Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Baldwin High School

It’s situated on the sand dunes midway between Wailuku and Kahului on the main highway … it was named and renamed four different times: Wailuku Junior High School (1928) … Wailuku Intermediate (1932) … Wailuku High School (1936) … Baldwin High School (1939.)

In December of 1924 a resolution was introduced by Supervisor R. A. Drummond to establish a new high school in or near Wailuku. While Maui High School was available for students pursuing a secondary school education (back then, it was located in Pā‘ia,) it was felt a high school should be located near the population center of the island. The school’s namesake, Henry Perrine Baldwin (born August 29, 1842 in Lahaina,) was a son of Dwight and Charlotte Fowler Baldwin, early American Protestant missionaries to Hawai‘i.

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Maui Grand Hotel

“Those Honeymoon Isles are getting all sorts of publicity these days, says last Sunday’s Bystander … ‘The Valley Isle’ and Wailuku city of 30,000, a hundred miles or a half-day by boat from O‘ahu Island, and the gateway to the colossus extinct crater, ‘Haleakala,’ will step into the tourist limelight this season with the lure of the new Grand Hotel … a Wailuku Clift – snow white, solid and beautiful, with every San Francisco fad and fancy of comfort, convenience and service, and a capacity for 100 patrons.”

“General manager de Souza said that the new Grand will be the Maui ‘Mecca’ this season with its California high-type hotel accommodations … Thus Maui, Wailuku, the new Grand Hotel and the bottomless Haleakala will this season and henceforth vie and rank with Oahu, Honolulu.” “The Grand hotel is going to work in conjunction with the St Francis of San Francisco.” (1916) In 1961, The Maui Grand Hotel closed and was demolished for a service station (the site of the Chevron at Main and Church.)

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Alexander House Settlement

The Hawaiian ‘settlement house’ movement was a smaller version of the American movement best represented by Chicago’s Hull House. The word ‘settlement’ had connotations of the frontier middle-class ‘settling’ in the inner city. They offered educational services, staged community events, build libraries and in general tried to enhance the lives of their neighborhoods. In 1900 work was begun to build a new building. The first building erected was known as the ‘Settlement Building’ (at the corner of Main and Market streets.)

It was named ‘Alexander House’ after William and Mary Alexander “the influence of whose lives is still felt on Maui, and throughout the Islands and whose names we love to honor.” It was completed and opened in 1900, its main use being for a kindergarten. By 1950, Alexander House closed its doors and was replaced by the National Dollar Store and by American Security bank. (Later the corner bank site was redeveloped as an office building.)

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Halekiʻi and Pihana Heiau

Located about ¼-mile inland, constructed of stacked waterworn basalt boulders collected from ʻIao Stream, Halekiʻi and Pihana Heiau overlook ‘Iao Stream, Kahului Bay and the Wailuku Plain, and are the most accessible of the remaining pre-contact Hawaiian structures of religious and historical importance in the Wailuku-Kahului area.

Traditional history credits the menehune with the construction of both heiau in a single night, using rock from Paukukalo Beach. Other accounts credit Kihapiʻilani with building Halekiʻi, and Kiʻihewa with building Pihana during the time of Kakaʻe, the aliʻi of West Maui. Some say that they were built under the rule of Kahekili.

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Wailuku Female Seminary

Back in the beginning of the 19th-century, it was believed that women should be educated to understand domestic economy, because they were to play the major role in educating the young, primarily in their homes, and later (as the school population grew and there was a shortage of teachers) as school teachers. (Beyer) Gender segregated […]