From petrol rationing in 1950 to carless days in 1979. The thirty years when the car defined Heretaunga Street West... and what happened when the petrol ran out.

Monster stock-taking sales. Diamond rings. Fuji silk at 2/11 a yard. A bicycle race outside the Stortford Lodge Hotel. And somewhere in the distance, the Jazz Age.

Money, marble and the 1931 reset. From a sledge-delivered safe in December 1884 to the moment every bank on the street fell at once.

Eleven ghost letters still readable in the plasterwork above Heretaunga Street West. The businesses are gone. The names are still up there.

10:46am, 3 February 1931. Two and a half minutes. The earthquake that destroyed Hastings and built the city we live in today.

The case for restoring WestSide's Art Deco facades. The HDC Façade Enhancement Scheme. The buildings that were built in a hurry and turned out to be the best things the city ever made.