From Municipal Baths to Ocean Spa

[As published in March/April BayBuzz magazine.]

“Swimming is more than a showy accomplishment which permits girls to play the part of graceful sea nymphs. It is a thoroughly practical exercise and one which improves the physical condition perhaps more than any other sport, while it has few equals in the degree of enjoyment to the swimmer.” 

So says ‘Isabel’, one of several writers for the ‘Women’s Realm’ – a column published regularly in Napier’s Daily Telegraph in the early 1900s. 

I’ll come back to more from Isabel soon, but the impetus for her column on November 8,1909 was that only a few weeks earlier, 19 October, crowds poured onto Napier’s Marine Parade to witness the opening of the salt water Municipal Baths – one of two forerunners to Ocean Spa today. 

It was a huge event with Mayor and local MP John Vigor Brown wearing his official robes for the first time and the Daily Telegraph declaring Napier “the leading watering place in the Dominion”. 

Nicknamed ‘the big bath’, the new pool was 100 feet long by 50 feet wide with the supply of salt water obtained from a cylinder 25ft long, which was sunk into the beach. Up to 130 bathers could swim at any one time while plenty of spectators could be accommodated in tiered seating around its edges.

The pool complex included porcelain plunge baths fitted up for hot and salt water and widely advertised for their curative value, especially for complaints such as sciatica, neuritis, lumbago, rheumatism, fibrosis, insomnia and nervous disorders. A Sicilian or douche bath was also provided for those who ‘fancy it’. 

“In view of the interest that is being taken in swimming this season and the impetus the sport has received through the completion of the fine new baths, a few remarks on the benefits derived from swimming exercises will be apropos,” Isabel continues in her column. 

“The first lesson after learning to keep up in the water usually includes breaststroke and while this has less speed in it than side stroke, it is one of the most attractive for young women. It is easy, graceful and an excellent exercise because it develops both sides of the body equally.”

As well as Isabel’s advice to Napier women, news reports and Letters to the Editor in the Daily Telegraph in the weeks after the Municipal Baths opened reflect the times and tell an interesting, and sometimes shocking, story. 

For example, on November 8th, 1909, a news report was headed up “Shall John Bathe?” 

“Whether Chinese should be allowed to use the baths was a question brought up in the ordinary business of the Borough Council last evening,” the report continued. 

“Cr. Eagleton said that Chinese were in the habit of going to the baths and people objected to their presence …” He went on to move that Chinese be excluded from bath’s premises …

“Cnr. Plowman seconded the motion pro forma, but at the same time he wished Cnr. Eagleton would withdraw it, as the Chinese had a Consul in Wellington, and it would be as well not to risk giving offense to such a powerful nation.

“Cr. Beecham said the trouble lay in the fact that the baths were too popular”, while Mayor Vigor Brown said the motion might lead to trouble, and “that the caretaker already had power, under the regulations, to exclude any person he thought fit”. 

The next day an impassioned letter from Oliver Dean, the Vicar of St Andrews asked, “What harm can there possibly be in a Chinaman or two taking a quiet dip in a large and deep swimming bath, and salt water at that, with all the germ destroying powers of such water, a bath, too, of which (for John pays taxes) he is one of the proprietors. It was a bigoted motion.”

There were early complaints via Letters to the Editor about the separate swimming times for men and women. Women from 4-5pm, men after 5pm. “While the women bathe, many men must wait, at hours which are most inconvenient to them, and vice versa …” wrote one user. Another said, visitors to the place (presumably men) “do not want to wait till after 5, when the sun has gone from the beach, to have a swim.”

According to HB historian Michael Fowler (HB Today 20 January, 2024), “mixed bathing was allowed at set times – 7.30pm to 9pm on Wednesdays and Fridays”. On these nights spectators far outnumbered the swimmers, leading to “some observations that ‘watching’ at the Napier Municipal Baths was a popular past-time …”

Zoom ahead a century and on a temperamental day in early January 2025, I found myself, with my adult daughter, at the Ocean Spa front desk. 

I hadn’t kept up with the Ocean Spa entry price hike after Napier City Council (NCC) took over management in 2023. On learning it would cost my daughter $20, and myself a pensioner $14, I was grumpy and nearly turned anyway. But I’m glad I didn’t. We had a glorious afternoon, the Marine Parade’s signature Norfolk Pines towering above as we hopped in and out of the sauna; let bubbles massage our backs in the spa as we spied two container ships far on the ocean’s horizon; lolled about like small children in the paddling pool; and then managed a few lengths of breaststroke back and forth in the lane pool. 

“There are few chest exercises of greater benefit than breaststroke,” notes Isabel. 

In the 1940s, my mother used to march down to swim at the Municipal Baths with her Napier Girls’ High School class. And when I was a child, I remember hours splashing in the Swan paddling pool, built in 1917 next to the ‘big bath’ in honour of longstanding Mayor George Henry Swan. (Today, the Swan paddling pool’s historical shelter, designed by architect Louis Hay, remains a visible piece of history at the Ocean Spa complex.)

In 1967 the Municipal Baths were replaced with a new pool on the same site. Ocean Spa then replaced this and the old Swan Paddling Pools when it opened in February 2003. 

NCC took over management of Ocean Spa in 2023 and in a bid to “reduce the rate burden on residents” upped fees in 2024, with entry prices soaring 74%. As a result patronage plunged with 5,000 fewer people walking through the facility’s doors in July and August than the previous year. 

“The cost of entry hadn’t increased for many years, so it was an important step,” says Mayor Kirsten Wise, who told BayBuzz about 20,000 people used the pools in January 2025. This is on a par with the 19,000-odd who used the pools in July 2023 before the price change. 

Special resident rates ($16 casual adult rate, $12 pensioner and a disability rate) have been introduced and Mayor Wise says “so far about 300 households have applied for a residents’ card that allows the discount”.

In a nod to the advice of Isabel – “the girl who would like to get rid of any superfluous breadth of hip should try swimming” – I’ve signed up for the residents’ card and will continue to visit Ocean Spa, mindful of staying long enough to get my money’s worth. 

Once called the ‘Nice of the Southern Hemisphere’, or ‘the Malta of the South Seas’, Napier and its Marine Parade is still pretty special, and to my mind, Ocean Spa’s long and colourful history is an important part of that.

Photos supplied by Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank