Masonic Hotel (1) - 26 February 2015

As highlighted in my earlier commentary, Napier, on New Zealand's North Island is the home of some delightful architecture. As one stands and mentally sweeps away the trappings of the modern era, the Art Deco highlights of the town transport one back to a different era. None is more powerfully elegant than the Masonic Hotel. It was built in its present form in 1932 as a defiant Napier resurrected itself from the rubble of the previous year's earthquake. The earlier building had been consumed in one of the many fires which raged in the aftermath of that catastrophe.

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