the United States and rebuilding the Napier CBD in Spanish Mission style only – as had been done after the Californian city's earthquake of the 1920s.

If this had happened, Napier today would be celebrating probably one of the highest concentrations of Spanish Mission CBD buildings in the world.

However (fortunately) this didn't occur and architects could give free rein to their creative expressions which resulted in Stripped Classical, Spanish Mission, Art Deco and lesser known styles in New Zealand called Prairie and the Chicago School of architecture.

In fact, most buildings in Napier are not purely one style and combine two or even three of the styles.

Napier architect Louis Hay (1881-1948) was a follower of the work of Americans Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan – in particular the Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright, a one-time pupil of Sullivan.

Louis Hay had copies of the work of Louis Sullivan from the 1880s, and Frank Wright's from his published 1912 folio of work – which influenced him in his designs.

The Prairie style is characterised by heavy concrete eyebrows above the windows, deep-set windows which extend to the eaves, long concrete beams (pilasters) and flat or hipped roofs.

Louis began designing in the Prairie style in the 1910s and 1920s with the former Soldiers' Club (1916), former Napier Fire Station (1921), and the Women's Rest (1926) and Parkers Chambers (1930).

Of these buildings, only the Soldiers' Club came through totally unscathed from the 1931 quake, and reconstruction of the others was needed.

After the quake, he used reinforced concrete, as required by law.

Parkers Chambers in Herschell St has bricks as a veneer over concrete reinforcing.

Louis' design work after the quake meant many buildings of his were Prairie, including the present Art Deco Trust's premises, but with Art Deco geometric decoration at the top of the pilasters.

He also designed in the Chicago style, with his best-known work being the National Tobacco Company building (1933) in Ahuriri, which also combines elements of Art Deco and Art Nouveau.

This replaced a 1925 building he had designed which collapsed in the quake.

The arch in a cube form on the facade is a classic Louis Sullivan signature. This is Napier's most photographed Art Deco building for good reason.

His other significant Chicago School-style building is the former AMP building on the corner of Shakespeare and Browning streets, which also features the arch in a cube.

The addition of the Prairie and Chicago School styles from Louis Hay makes Napier's post-1931 architecture even more unique.

• Dedicated to the memory of Robert Bergen McGregor (1940-2015) – Hawke's Bay Art Deco legend, and sadly missed.

• Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is an EIT accounting lecturer, and in his spare time a recorder of Hawke's Bay's history.