Hastings District Libraries

Blossom Festival 2011

This year's Blossom Festival will be held 15 - 25 September 15, with the parade on Saturday 17 September.

See the Festival Programme at www.visithastings.co.nz/eventlisting/hastings-blossom-festival

1950 - The First Blossom Festival

• After a meeting in March 1950, Greater Hastings Inc was formed to promote Hastings, attract visitors and assert the town's rivalry with Napier which had just become a city. 
• With support from retailers and fruitgrowers, Greater Hastings Inc. organised the first Blossom Week Festival to mark the start of the 1950-51 fruit season. Streets and shop windows were bedecked with paper blossoms. 
• The highlight of the week was the parade with 41 decorated floats. 
• People danced in the streets to band music until around 10.30pm. 
• With the success of the first festival, it then became an annual event, attracting up to 50,000 people some years.  

Statistics New Zealand gathers comprehensive data on many aspects of our region.

Visit their website to find the latest economic, social and demographic statistics for Hastings District and Hawke's Bay.

http://search.stats.govt.nz/search?w=hastings  

Also Interactive Maps is useful. 

From a free reading room to computerised services, the Hastings Library has evolved over many years. Our buildings have been built, fallen down (literally), moved, rebuilt and extended, to provide a much used community service in the heart of Hastings.

Photo: The old Hastings Library building in Market Street South, destroyed in the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake.

The main repositories of local history information are: Hastings & Havelock North Libraries, Napier Library and the Hawke's Bay Museum. 

Hawke's Bay local history records and items may also be located at National Archives and the Alexander Turnbull Library (part of the National Library) in Wellington.

The Hastings District was devastated by the 1931 earthquake.  The damaged buildings were replaced by strongly reinforced buildings in the Art Deco and Spanish Mission styles. 

Some buildings did survive the earthquake, so we now have an interesting mixture of architectural styles and some very fine buildings. 

The Landmarks History Group is holding a series of monthly talks on Hawke's Bay history.  The topics are varied and interesting.  All are welcome to attend.

The meetings are held on the second Tuesday of the month, 5:30pm - 6.30pm, upstairs at Hastings War Memorial Library.

Meeting -Tuesday 15 November

Adrian Coleman, author of Lust for Land: James Henry Coleman – his life, his fortune, his descendants

November’s Landmarks History Group speaker was Mr A J Coleman, retired solicitor, and recent author on the life of his great-grandfather, James Henry Coleman. Mr Coleman spoke on events surrounding early Hawke’s Bay, in particular the activities of the early pastoralists in connection with their land acquisitions, which he has written about in his book Lust for Land. He focussed on Napier’s early dominance as the seat of power in Hawke’s Bay.