February 18, 1820 – no entry. (Thaddeus Journal)
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February 18, 1820 – no entry. (Thaddeus Journal)
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We associate and call the approximate 36-acres on the Ewa side of Downtown Honolulu, “Chinatown.” But it wasn’t always called that; and, the Chinese were not the only group to occupy the place.
In ancient times, the area fronting Honolulu Harbor was said to be called “Kou.” Back then, the shoreline was along what is now Queen Street (in the 1850s-60s, the reef was filled over to make the Esplanade – where Aloha Tower now stands.)
Honolulu Harbor, also known as Kuloloia, was entered by the first foreigner, Captain William Brown of the English ship Butterworth, in 1794. He named the harbor “Fair Haven.” The name Honolulu (meaning “sheltered bay” – with numerous variations in spelling) soon came into use.
To the left of Kou was “Kapuʻukolo;” beginning near the mouth of Nuʻuanu Stream, makai of King Street was “where white men and such dwelt.” Of the approximate sixty white residents on O‘ahu in 1810, nearly all lived in the village, and many were in the service of the king.
Among them were Francisco de Paula Marin, the Spaniard who introduced and cultivated many of the plants commonly associated with the Islands, and Isaac Davis, friend and co-advisor with John Young to Kamehameha.
Marin arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1793 or 1794; Kamehameha granted Marin a couple acres of land Ewa of the King’s compound on the Honolulu waterfront (near Nuʻuanu Stream.)
He planted a wide range of fruits and vegetables, vine and orchards – his “New Vineyard” grapevines were located Waikīkī side of Nuʻuanu Stream and makai of Vineyard Street; when a road was cut through its mauka boundary, it became known as Vineyard Street
In 1809, Kamehameha I moved his compound here, to an area referred to as Pākākā fronting the harbor (this is the area, in 1810, where negotiations between King Kaumuali‘i of Kaua‘i and Kamehameha I took place – Kaumuali‘i ceded Kauaʻi and Ni‘ihau to Kamehameha.)
By the late-1830s, some 6,000 people lived in the town proper, with perhaps another 3,000 in the suburbs. Foreigners numbered 350-400 – about 200-250 were Americans, 75-100 English, 30-40 Chinese and the remainder, a thin sprinkling of French, Spanish, Portuguese and other nationalities.
Hawaiians’ houses, estimated to number 600, were chiefly of the traditional “grass shack” type, vulnerable to occasional high winds that scalped, twisted, or even demolished them. A few foreigners lived in wooden or coral “stone” homes; most, however, inhabited houses built of adobes.
At the end of 1837, the Gazette complained about the mud walls encroaching on streets. Thoroughfares were reduced to skinny, zigzag alleys, and squares to “pig-sty corners” where pedestrians inched sideways.
The newspaper, campaigning for a regular plan, warned that neglecting this matter would make it “… an expensive and difficult task for the future population to rectify the mistakes of their ancestors.” 1838 is remembered as the year Honolulu got real roads.
By 1848, the city was regularly laid out with principal streets crossing at right angles, cut up into regular squares – “making it easy to find the way from one part to another without difficulty.” The most of the streets are wide and pleasant (however, the white adobe walls fronting the streets “when the sun is bright the reflection of this light and heat is very unpleasant.”)
While the first Chinese arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1789, it wasn’t until 1852 that the Chinese became the first contract sugar plantation laborers to arrive in the islands.
With the growth of the sugar industry, the need for plantation laborers became imperative, and China was selected as the best source of immediate cheap labor due to proximity and the interest of the Chinese in coming to Hawaii to work.
Between 1852 and 1876, 3,908 Chinese were imported as contract laborers, compared with only 148 Japanese and 223 South Sea Islanders. Around 1882, the Chinese in Hawaii formed nearly 49% of the total plantation working force, and for a time outnumbered Caucasians in the islands.
It had been noted, according to one observer in 1882, for the fact that the great majority of its business establishments “watchmakers’ and jewelers’ shops, shoe-shops, tailor shops, saddle and harness shops, furniture-shops, tinshops, cabinet shops and bakeries, (were) all run by Chinamen with Chinese workmen.”
By 1884, the Chinese population in Honolulu reached 5,000, and the number of Chinese doing plantation work declined. As a group they became very important in business in Hawaii, and 75% of them were concentrated in the 25 acres of downtown called Chinatown where they built their clubhouses, herb shops, restaurants, temples and retail stores. In 1896, there were 153 Chinese stores in Honolulu, of which 72 were in Chinatown.
In 1886, calamity struck Chinatown when a fire raged out of control and destroyed the homes of 7,000 Chinese and 350 Native Hawaiians, and most of Chinatown. The fire lasted three days and destroyed over eight blocks of Chinatown.
Then, again, in 1900, the area burned when deliberate fires set to wipe out the bubonic plague spread through Chinatown.
The highest proportion of Chinese inhabitants in this area, as recorded by an official census, was 56.3 percent in 1900, just three months after the second devastating Chinatown fire, and this ratio dropped to 53.8 percent in 1920 and still further to 47.0 percent in 1930.
By 1940, Japanese had exceeded the number of Chinese residents, and by 1970, persons of Chinese ancestry made up less than 20 percent of the inhabitants of the area.
Honolulu’s Chinatown is one of the oldest Chinatowns in the Western Hemisphere. Inspiration and information here comes from chinatownhi-com.
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February 19, 1820 – no entry. (Thaddeus Journal)
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February 20, 1820 – no entry. (Thaddeus Journal)
Feb. 20. Once more we are favored with a pleasant, peaceful, Sabbath. Have had public worship on deck. Brother T preached from the words, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” The thought that perhaps I might again worship god in his earthly courts, filled my mind with joy and address. I thought of my dear friends and the privileges they enjoy, and could not but say, praise your mercies. We, though deprived of many enjoyments will not complain. We have voluntarily sacrificed the dear delights of civilized society, and relinquish the happiness of home and friends, to carry the blessings of the Gospel to the nation degraded and vicious. When I left my home and native land, I knew but little of the character of that people, to whom I am going. Capt B & some of his officers who have been to the Sandwich Islands, have given us considerable information respect in them. They represent the inhabitants as very degraded, immersed in almost every vice to which human nature is prone & addicted to practices to abominable to be named. O how much do they need the gospel, to raise them from the state of pollution & wretchedness & to make them a holy and happy people. Could we not lean upon an arm which is omnipotent when contemplating their wretched state, our hearts would sink within us. But we know the arm of the Almighty is not short and that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot here. (Mercy Partridge Whitney Journal)
20. – My sabbaths are truly refreshing. I believe the prayers of my friends are heard and answered. How blessed to be the subject of so many supplications. Brother T preached today and from 122 psalm 1st verse. (Samuel Whitney Journal)
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Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke.
She received large bequests from her father’s will when she turned 21, 25, and 30; she was sometimes referred to as the “world’s richest girl.”
She also acquired a number of homes. Her principal residence was Duke Farms, her father’s 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Here she created Duke Gardens, 60,000-square-foot public indoor botanical display that were among the largest in America.
She spent summer weekends working on her Newport Restoration Foundation projects while staying at Rough Point, the 49-room English manor-style mansion that she inherited in Newport, Rhode Island; she also had a home at “Falcon’s Lair” in Beverly Hills, California, once the home of Rudolph Valentino.
She also maintained two apartments in Manhattan: a 9-room penthouse with a 1,000-square-foot veranda at 475 Park Avenue and another apartment near Times Square that she used exclusively as an office for the management of her financial affairs.
In the late 1930s, Doris Duke built her Honolulu home, Shangri La, on five acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Diamond Head. Shangri La incorporates architectural features from the Islamic world and houses Duke’s extensive collection of Islamic art, which she assembled for nearly 60 years.
It was a retreat and sanctuary for a woman who greatly valued her privacy; she typically spent winters there.
From its inception, Doris Duke’s estate was envisioned by its founder as a home of Islamic art and architecture. As early as 1936, Shangri La was shaped by a symbiotic relationship between the built environment and the collection.
For nearly 60 years, Doris Duke commissioned and collected artifacts for Shangri La, ultimately forming a collection of about 3,500 objects, the majority of which were made in the Islamic world.
In the same manner that her father transformed Duke Farms from flat New Jersey farmland into his ideal of a magnificently landscaped country estate, Doris Duke transformed her own private Shangri La into a haven from the unwanted publicity that came with being one of the wealthiest women in the world.
Through an Exchange Deed dated December 8, 1938 between the Territorial Land Board of Hawai‘i and Ms. Duke, two underwater parcels (totaling approximately 0.6 acres) were added to the Duke property.
The transfer gave the Territory a perpetual easement of a four-foot right-of-way for a pedestrian causeway along the coastline.
At water’s edge below the estate, Duke then dynamited a small-boat harbor and a seventy-five-foot salt-water swimming pool into the rock. The harbor was built to protect Duke’s fleet of yachts, including Kailani Lahilahi, an ocean-going, 58-foot motor yacht and Kimo, the 26-foot mahogany runabout that Duke sometimes used to commute into Honolulu.
Doris Duke died at her Falcon’s Lair home on October 28, 1993, at the age of 80. In her will, Duke set in motion plans to open Shangri La to the public as a place for the study of Islamic art and culture.
Doris Duke’s philanthropic work extended throughout her lifetime; her estimated $1.3-billion fortune was largely left to charity. Duke’s legacy is now administered by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, dedicated to medical research, prevention of cruelty to children and animals, the performing arts, wildlife and ecology.
Today, Shangri La is open for guided, small group tours and educational programs. In partnership with the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art – which owns and supports Shangri La – the Honolulu Museum of Art serves as the orientation center for Shangri La tours.
Education programs such as residencies, lectures, performances, panel discussions, among other special events with a focus on Muslim arts and culture are offered. The estate can also be visited by public tour and by virtual tour.
The public shoreline access and small basin is a popular swimming hole (which the State recently took over); in addition, the harbor’s jetty serves as a jump-off point to get to two nearby surf breaks, Cromwells and Browns.