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New! Masonic Hotel: The Heart of Napier

This eloquently written book about the heart of Napier is filled with rich historic tales and images. You will be able to learn about the Masonic’s battles with numerous fires. How has it managed to rebuild itself so many times and most importantly why? Why did Napier feel it was such an integral part of its City?

So many incredible people have chosen the Masonic as their hotel, such as Mark Twain, who is quoted in the book saying “I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back in Napier. Here we have the smooth and placidly complaining sea at our door, with nothing between us but 20 yards of shingle. Away down here 55 degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar tongue – a foreign tongue – tongue bred among the ice fields of the Antarctic – a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast unvisited solitude it has come from. It was very delicious and solacing to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there.”

The author Michael Fowler describes himself as a self- employed historian and you can see his motivation for unearthing the region’s social history with every word he puts to page. Having written Historic Hawke’s Bay this ‘love letter’ to the Masonic Hotel is a delightful change and allowed him to dig deeper into the true Heart of this building and the people who have run it over the years.