Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pleasanton Hotel

“The premises of the late (Henry) Alexander Isenberg, at the corner of Punahou and Wilder avenue are to be opened today by Mrs JW Macdonald as a family hotel, to be called the Pleasanton.” The Isenberg home-turned-hotel “is in the most beautiful residential portion of Honolulu – Punahou. Lovely grounds occupying five acres of tropical garden surround the palatial building. The O‘ahu College is close by and the entrance to the exquisite and historic valley of Mānoa is reached by the cars running past the hotel.”

“The Pleasanton ‘s business has been increasing rapidly and there are now fifty guests, although the room space is rather limited.” In 1950, the Lutheran Church purchased part of the old Alexander Isenberg/Pleasanton Hotel property. On another portion of the property the YWCA built ‘Fernhurst’ (in 1952,) offering nightly shared accommodations. Between them is a high-rise condominium building that retains the memory of the old hotel in its name: The Pleasanton.

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Roosevelt High School

Roosevelt was the only public, English-standard secondary school in the Territory of Hawai‘i. It was initially composed of grades seven to eleven and housed in temporary quarters in an old, Normal School building that formerly trained teachers for Hawai‘i’s public schools. Honolulu students would typically go to Lincoln, then to Jefferson or Stevenson (both English Standard) and then to President Theodore Roosevelt High School. The school’s property encompasses a little over 20-acres in upper Makiki, in Honolulu. From 1883-1927, the site had been the home of Lunalilo Home.

A heated football rivalry began in 1933 between Roosevelt and nearby Punahou. Roosevelt seniors Lex Brodie, Rufus Hagood and Gibby Rietow responded by painting the blue pie sections of Punahou’s Pauahi Hall dome green. (At the time Roosevelt’s school colors were green and gold; out of deference for Leilehua High School, Roosevelt’s colors were changed to today’s red and gold in 1939.) The tradition continued until 1969, after which Roosevelt became a part of the O‘ahu Interscholastic Association and Punahou the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, and the two schools no longer played regular season games against each other.

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Mānoa – Home of Hawai‘i’s Commercial Agricultural Ventures

Mānoa Valley was a favored spot of the Ali‘i. In early times Mānoa Valley was socially divided into “Mānoa-Aliʻi” or “royal Mānoa” on the west, and “Mānoa-Kanaka” or “commoners’ (makaʻāinana) Mānoa” on the east. The Ali‘i lived on the high, cooler western (left) slopes; the commoners lived on the warmer eastern (right) slopes and on the valley floor where they farmed.

The well-watered, fertile and relatively level lands of Mānoa Valley supported extensive wet taro cultivation well into the twentieth century. Click the link for more information about Mānoa’s pioneering role in the development of commercial-scale agricultural ventures in the Islands – Sugar, Pineapple, Coffee and Macadamia Nuts – all had their commercial start in the Islands, in Mānoa.

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

ʻIolani Palace ‘Fountain’

To supply water for ʻIolani Palace, Kalākaua authorized a well on Palace grounds. “On Saturday morning (January 27, 1883) at 5 o’clock the water was reached in the well sunk in the Palace yard. No means were available to stop or check the flow, and the whole grounds were soon covered with water. Alakea and Richard streets, from King street to the sea, were flooded all day.”

“As the ordinary pump house seemed rather out of place and would be somewhat of an eyesore to the Capitol Grounds, it was decided to construct the pump house under-ground and make that portion projecting out of the ground a large ornamental flower pot, enclosed in which is located the pressure tank.”

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kou and Kuloloia

In the late-18th and early 19th centuries most vessels sailing through the North Pacific stopped for supplies at the Hawaiian Islands. A key stop was at Kou (what is now downtown Honolulu) and Honolulu Harbor, also known as Kuloloia. Boats either anchored off-shore, or they were pulled, towed or tracked into the harbor (this was done with canoes; or, it meant men and/or oxen pulled them in.) The harbor’s narrow entrance and channel were always a problem for vessels entering. The small inter-island schooners could negotiate it without help, but the larger foreign vessels were towed in – first by their own boats and later by double-canoes.

A few years after, in 1825, the first pier in the harbor was improvised by sinking a ship’s hull near the present Pier 12 site. The first efforts to deepen Honolulu Harbor were made in the 1840s. The idea to use the dredged material, composed of sand and crushed coral, to fill in low-lying lands was quickly adopted. It wasn’t until 1850 that streets received official names. in 1857, the fort was dismantled; its massive 12-foot walls were torn apart and used to fill the harbor to accommodate an expanding downtown.