Dillingham | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

July 17, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pālama Settlement

Central Union Church dates back to the days of the Seaman’s Bethel Church in 1828. It was formally founded in 1887 and it moved into its present location in 1924.

In addition to developing new institutions within the church, the congregation made great strides in the field of missionary work in the city of Honolulu, including the beginning of the present Pālama Settlement.

Pālama, then a sleepy neighborhood of neat little cottages and taro patches, was chosen by philanthropist and Central Union members Mr. and Mrs. PC Jones as the site for a new chapel.

On the makai side of King street, opposite Liliha Street, the chapel was dedicated on June 1, 1896, and presented to Central Union by the Joneses, on the condition that the church …

… “maintain public preaching there on Sundays, a weekly prayer meeting, sustain a Sabbath school and also an occasional social for the residents of Pālama, the services to be conducted in the English language.”

Located west of Nuʻuanu Stream, near Downtown Honolulu, Pālama was home to mostly working-class Hawaiian families.

Walter F. Dillingham, long active in philanthropic endeavors in Honolulu, once observed of Pālama: “One must picture Honolulu at the end of the century with its mixture of races, their variety of foods, dress, cultures, customs and living habits. All this gave Honolulu a character and personality not duplicated in any American city.”

“The business section was composed mainly of low framed buildings with corrugated iron roofs near the water front. Streets were unpaved, horse-drawn vehicles, with the ox-cart was a common sight. Taro patches, duck ponds and even sugar cane grew in the section of Palama. It was in such a section that Palama Chapel was built and which grew to be Palama Settlement.” (HJH)

In 1900, as Honolulu health officials attempted to rid the nearby Chinatown area of bubonic plague, fire destroyed a four-block section. Displaced residents took up residence in newly built tenements in Pālama, changing the physical, social and economic make-up of the community.

The chapel’s staff located housing for many of the displaced and took care of the injured and children. It also ministered to the needs of immigrants who moved into the Pālama area soon after arriving in the Islands.

Social worker James Arthur Rath, Sr. and his wife, Ragna Helsher Rath, turned Pālama Chapel into Pālama Settlement (in September 1906,) a chartered, independent, non-sectarian organization receiving contributions from the islands’ elite.

“… they called them ‘settlement houses,’ the philosophy being that the head worker, as they called them, settled in the community. Instead of going in to spend the day working and coming out, they settled in, raised their families there and in that way learned …”

“… one, what the people needed; two, gained their confidence so that they could help them fulfill their needs; and then, three, went ahead and designed programs for exactly what the people needed.”

“So they were settlers and therefore they called them settlement houses. Which is what the origin of Pālama Settlement was because my father and my mother settled there and all five of us children were born and raised in our home in the settlement.” (Robert H. Rath, Sr)

The Raths established the territory’s first public nursing department, a day-camp for children with tuberculosis, a pure milk depot, a day nursery, a night school, and low-rent housing.

In 1908, an indoor swimming pool was opened, and a year later, a gymnasium and bowling alley were built above it. Later, outdoors, a playground, tennis court, and basketball court were added.

Also that year, a new Parish House was erected on an adjacent property at Richards Street, to be used for Sunday School classes and midweek meetings

After a territory-wide fund-raising effort, in 1925 Pālama Settlement moved to its present location with nine buildings spread over eight acres of land on Vineyard and Pālama streets.

Over the years, a medical clinic, an outpatient clinic and the Strong-Carter Dental Clinic were established along with annual circuses, athletic competitions, social and community-service clubs, boardinghouses for women and a preschool. Classes and events relating to music, arts, vocations, and athletics were also offered.

World War II and the postwar era brought about widespread changes in Hawai‘i’s social, economic, and political environment. These developments, in turn, led to changes in the way social agencies such as Pālama Settlement addressed community needs.

Observers noted that Pālama Settlement was departing from its original settlement house philosophy by offering programs for fees and catering to a broad cross section of people regardless of where they lived.

The 1960s and 1970s were periods of re-evaluation, adjustment, and growth, with the settlement’s programs becoming more people-centered rather than activity-centered, stressing human and community needs as opposed to uncoordinated, departmentalized activities, following the large-scale social and economic programs being implemented nationally.

Civil rights and anti-poverty legislation brought large amounts of federal monies to Pālama Settlement for local programs geared to at-risk youth and community development.

Pālama Settlement – a smaller one due to the widening of Vineyard Boulevard and the construction of the H-1 Freeway – continues to exist as a nonprofit, nongovernmental agency dedicated to helping needy families and at-risk youths.

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Palama Chapel-(centralunionchurch-org)-circa 1897-1901

Original Palama Settlement at King and Liliha streets-(HJH)-circa 1912

Palama_Settlement-(palamasettlement-org)

James Arthur Rath (1870-1929) and Ragna Helsher Rath (1879-1981)founded Pälama Settlement in 1905-(honoluluadvertiser)

Palama_Settlement

Palama Settlement Swim Meet-(hawaii-edu)-1932

Palama_Settlement

If you had a toothache in 1935, you could get dental work done at Palama Settlement

July 12, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

La Pietra

Papaʻenaʻena heiau was situated on the side of Lēʻahi, Diamond Head. It was referred to by early writers as “Lēʻahi heiau.”

Papaʻenaʻena was reportedly built by Maui King Kahekili to commemorate his conquest of Oʻahu. This heiau was destroyed in about 1856 and its stones were carted off to Waikīkī for use as rock walls and driveways.

During the Mahele this site was given by the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to the future King Lunalilo. After the king’s death this site was sold to James Campbell, in 1883. Later, Walter F. Dillingham bought the land from Campbell.

In 1910, Walter Dillingham married Louise Gaylord. Bucking the current trend of wealthy families living in Mānoa, Mr. Dillingham chose to build his new bride a home on a dry and – at the time – remote area on the slopes of Diamond Head.

With the help of famed Chicago architect, David Adler, they built a home similar to the Villa La Pietra they admired in Tuscany while on their honeymoon.

Three elements compose the central structure. One is facing the northward toward the Koʻolau range, one westward to the Waianae range, and one southward to the sea.

All three face inward on a flagged courtyard surrounded by a pillared arcade. In the center of the courtyard is an Italianate fountain, which was used to cool the building when the breeze swept through the structure.

The building is a composite of villa, as noted by Grace Tower Warren, Island Hostess: An Italian Villa in Hawaii, Paradise of the Pacific, Vol. 63:
“Many people have had the idea that La Pietra is a copy of my aunt’s villa in Florence of the same name, the one In which Mr. Dillingham and I were married, but such is not the case”, said Mrs. Dillingham.

“It is a composite of several of the beautiful villas in Florence to which my aunt, Mrs. Acton, took me, The facade facing the Waianae Mountains and the town is copied from the Villa Cambreia, The facade facing the Koolau Mountains is a replica of the de Medici villa in Florence. Our architect was David Adler, and he beautifully combined and coordinated the designs and ideas we loved…”

Mr. Dillingham and Adler did not work together in person. At the time Adler was designing another residence in New York. So Mr. Dillingham sent Mr. Adler detailed measurements and contour maps of the site, and photographs showing the setting in which the villa would stand.

With that, La Pietra – meaning The Gem or The Rock – was born.

The Dillingham home was completed in 1922 and included 5 bedrooms, a swimming pool, a formal dining room, horse stables, servants’ quarters, tennis courts, and a game/pool table room.

Architecturally, the home is described as “An extensive two-story “Italian villa” in an imposing terraced setting overlooking Kapiʻolani Park, Waikiki Bay and Honolulu; an example of the “Mediterranean Revival” period which had some popularity in Honolulu, as on the mainland.”

For the next 40 years, La Pietra was a social center for Honolulu’s wealthy and famous, with visitors to the estate including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Walt Disney.

Upon Mr. Dillingham’s death in 1963, Punahou School gained ownership of La Pietra and used it for faculty housing; the property was eventually sold to the newly formed Hawaii School for Girls in 1969.

With its start at Central Union Church, Hawaii School for Girls then renamed and relocated to La Pietra – Hawaii School for Girls, an independent, college preparatory school for girls, which consisted of nine founding teachers, 210 girls and Head of School, Joseph Pynchon.

Over the years, various enhancements were made to the campus. A six classroom building named in honor of Mrs. Cooke was dedicated in January 1977.

The athletic complex, completed in 1987, was named in honor of Mrs. Anthony in 2008. Bachman Science Center was built in 1997. Most recently, the school renovated its library to create Hawaii’s first all-digital school library.

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La Pietra

Walter_Francis_Dillingham-(WC)

May 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Downtown Honolulu In 1950

A picture is worth a thousand words; they (and maps) tell stories. This map tells lots of stories … and brings back some great memories.

OK, I wasn’t even born when the map was printed. But a few years later, when I was a kid, there are a lot of familiar places (and associated stories) depicted on this map.

Take some time looking at the ownership and operations up and down the streets. There have been lots of changes since then – but the memories are still here.

Back then, Bishop only went to Beretania – with no further mauka extension (it finally popped through and extended/ connected to the Pali Highway and became the windward gateway into “Town.”)
Bishop Street was the home of the Big 5. Bishop Street was and continues to be the center of Hawai‘i commerce and banking (in the center of the map, running up/down.)

Did you notice their placement on Bishop Street (and to each other) back then (as well as the battling banks across Bishop Street from each other?)

Five major companies emerged to provide operations, marketing, supplies and other services for the plantations and eventually came to own and manage most of them. They became known as the Big 5:

Amfac (1849) – Hackfeld & Company – a German firm that later became American Factors Ltd (Amfac.) It was started by a young German selling goods to whalers and grew to manage and control various sugar operations.
Alexander & Baldwin (1870) – started by Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin, sons of missionaries. It was the only Big 5 that started in sugar. Their irrigation project sent water 17-miles from Haleakala to 3,000-dry sugar cane acres in central Maui.
Theo H. Davies (1845) – a British firm that started as a small isle trading company and expanded into other businesses including sugar, transportation and insurance.
Castle & Cooke (1851) – founded by missionaries (Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke,) which originally sold sewing machines, farm tools and medicine in Hawaii. It later bought stock in sugar plantations and focused on sugar companies.
C. Brewer – (1826) founded by James Hunnewell, an officer on the Thaddeus that brought the original missionaries to Hawai‘i in 1820. He returned in 1826 to set up a trading company specialized in supplying whaling ships but then moved into sugar and molasses. The firm’s namesake, Capt. Charles Brewer, became a partner in 1836.

Another Hawai‘i family and company, Dillingham, started in the late-1800s, although not a “Big Five,” deserves some attention – it’s offices were down there, too (next to the Big 5.)

They played a critical role in agricultural operations through leasing land and controlling some operations, but mostly moved the various goods on OR&L.

Back in the ‘50s, Fort Street was “it” for shopping (to the left of Bishop Street, also running mauka/makai – now, it’s mostly a pedestrian mall.)

You can read the names of old Honolulu retail iconic institutions – Liberty House, McInerny, Watumull and Andrade – along with Kress, Woolworths, National Dollar and Longs Drugs.

I remember the “moving windows” during Christmas season; we’d pile in the station wagon and take a special trip over the Pali to downtown to Christmas shop (the Pali Tunnels and Ala Moana Center weren’t open until 1959.)

We’d walk up and down Fort Street and look at all the animated window displays, then stop in at a restaurant for dinner (one of our favorites was Fisherman’s Wharf at Kewalo Basin.)

‘Iolani Palace is on the site labeled Territorial Executive Grounds (we’re still nine years away from statehood;) mauka of it had different uses – it’s now the State Capitol and Hotel Street walkway.

The YWCA (just to the left of ‘Iolani Palace) is still going strong and nearby was the YMCA, now converted to the Hawai‘i State Art Museum and state offices.

The Alexander Young Hotel, opened in 1903 (on Bishop between Hotel and King,) was later converted hold offices and was demolished in 1981.

You can see some roads have changed or have been consolidated into adjoining properties. Did you notice, back then, Ala Moana/Nimitz on the map was called Queen Street?

In my early years in real estate (while still a student at UH, I used to do research in the Tax Office and Bureau of Conveyances (lower right of map.) Fifty-years later, I directed DLNR which now has the Bureau of Conveyances under its management umbrella.

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Downtown_Honolulu-Building_ownership_noted-Map-1950

Bishop Street ended at Beretania in 1959

American Factors Building was demolishe

Amfac-Building-corner-of-Fort-Queen-Streets

Theo H Davies Building-1920s

Queen-Street-view-of-C.-Brewer-Building

c brewer & co ltd

In_front_of_Castle&Cooke-Building-1945-Star-Bulletin

Alexander&Baldwin-Building

First_Hawaiian_Bank_Building (old)

Dillingham_Transportation_Building

Queens_Hospital-1954

Schuman Carriage-corner of Beretania and Richards-the entire block was torn down to build the State Capitol Building-1950s

McInerny

Alexander Young Building

Honolulu Iron Works 1960. Today it is the location of Restaurant Row.

Honolulu Harbor-1950s

Fort Street looking mauka from King street-11-08-59

Downtown Honolulu in 1956. McInerny on the left, and the overhead lines are for trolley buses

Bishop_Street-1954

Bishop_Street_Looking_Makai-Dillingham_Transportation_Bldg-1940

Honolulu_Harbor-Downtown-aerial-1950s

Downtown_Honolulu-1957

Honolulu and Vicinity-Transit-Map-1949

Honolulu-HVB-map-1952

April 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hale‘iwa Hotel

While the Moana is touted as the First lady of Waikīkī, the Hale‘iwa Hotel, at the end of the OR&L train line in North Shore O‘ahu was constructed a year before the Moana.

In 1898, as part of the O‘ahu Railway & Land Company (OR&L) rail system, the Hale‘iwa Hotel (“house of the ‘iwa”, or frigate bird) was completed.

The hotel was part of a bigger plan to expand and diversify operations of the OR&L rail line. OR&L primarily serviced the sugar plantations, adding a hotel at the end of the line opened up opportunities to expand the number of people riding the train.

Passenger travel was an add-on opportunity that not only included train rides; they also operated a bus system. However, the hauling for the agricultural ventures was the most lucrative.

Typical hotels, like the Moana and later the Alexander Young Hotel in downtown Honolulu, served the traditional function of accommodating visitors; Ben F. Dillingham’s hotel sought that, as well as the diversified use of his train line.

On the continent, railroads were building hotels on their lines as a means to enhance the passenger counts – Hawai‘i, through OR&L, was doing the same.

By the early-1900s, the expanded railway cut across the island, serving several sugar and pineapple plantations, and the popular Hale‘iwa Hotel. They even included a “Kodak Camera Train” (associated with the Hula Show) for Sunday trips to Hale‘iwa for picture-taking.

When the hotel opened on August 5, 1899, guests were conveyed from the railway terminal over the Anahulu stream to fourteen luxurious suites, each had a bath with hot-and-cold running water.

Thrum’s ‘Hawaiian Annual’ (1900,) noted, “In providing so tempting an inn as an adjunct and special attraction for travel by the Oahu Railway – also of his (Dillinghams’s) creation – the old maxim of ‘what is worth doing is worth doing well’ has been well observed, everything About the hotel is first class…”

The weekend getaway from Honolulu to the Hale‘iwa Hotel became hugely popular with the city affluent who enjoyed a retreat in “the country.”

Reportedly, a round-trip, two-day excursion by train from Honolulu to Hale‘iwa, around Ka‘ena Point, cost $10. It included an overnight stay at the Hotel, a tour through Waialua sugar mill and a ride up to Wahiawa to tour the plantations.
The original manager was Curtis Iaukea, who had been chamberlain to Kalākaua’s royal household and was famed for his knowledge of protocol.

To while away the time there, the hotel recreational activities offered guests golf (reportedly the second course to be constructed in the islands,) tennis, fishing, canoeing and glass-bottom boat rides.

With the opening of the Hale‘iwa Hotel, the business climate expanded and tourism began to play a hand in the area. Many of the early business families and their original business buildings still remain in Hale‘iwa town today. Some of the town’s buildings are protected landmarks.

As noted in ‘The Union Pacific Magazine,’ (1924) “there are few more charming spots in the Hawaiian Islands than this delightful hotel with its bungalow cottages for guests and its beautiful grounds sloping gently back to the bank of a crystal clear river that runs out between lava rocks to the sea”.

By the late-1920s, it was hard to maintain the luxury and level of service at the hotel. What had been built two decades before to lure passengers to ride the train no longer applied, as more and more people owned cars.

In 1930 the railroad closed the hotel and it became a private ‘Haleiwa Beach Club.’ Later, the Haleiwa Hotel became the ‘Haleiwa Army Officer’s Club.’

During the height of its popularity, the hotel had made the name Hale‘iwa famous, and when its, ultimately, doors closed in 1943; its name remained as the name of the surrounding community – Hale‘iwa.

The last ride on OR&L’s train operations was on December 31, 1947, ending 58-years of steam locomotives hauling all kinds of people, freight and other around O‘ahu.

By 1953, the aged, termite-ridden structure had been torn down. Hale‘iwa Joe’s restaurant now stands where the Hale‘iwa Hotel once stood.

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Haleiwa_Hotel-from rail

Haleiwa_Hotel

Haleiwa-Hotel

HaleiwaHotel

Haleiwa Hotel

circa 1910, from The Advertiser’s archives shows the old Hale’iwa Hotel

Bridge at Haleiwa Hotel

Haleiwa_Hotel-1930s

Haleiwa-Hotel-Interior

Haleiwa Hotel-Interior

Driveway at Haleʻiwa Hotel circa 1915

Haleiwa Hotel-1935

Panoramic-view-of-Haleiwa-Hotel-1902-four-years-after-Benjamin-Dillingham-opened-the-hotel-in-1898

August 13, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Big Five (plus 2)

“By 1941, every time a native Hawaiian switched on his lights, turned on the gas or rode on a street car, he paid a tiny tribute into Big Five coffers.” (Alexander MacDonald, 1944)

The story of Hawaii’s largest companies dominates Hawaiʻi’s economic history. Since the early/mid-1800s, until relatively recently, five major companies emerged and dominated the Island’s economic framework. Their common trait: they were focused on agriculture – sugar.

They became known as the Big Five:

C. Brewer & Co.
Founded: October 1826; Capt. James Hunnewell (American Sea Captain, Merchant; Charles Brewer was American Merchant)
Incorporated: February 7, 1883

Theo H. Davies & Co.
Founded: 1845; James and John Starkey, and Robert C. Janion (English Merchants; Theophilus Harris Davies was Welch Merchant)
Incorporated: January 1894

Amfac
Founded: 1849; Heinrich Hackfeld and Johann Carl Pflueger (German Merchants)
Incorporated: 1897 (H Hackfeld & Co;) American Factors Ltd, 1918

Castle & Cooke
Founded: 1851; Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke (American Mission Secular Agents)
Incorporated: 1894

Alexander & Baldwin
Founded: 1870; Samuel Thomas Alexander & Henry Perrine Baldwin (American, Sons of Missionaries)
Incorporated: 1900

Some suggest they were started and run by the missionaries. Actually, only Castle & Cooke had direct ties to the mission – Castle ran the ‘depository’ and Cooke was a teacher.

Alexander & Baldwin were sons of missionaries, but not a formal part of the mission. Brewer was an American sea captain and merchant; the founders of Davies were English merchants and the founders of Amfac were German merchants.

Hawaiʻi’s industrial plantations began to emerge at this time (1860s;) they were further fueled by the Treaty of Reciprocity – 1875 between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market. Through the treaty, the US obtained Pearl Harbor and Hawai‘i’s sugar planters received duty-free entry into U.S. markets for their sugar.

As the sugar industry pushed ahead, something else new was introduced into the economic scheme of things. In Honolulu two or three new firms began business solely to handle the affairs of the scattered plantations.

They began by acting as selling agents for the planters. Gradually they took over other functions: financing crops, importing labor, purchasing machinery for the planters and serving in all ways as their business agents. The new businesses soon found themselves running the sugar industry.

By the 1880s, five of these concerns, called factors, eventually dominated the field. How effectively the Big Five could band together as one against outside forces whether the enemy was foreign capital, insects, labor, competing products or disease was well demonstrated by their Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, more familiarly known as the HSPA. (MacDonald)

This group organization for Hawaii’s sugar industry was founded in 1882 as the Planters’ Labor and Supply Company when the planters found they had common problems in irrigating the sugar lands, growing the cane, and finding labor. That was its immediate official purpose.

“Everything that comes into the territory comes through a large corporation. The independent businessman who attempts to enter business here immediately finds that even nationally advertised lines from the mainland are tied up by the Big Five. It is almost impossible to get an independent line of business as they have everything – lumber paint, right down the line.” (Edward Walker, High Sheriff of Hawaiʻi, 1937; Kent)

Acting as agents for thirty-six of the thirty-eight sugar plantations, the Big Five openly monopolized the sugar trade. Twenty-nine firms, producing seven out of every eight tons of sugar exported from the Islands, refined, markets and distributed through the Big Five’s wholly owned California and Hawaiian Sugar Company, whose refinery, the largest in the world, was on San Francisco Bay. (Kent)

They branched out into other businesses. To squeeze additional profits out of the sugar trade, they started their own refinery in California; it was to become the largest in the world. They built up a fleet of ships, the Matson line, to carry the sugar away and to bring back goods and passengers.

They developed inter-island shipping, built hotels, put capital into insurance, cattle, pineapples, banking. They took over bodily the wholesaling of goods coming into the Islands; ninety percent of retail stock came from their warehouses.

Their capital started the public utilities. Their street railway transported Hawaiians, their gas and electric plants lighted the city, they acquired the communications systems. (MacDonald)

The sugar industry was the prime force in transforming Hawaiʻi from a traditional, insular, agrarian and debt‐ridden society into a multicultural, cosmopolitan and prosperous one. (Carol Wilcox)

With statehood in 1959 and the almost simultaneous introduction of passenger jet airplanes, the tourist industry began to grow rapidly.

The industry came to maturity by the turn of the century; the industry peaked in the 1930s. Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar. (That plummeted to 492,000-tons in 1995.)

A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s. As sugar declined, tourism took its place – and far surpassed it. Like many other societies, Hawaii underwent a profound transformation from an agrarian to a service economy.

There were a couple other associated entities that were associated with the Big 5” Dillingham (Benjamin Franklin Dillingham) and Campbell (James Campbell) and their associated companies.

Click HERE to view/download for more information on Hawai‘i’s Big 5 (plus 2).

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