Perhaps the only good fortune that accompanied Napier’s devastating earthquake in 1931 was that it coincided with an international design style. Out of the rubble emerged ‘Art Deco Napier’ and, with it, the prominence of local architect James Augustus Louis Hay.

You might even point to the National Tobacco Company building and conclude that Louis Hay is our greatest exponent of art-deco architecture. But on this, you would be wrong. As Peter Shaw has written, Louis Hay cared less for art deco than for fin de siècle Europe. And, yet, with the exception of a brief sojourn in Sydney, Louis Hay spent his entire adult life in Hawke’s Bay, supporting his architectural ambitions vicariously through his collection of books and periodicals: a provincial personality to the end.

In light of this, you could also be forgiven for assuming that the post-’31 rebuilding presented an exceptional occasion during which an aspiring architect could shine. But, here too, you would be wrong. It is true that Napier’s recovery afforded Louis Hay an opportunity to undertake the kinds of commercial project that had previously eluded him, but the earthquake had also damaged or destroyed most of his best houses.

In reality, his work of this period was something of a realist’s apology to his real architectural ambitions. His greatest recovery proposals – the Marine Parade Entertainment Centre and the Albion Hotel – proved to be a step too far for the urgencies of the time and, in 1948, Louis Hay died a rather forlorn figure.

This exhibition (to the credit of its curator, Gail Pope, and her team) makes no claim of art-deco valorisation. What it does is artfully present a career-spanning selection of Louis Hay’s drawings that shows us an architect of uncommon intellectual and creative ambition. But, beyond an attachment to Louis Hay, this exhibition is, first and foremost, a simple and wonderful celebration of architectural drawing.

As the exhibition introduction emphasises, Louis Hay relied upon the abilities of his draughting staff to realise many of these works. The talents of Arthur Milne, Leonard Wolfe and Charles Corne must be added to Napier’s reputation for art-deco excellence, and special mention must be made of Thelma Williamson, who was Louis Hay’s longest-serving and most important employee.

We might agree that it is Louis Hay’s vision that is displayed  in all of these projects but it is often not his hand responsible for what we find so seductive in the images. The early drawings, however, can be reliably attributed to him but, here, there is often a disconcerting heaviness. The best are those executed in a free pencil; they display dark, fleecy lines evoking the touch of a fine artist. But, oddly, Louis Hay’s watercolours are laboured, more like pragmatic exercises in colouring-in than enlivening. This contrast serves to suggest an architect happier in the speedy moment of creativity than in the slow labour of presentation or production drawings.

Yet, at his best, Louis Hay shows a healthy disregard for preciousness where he made late annotations and alterations with his fluent pencil over the top of composed ink. These drawings can be taken at face value as the work of an architectural practice. But, given a chance, they are also arguments for the people who made them.

In the current exhibition, is Leonard Wolfe’s heroic presentation rendition for Louis Hay’s proposed Albion Hotel. There is little doubt that, in formulating this design, Louis Hay had dipped into Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed Wasmuth Portfolio, not only for architectural inspiration but, also, for presentation direction.

However, it is to the margins we should look for a very different kind of influence. In the lower left-hand corner, a small dog is pulling its lead taut in the interests of exploring an American fire hydrant. It is a minor but telling detail. What are we to make of such an intrusion? Perhaps it is the activities of a bored draughtsperson, or a knowing visual commentary of a notable provincial architect with international aspirations who, in his heyday, was renowned for strolling Napier in a white suit and the company of a fox terrier named Spark.

This article first appeared in Architecture New Zealand magazine.

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