Buildings | Page 35 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

September 6, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bailey House

The Bailey House was originally built as a parsonage for the ministers of the Wailuku Church. The house is a combination of four structures built between 1835 and 1850.

The original portion was built in 1833 by Reverend Jonathan Green and is a two-story lava stone structure measuring approximately 30’ x 20’ with 20” thick walls. A high pitched gable roof is covered with wood shingles.

At about the same time (1833), a single story lava stone cookhouse was constructed slightly uphill from the living area. The single room is dominated by a large fireplace and oven flush with the interior wall. The mass of the oven structure projects beyond the north wall.

The lower floor is built partially into the side of a hill with the walls retaining the earth on the uphill side.

In 1837 a single story lava stone structure with a basement was built for Miss Ogden, a teacher for the girls’ school in Wailuku.

Edward Bailey was a Protestant missionary from Holden, Massachusetts. Prior to their marriage, Edward attended Amherst College and Caroline was a tailoress.

He and his wife Caroline Hubbard Bailey sailed from Boston on the barq, ‘Mary Frazier,’ on December 14, 1836. They arrived in Honolulu April 9, 1837.

They were married only two weeks when they left Massachusetts. Caroline was pregnant with son Edward upon their arrival in Hawaii.

Not long after their arrival, the couple was transferred to Wailuku to head the Wailuku Female Seminary in 1837. The Seminary was the counterpart to the boy’s institution at Lahainaluna, serving some 50 girls age five to 12.

Seminary girls learned the traditional lessons in Hawaiian and were also taught to sew, spin and crochet. They also would work an hour a day in their own garden plots.

Bailey worked at the Wailuku Female Seminary in Maui from 1840 until its closure in 1849. At that time he purchased a fee simple title to the Girls’ boarding school, the house and lot, and began his interest in what was to become Wailuku Sugar Company.

As noted by Mary Brewster in 1847, “Mr. Bailey has a very fine house with a beautiful garden handsomely laid and of considerable extent. T he most beautiful place I have ever seen.”

“All kinds of trees such as the fig, banana, guava, citron and a number of our own species which he is trying to cultivate. Flowers of all kinds which will grow here with exotics, vines, and shrubs, all displaying much taste in their arrangements.”

Because of his growing family, Bailey added two rooms upstairs in 1850 and had the entire house re-roofed.

After the seminary closed, he built the still-standing Ka’ahumanu Church in Wailuku and operated a small sugar plantation. He designed and built a water powered mill for sugar and wheat in Wailuku. The business developed into the Wailuku Sugar Company. He was also an active participant in starting the Haiku Sugar Company.

Over his years in Hawaiʻi, Bailey taught music. He aided in the practice of medicine, although he had no medical degree. He created the girls school in Makawao known as Maunaʻolu Seminary.

He surveyed native kuleana and built the first bridge over the Wailuku River. He designed the Lahainaluna token currency.

He began painting about 1865, at the age of 51, without any formal instruction; he was the most accomplished of the missionary artists in Hawaii. He painted landscapes in oil.

Edward and Caroline lived in their Wailuku home for 50-years, then they and their sons (other than Edward Jr. who was married to Emily Kania) moved to California in 1885, possibly 1888.

At the time of his death in 1903 Edward Sr. was the oldest living missionary sent to Hawaii between 1820 – 1850 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions .

The Bailey House is now the Maui Historical Society’s Hale Hō‘ike‘ike (House of Display) showcasing Hawaiian history and culture, as well as paintings and furnishings from nineteenth-century Maui.

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August 12, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Female Seminaries

Hawaiian female seminaries grew out of the evolution of education of middle class white women in the US. Because the primary educators responsible for developing the education system of Hawai’i were Americans, the educational practices for Hawaiian girls tended to mirror, but not necessarily duplicate, what was taking place on the continent. (Beyer)

It was believed that women would have to 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 rose and there was a shortage of teachers, as school teachers.

The founders of the female seminaries were at first men who were committed to providing education for women, but as time went by, more of the founders were women. The financial backing for these seminaries were typically from private sources and the tuition charged the students. Enrollment varied between 50 to 100 students.

The men of the mission to Hawai’i were prepared for the work by education, work experience, and the sense of a calling. Their backgrounds were usually rural, and often farming had been the family livelihood. They were from the middle class. Their education had been preceded by engagement in various kinds of work: the employment with charitable or religious concerns; and traveling the northeast with tracts, Bibles, and the missionary message, or the call to revival.

The women of the mission were quick, efficient, and multi-talented. Also from rural, middle-class backgrounds, they were adaptable in terms of skills, worked to fund their own education, and were not accustomed to leisure or easy living. Most had secured their education at intervals, while supporting themselves by teaching, by farm labor, or skilled trade.

When the daughters of these missionaries or new recruits from the US took over the education of Hawaiian females during the last 40 years of the 19th century, many more were trained in the female seminaries of the US.

In the Islands, the first female seminary students were adult Hawaiian women. Patricia Grimshaw states: “… that (s)oon after their arrival in Hawai’i in 1820, and over the next three decades, New England missionary women embarked on an ambitious plan to transform Hawaiian girls and women to notions of femininity upheld by their culture.”

“The plan and design of the Female Seminary is to take a class of young females into a boarding school—away in a measure from the contaminating influence of heathen society, to train them to habits of industry, neatness, and order …”

“… to instruct them in employments suited to their sex, to cultivate the minds, to improve their manners and to instill the principles of our holy religion – to fit them to be suitable companions for the scholars of the Mission Seminary and examples of propriety among the females of the Sandwich Islands.” (Dibble)

In 1835, at the general meeting of the Mission, a resolution was passed to promote boarding schools for Hawaiians; several male boarding schools and two female boarding schools were begun.

Wailuku Female Seminary (or the Central Female Seminary, as it was first called) was the first female school begun by the missionaries (1837). It received support at a time when the missionaries were experimenting with both boarding schools and a manual labor system.

Fidelia Coan, the wife of Reverend Titus Coan, began Hilo Girls’ Boarding School in 1838. The Hilo school was opened for 20 girls from seven to 10 years old. Hilo residents helped erect and furnish the school building, and arranged to supply food for the pupils.

On January 16, 1860, the Privy Council authorized the chartering of the Makiki Family School. In family schools, young girls lived in the homes of the instructors; the instruction included both academics and domestic craft. It later closed, with the formation of Kawaiaha’o Seminary.

In 1862, Orramel Hinckley Gulick and his wife, Ann Eliza Clark Gulick began the Kaʻū Seminary on the Island of Hawai‘i. Both were the children of missionaries (Peter Johnson Gulick and Fanny Hinckley Thomas Gulick; Ephraim Weston Clark and Mary Kittredge Clark.)

Due to the isolated location of the seminary, it was difficult to attract many students to the school. In 1865, after struggling to fill the school, it was decided to move the school to Waialua, Oʻahu, on the Anahulu Stream.

“Honolulu Female Academy (is) another of the schools provided by Christian benevolence for the benefit of the children of this highly favored land. This institution will, it is hoped, supply a felt need for a home for girls, in the town of Honolulu, yet not too near its center of business.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 13, 1867)

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – an organization consisting of the children of the missionaries and adopted supporters) decided to support a girls’ boarding school.

Miss Lydia Bingham (daughter of Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi) became teacher and principal.

It was later named Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary. In January 1869, Miss Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu (Lizzie) Bingham arrived from the continent to be an assistant to her sister. Lizzie later became principal.

The Kohala Girl’s School was Reverend Elias Bond’s last major undertaking. For 30-years prior to the 1874 founding of the Kohala Girl’s School, Reverend Bond ran a boarding school for boys. His decision to build a separate facility to educate native Hawaiian women in Christian living and housekeeping was made in 1872.

The last of the female seminaries that was begun by the missionaries was initially called the Makawao Family School. Later called Maunaʻolu Seminary, it was an out-growth of the “East Maui Female Seminary

At the end of the century, all the female seminaries in Hawai‘i began to lose students to the newly-founded Kamehameha School for Girls.

This latter school was established in 1894; it was not technically a seminary or founded by missionaries, but all the girls enrolled were Hawaiian, and its curriculum was very similar to what was used at the missionary-sponsored seminaries.

Above text is a summary – Click HERE for more information

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August 8, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hawai‘i State Library

The earliest libraries in Hawaiʻi appear to have been reading rooms provided for ships officers and crews. In Lāhainā, the Seamen’s Chapel and Reading Room was built in 1834 following an appeal by William Richards and Ephriam Spaulding (it was built two years later.)

In Honolulu, the Sandwich Islands Institute, organized in November 1837, fitted up a room at the Seamen’s Bethel in downtown Honolulu as a library and a museum of natural history and Pacific artifacts.

A newspaper article in October 1840 referred to this as a “Public Library, three to four hundred volumes” and also listed a “Reading Room for Seamen,” presumably at a different location.

A decade later, in 1850, residents of Honolulu organized the Atheneum Society, which for a year or two maintained a reading room and library. The Atheneum was succeeded in 1853 by the Honolulu Circulating Library Association.

In 1879, a group of men founded the Honolulu Library and Reading Room Association. In the local newspaper, the Commercial Pacific Advertiser, editor JH Black wrote, “The library is not intended to be run for the benefit of any class, party, nationality, or sect.”

Some of the founders wanted to exclude women from membership, but Alexander Cartwright disagreed, writing to his brother Alfred: “The idea keeps the blessed ladies out and the children. What makes us old geezers think we are the only ones to be spiritually and morally uplifted by a public library in this city?”

It wasn’t long before the committee changed the wording of the constitution to make women eligible for membership.

Early in its history, the organization had established a solid economic foundation, and over time it was able to obtain the moral and financial support of both the Hawaiian government and wealthy citizens.

King Kalākaua, Queen Kapiʻolani, Queen Emma, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Regent Lili‘uokalani, Minister of the Interior F. W. Hutchinson and Charles R. Bishop were just a few of its notable and highly influential supporters.

From 1879 to 1912, library service was provided by the Honolulu Library and Reading-Room Association.

In 1909, Governor Frear helped pass the “Act to Provide for the Establishment of the Public Library of Hawaii”. On May 15, 1909 the Honolulu Library and Reading Room and the Library of Hawaiʻi signed an agreement by which the former agreed to turn over all books, furnishings and remaining funds to the latter.

A few months later, the Honolulu Library and Reading Room, Library of Hawaiʻi and the Historical Society jointly signed and submitted a letter to Andrew Carnegie requesting a grant for the construction of the Library of Hawaiʻi.

The request to Carnegie was for funds to build the new Library; Carnegie responded that the sum of $100,000 would be made ready as soon as a site was selected and plans drawn up.

The building’s final location, though, was not immediately settled. Several possible sites were considered. Ultimately, Governor Frear made a lot available on the corner of King and Punchbowl streets.

He picked a site that in 1872 had been purchased by the Government of Prince Lunalilo and transferred its control to the Board of Education.

The site was the location of Hāliʻimaile, the residence of Boki and Liliha and later Victoria Kamāmalu and her father and brothers before they ascended Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V.

In 1874, the government-supported Pohukaina School for Girls was started. Just up the street was the Royal School for Boys.

In order to accommodate the new Library of Hawaiʻi, after 36-years at King and Punchbowl, Pohukaina School was moved to Kakaʻako; the new school opened in 1913.

Ultimately, the Library of Hawaiʻi was completed at a cost of $127,000, with the local legislative funding providing the difference.

The building opened its doors on February 11, 1913, and Hawaiʻi at last joined those states of America that offered free library services to their communities. The library, now known as the Hawaiʻi State Library, still stands today.

Greco-Romanesque columns in front mark it as a Carnegie library, and within its lobby, a bust of Andrew Carnegie, the man who made it possible is on the grounds.

In 1921, the County Library Law established separate libraries on the islands of Kauaʻi, Maui and Hawaiʻi, under minimal supervision by the Library of Hawaiʻi, which restricted its services to Oʻahu. Even so, the latter quickly outgrew its quarters.

In 1927, the Territorial legislature approved funding to expand and renovate the building. Construction was completed in 1930. Architect CW Dickey tripled its size by adding new wings to create an open-air courtyard in the center.

After statehood in 1959, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature created the Hawaiʻi State Public Library System, the only statewide system in the United States, with the Hawaiʻi State Library building as its flagship branch.

My grandmother worked at the State Library, from 1920 to 1948; she retired after serving as Assistant Head Librarian and Director of the Extension Department. Part of her duties included the expansion of the Library to the Neighbor Islands in 1921. My mother received a degree in Library Science and was archivist at Punahou School.

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August 4, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Haleuluhe

Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III, stepped into the position of King at age 10 (in 1825,) upon the death of his brother Liholiho.

Boki, governor of the island of O‘ahu, built a Honolulu royal residence called ‘Haleuluhe’ (fern house) for the young King at ‘Pelekane’ (Britannia … i.e. Beretania) in the vicinity of the site of the present St. Andrew’s (Episcopal) Cathedral.

The Rev. Charles S. Stewart, who returned to Hawaii in 1829 as Chaplain of the US ship-of-war “Vincennes,” provides a good description of this palace. His October 15, 1829 description of Haleuluhe Palace is most complete:

“The king’s establishment, but lately erected, is quite in the outskirts of the town – having the open plain towards Punchbowl Hill immediately in the rear.

“On entering it (the main entrance of the palace grounds was closed by a large white gate,) we found ourselves in a spacious yard of some acres …”

“… enclosed on all sides by a well-constructed and high fence, and furnished with two other gates similar to that through which we had passed-one, on another street, in the direction of the residences of most of the chiefs in the neighborhood of the chapel and mission houses, and the other, inland towards the hill and valleys.”

“Everything within, appeared exceedingly neat. On the side of the square at which we entered and near the gate, there are three or four good sized houses, but not differing, externally, from most of the better kind of native dwellings. These, we were informed, are the dining and sleeping rooms, offices, etc., of the king and his household.

“At a considerable distance, on the opposite side, stands the palace – a fine lofty building of thatch, some hundred or more feet in length, fifty or sixty broad, and forty or more high …”

“… beautifully finished and ornamented at the corners, from the ground to the peak, and along the ridge of the roof, with a rich edging of fern leaves (uluhe fern: Dicranopteris linearis, also known as false staghorn fern]”.

“It is enclosed by a handsome and substantial palisade fence, with two gates-one large, in front, and a smaller at the side and a pebbled area within.”

“All the timbers in sight, the numerous posts, rafters, and centre pillars, are of a fine substantial size, and of a dark hard wood, hewn with the nicest regularity. The lashing of sinnit [sennit], made of the fibres of the cocoanut bleached white, are put on with such neatness, and wrought into so beautiful a pattern, at close and regular intervals …”

“… as to give to the posts and rafters the appearance of being divided into natural sections by them; and to produce, by the whiteness and nice workmanship of the braid, in contrast with the colors of the wood, an effect striking and highly ornamental.”

“But that, which most attracted my admiration in the building, is an improvement – a device of native ingenuity – of which I was told, we then saw the first specimen, and which gives to the interior a finish, as beautiful as appropriate, to such an edifice.”

“It is a lining between the timbers and the thatch, screening entirely from sight, the grass of which the external covers is composed; and, which always gives an air of rudeness, and a barnyard look, even to the handsomest and best finished of their former establishments.”

“The manufacture is from a small, round mountain vine, of a rich chestnut color (some say the stem of the uluhe fern) – tied horizontally, stem upon stem, as closely as possible, in the manner, and probably in imitation, of the painted window blinds of split bamboo, brought from the East Indies, once much in fashion and still occasionally seen in the United States.”

“The whole of the inside, from the floor to the peak of the roof – a height of at least forty feet – is covered with this, seemingly in one piece; imparting by the beauty of its color and entire effect, an air of richness to the room, not dissimilar to that of the tapestry, and arras hangings of more polished audience chambers.”

“The floor also is a novelty, and an experiment here: consisting – in place of the ground strewn with rushes or grass, as a foundation for the mats, as was formerly the case – of a pavement of stone and mortar, spread with a cement of lime, having all the smoothness and hardness of marble.”

“Upon this, beautifully variegated mats of Tauai (island of Kauai) were spread – forming a carpet as delightful, and appropriate to the climate, as could have been selected.”

“Large windows on either side, and the folding doors of glass at each end, are hung with draperies of crimson damask; besides which, and the mats on the floors, the furniture consists of handsome pier tables, and large mirrors; of a line of glass chandeliers suspended through the centre … and of portraits in oil of the late king and queen, taken in London, placed at the upper end, in carved frames richly gilt.”

“In the middle of the room, about sixty feet in front, or two thirds the length of the apartment, the young monarch was seated, in an armchair, spread with a splendid cloak of yellow feathers.”

“His dress was the Windsor uniform, of the first rank, with epaulettes of gold – the present of George IV – and an undress of white, with silk stockings and pumps.”

“On a sofa, immediately on his right, were Ka‘ahumanu, the regent, and the two ex-queens, Kīna’u – at present the wife of General Kekūanaō‘a and Kekauruohe (Kekauluohi).“ (Information here is from ‘Palace and Forts of the Hawaiian Kingdom.’)

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July 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Coral Construction

Hawaiian architecture evolved over time, starting with Hawaiians use of natural resources, to influences from all of the various visitors to Hawaiʻi.

Soon after missionary arrival, builders began to incorporate coral blocks from Hawaiʻi’s reefs, with the coral serving as a substitute for bricks the American and Europeans used in their homeland.

Here are a few examples of existing or remnants remaining today of the early use of coral blocks in building construction.

Chamberlain House

Nearby at what is now the Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, the Chamberlain House (Ka Hale Kamalani) was built in 1831 from materials procured locally: coral blocks cut from reefs offshore and lumber salvaged from ships.

Designed by the mission’s quartermaster, Levi Chamberlain, to hold supplies as well as people, it had two stories, an attic, and a cellar. The windows are larger, more numerous, and shuttered against the sun. The building now serves as the main exhibition hall for the Museum.

Lāhainā Fort Ruins

The reconstructed remains of one old Lāhainā Fort wall still stand at this old lockup. This fort overlooked one of the canals of Lāhainā, now a paved street, and was built to protect the town after unruly sailors who fired a canon at Rev. Richard’s house.

The fort was built in 1831-1832 in which to incarcerate rowdy sailors and others who disobeyed the law. The fort was used mostly as a prison. It was torn down in the 1850s to supply stones for the construction of Hale Paʻahao – the prison on Prison Street.

Kawaiahaʻo Church

Down the street, Congregational missionaries had earlier begun (1836) the construction of Kawaiahaʻo Church. The “Stone Church,” as it came to be known, is in fact not built of stone, but of giant slabs of coral hewn from ocean reefs.

These slabs had to be quarried from under water; each weighed more than 1,000 pounds. Natives dove 10 to 20 feet to hand-chisel these pieces from the reef, then raised them to the surface, loaded some 14,000 of the slabs into canoes and ferried them to shore.

Following five years of construction, The Stone Church was ready for dedication ceremonies on July 21, 1842. King Kamehameha III, who contributed generously to the fund to build the church, attended the service.

Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace

Catholic missionaries broke ground for the new church to be built on July 9, 1840. It coincided with the Feast of Our Lady of Peace, patroness of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary religious institute of which the missionaries were members

The cornerstone was officially laid in a ceremony on August 6 of that year. Construction continued after groundbreaking with devoted Native Hawaiian volunteers harvesting blocks of coral from the shores of Ala Moana, Kakaʻako and Waikīkī. On August 14, 1843, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace was consecrated and dedicated.

Print House

Also at Mission Houses, in 1841, a covered porch and balcony were added to the frame house, and an extra bedroom was built next door out of coral blocks. Both additions show further adaptation to an indoor-outdoor lifestyle appropriate to the climate.

The extra coral building later became the mission’s Print House (Ka Hale Paʻi) and now serves as a museum exhibit to show how the missionaries and native Hawaiians worked together to produce the first materials printed in the Hawaiian language.

ʻIolani Palace Barracks

Originally completed in 1871, and looking like a medieval castle, 4000-coral blocks were stacked with parapets and towers to make Halekoa, the ʻIolani Barracks (with its open courtyard surrounded by rooms once used by the guards as a mess hall, kitchen, dispensary, berth room, and lockup.)

The Barracks was originally located on what are now the grounds of the Hawaiʻi State Capitol, mauka of the Palace. After being dismantled block by block, ʻIolani Barracks was moved and reconstructed at its present location in 1965.

Fort Kekuanohu (Fort at Honolulu)

Back in Honolulu, in 1815, Kamehameha I granted Russian representatives permission to build a storehouse near Honolulu Harbor. Instead, they began building a fort and raised the Russian flag. When Kamehameha discovered this, the Russians were removed.

The fort had 340-by-300-foot long, 12-foot high and 20-foot thick walls made of coral. Its original purpose was to protect Honolulu by keeping enemy or otherwise undesirable ships out. But, it was also used to keep things in (it also served as a prison.)

The fort’s massive 12-foot walls were torn apart and the fort dismantled in 1857 and used to fill the harbor to accommodate an expanding downtown.

Honolulu Harbor – Esplanade – Harbor Expansion

As Honolulu developed and grew, lots of changes happened, including along its waterfront. What is now known as Queen Street was actually the water’s edge.

Then, from 1856 to 1860, the work of filling in the land to create an area known as the “Esplanade” or “Ainahou,” and building up a water-front and dredging the harbor to a depth from 20 to 25-feet took place.

Following the demolition of Fort Kekuanohu (Fort Honolulu) in 1857; its walls became the 2,000-foot retaining wall used to extend the land out onto the shallow reef in the harbor.

The remaining fort materials were used as fill to create what came to be known as the Esplanade (it’s where Aloha Tower and surrounding land now stand – evidence of the coral blocks from the old Fort can still be seen at Pier 12, ʻEwa of the Aloha Tower cruise ship pier.)

Hawaiʻi law (§171-58.5 HRS) now prohibits the mining or taking of sand, dead coral or coral rubble, rocks, soil or other marine deposits seaward from the shoreline, except for non-commercial uses in volumes that do not exceed 1-gallon per person per day, or to allow replenishment or protection of public shoreline area and government maintenance of stream mouths and shoreline.

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