Waikiki Inn | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

Thomas and Jane (Wilson) Wright were from Durham, England. The parents never left England, some of the siblings moved to New Zealand and then to Honolulu. The elder Wright was a blacksmith, a trade followed for more than 150 years by members of the family. In the early 1880s, at least three of the boys (Thomas, William Wilson and Henry) came to the Islands. It was a time when folks rode horseback or were carried in a horse or mule drawn carriage, trolley or omnibus (the automobile didn’t make it to the Islands until 1890.)

Until the mid-1800s, to get around people walked, or rode horses or used personal carts/buggies. It wasn’t until 1868, that horse-drawn carts became the first public transit service. In 1888, the animal-powered tramcar service of Hawaiian Tramways ran track from downtown to Waikīkī. Wright brothers set up respective carriage and blacksmithing facilities in Honolulu – a son of William Wilson, George Frederick Wright, became the fifth person to serve as Mayor of Honolulu. (Mayor Wright Housing in Kalihi was named after him.)

Thomas and Elizabeth Wright made their home in Waikiki. Thomas was a carriage maker who came to Hawaiʻi with two brothers who operated a carriage business. Their home was built in about 1890, on the water, across from Uluniu Street on Kalākaua. The Wrights opened their home as a bath house and accommodations (food and lodging.) It was initially known as Wright’s Villa. It received favorable success.

The Wrights left in 1899 and returned to Staindrop, England, never to return to the Islands, and ES Buhlon joined other property with Wright’s Villa and became known as the ‘Waikīkī Inn.’ Today, the home of Thomas and Elizabeth Wright is now a small patch of grass and a sandy beach, just ‘Ewa of the hula mound and banyan tree at Kūhiō Beach on Waikīkī.