Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Walter Murray Gibson Building

In 1834, King Kamehameha III organized the first police force in the Hawaiian Islands. This was only four years after the inception of London’s first police force, and twelve years before that of any American city.

In 1845, the king appointed the first Marshal of the island, and sheriffs were appointed for each island. After counties were organized in 1905, sheriffs were elected for each county.

In 1885, the Minister of the Interior under King Kalākaua purchased property at Bethel and Merchant Streets and began construction of a new Police Court building on the site. The May 21, 1885 Daily Bulletin noted, “The work on the new Police Station building is progressing rapidly.”

The Chinatown fire of 1886 destroyed the old King Street police station so all of the functions of that building were transferred to the nearly completed Merchant Street structure, a two-story brick building.

The cell block was in the basement, the offices of the Marshal, Deputy Marshal, Police Justice and a detention area were on the ground floor. The courtroom was on the second floor.

In 1930, this building was demolished in order to construct the present structure on the site. The earlier brick building on the same site was built during the era of Walter Murray Gibson, so the new structure is also known as the Walter Murray Gibson Building.

While Gibson was in the Legislative Assembly (1878-1882) he became Finance Committee Chairman and under his leadership allocations of public funds showed his concern for the national pride of Hawaiians: $500 to Henri Berger, leader of the Hawaiian Band, for composing the music for Hawaii Ponoʻi, the new national anthem; $10,000 for a bronze statue of Kamehameha I; and $50,000 to begin construction of a new ʻIolani Palace, to house King Kalākaua and Queen Kapiʻolani, and all their successors. (Adler – Kamins)

He was also Member of Privy Council and Board of Health (1880, Health President 1882;) Commissioner of Crown Lands (1882;) Board of Education, President (1883;) Attorney General (1883;) House of Nobles (1882-1886;) Secretary of War & Navy (1886;) Premier and Minister of the Interior (1886) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1882-1887.)

In his new capacities, Gibson’s first notable accomplishment was his development of a new monetary system for the island nation. The new money was printed in San Francisco and the bills featured Kalākaua. This was followed by the creation of a postal system; Gibson himself designed and printed the postage stamps for the Hawaiian kingdom. (Lowe)

Back to the building …

The later police station cost $235,000 and used eleven tons of French marble, Philippine mahogany and Waianae sandstone. The building, designed by local architect, Louis E. Davis, was occupied on September 29, 1931. (The Nuʻuanu Street addition was constructed in 1986.)

The style is Spanish Colonial Revival, also called Spanish Mission Revival; at the time it was built, the Spanish colonial revival style structure was becoming an accepted style for public edifices in Honolulu.

It is a three-story (with basement) Mediterranean-style reinforced-concrete building with plaster finish and ornate terra-cotta entry and decorative interior detailing. Various window and balcony elements reflect interior stairway. Interesting curved railings of exterior stair in 1939 addition at ‘Ewa end of building.

The vice squad, weights and measures, military police and shore patrol were in the basement, the receiving area, general offices, foot patrol, examiner of chauffeurs and traffic department were on the main floor, the jail was on the second floor, and district courtrooms and offices were on the top floor.

A one-and-a-half-story entrance hall on the ground floor at the Merchant/Bethel Streets corner contains a stairway to the first floor. Access to the second and third floors is via an open core stairway contained in the tower on Bethel Street.

During wartime, the first floor housed the Alien Property Custodian, which confiscated property owned by foreign citizens, beginning with the declaration of martial law on December 7, 1941. (It was this agency that closed the Yokohama Specie Bank across the street in 1941.)

The Police Department left the building in 1967, when they moved to the old Sears store in Pawaʻa. The Old Police Station, or Court Building as it was also known, continued to house the District Courts.

The courts, in turn, were moved in 1983 and the building stood empty for three years in the mid-1980s while the city debated the building’s future.

After a 1985 plan to use it as the vehicle and driver licensing operations center was rejected following public objection, in 1985 the city decided to use the building for the city’s Real Property Assessment and Public Housing Divisions.

The building is part of the Merchant Street Historical District, occupying four square blocks in downtown Honolulu, containing a variety of interesting old buildings. The area is what remains of “old” Honolulu.

Merchant Street, once the main street of the financial and governmental part of the city, bisects the district and is lined with low-rise, well maintained buildings of character and distinctions. (Lots of information here is from the HABS.)

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Drying Tower

On December 27, 1850, King Kamehameha III passed an act in the Privy Council that established the Honolulu Fire Department, the first fire department in the Hawaiian Islands and the only fire department in the US established by a ruling monarch.

In 1870, the tallest structure in Honolulu was the bell tower of Central Fire Station, then-located on Union Street. Spotters would sit in the tower, ready to sound the alarm. Central Fire Station was later relocated to its present site at Beretania and Fort Streets. (HawaiiHistory)

Back in those early days, firefighting equipment was primarily buckets and portable water supplies. As the department grew, several hand-drawn engine companies were added.

But bucket brigades were very labor intensive and very ineffective. Large amount of water would be lost during the passing of these buckets before it could be thrown on the actual fire.

In 1693 the first fire hose (what Dutchmen Jan Van Der Heiden and his son Nicholaas called a “fire hoase”) was a fifty-foot length of leather, sewn together like a bootleg. These inventions allowed firemen a steady stream of water and accurately deliver it directly on the fire.

Leather hose had many disadvantages. It was high maintenance. Leather would dry out and crack. The hose had to be washed, dry and preserved using codfish and whale oil as a preservative.

James Boyd in 1821 received a patent for rubber lined, cotton-webbed fire hose. In 1825 the Mayor of Boston reported that a 100 feet of hose would do the same work as 60 men with buckets and more efficient. In 1827 the Fire Chief of New York City put 30 pumpers in a line to pump water a half mile. (Gilbert)

Hawaiʻi later used the rubber lined, cotton covered hoses.  But the hoses’ cotton could rot, so they needed to be dried to prevent mold.

Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, as they built new fire houses, a drying tower was added to the main fire house, so the hoses could be hung up to dry.

More often than not, there drying towers are mischaracterized as observation or spotting towers; their main purpose was to hang and dry the cotton covered hoses.

By 1912, the first motor apparatus was put into service. Then, three old steam engines at stations 1 (Central,) 3 (Makiki) and 4 (Palama) were replaced by motorized 1,000-gallon capacity combination engines and hose wagons during January in 1916. May 1920 saw the last of the horses, a gray and black team called Jack and Jill.

By the 1920s, the accepted style for most public architecture in Honolulu was Spanish Mission Revival or, more broadly, Mediterranean Revival. Five fire stations built on Oʻahu between 1924 and 1932 illustrate this stylistic design, despite being designed by three different architects.

The prototype for all five appears to have been Palama Fire Station (Fire Engine House #4,) designed by Oliver G Traphagen. The construction of the building was begun late in 1901 (it was completed on July 1, 1902,) which makes it the oldest public structure completed in Hawaiʻi during the Territorial Government period.

It was boasted in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser that the new station was equal to the “best of its class in the States.”

The building included all the latest equipment: an electric automatic door opener with slide poles to connect the upper dormitory quarters with the ground floor. The lower floor interior was occupied by stands for the engine, hose wagon and horses, a feed room, lavatories and hose washing tanks.

There was a horse watering trough near the feed room. Fire Engine House #4 had a 75-foot drying tower with tackle and hood racks immediately above the hose washing tanks.

The Honolulu Fire Department (HFD) operates 44 Fire Stations on the Island of Oʻahu, and in and around Honolulu. Seven current or former stations are on the National Register of Historic Places, of which five are still in use today as fire stations.

Although designed by various architects, the seven fire stations are similar in character. All seven fire stations are box-shaped, two-story structures, with engine bays on the ground floor and dormitories upstairs.

All have prominent towers. The towers, which generally rise approximately sixty feet in height, function as a space in which to hang and dry the cotton sheathed rubber hoses. (NPS)

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Lot Kapuāiwa

December 11, 1830, Lot Kapuāiwa was born. His mother was Kīnaʻu, the daughter of Kamehameha I (she became the Kuhina nui, in 1832.) His father was Mataio Kekūanāoʻa, a descendent of the Chiefs of the Island of Oʻahu (he was governor of Oʻahu, as well as a member of the House of Nobles and the Privy Council.)

Lot Kapuāiwa was hānai to Chief Hoapili of Lāhainā and Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena.  (Kapuāiwa means mysterious kapu (taboo) or sacred one protected by supernatural powers.)

He was 9-years-old when he entered the Chiefs’ Children’s School. The aliʻi wanted their children trained in Western, as well as Hawaiian traditions and Kamehameha III asked missionaries Amos and Juliette Cooke to teach the young royals.

In 1849, Lot and Alexander Liholiho (his brother) began their year-long trip to the United States and Europe. When he returned he was appointed a member of the House of Nobles and began government service.

He ascended to the throne as Kamehameha V on November 30, 1863, on the death of his brother.  “He was a master in the beginning, & at the middle, & to the end.  The Parliament was the “figure-head,” & it never was much else in his time. … He hated Parliaments, as being a rasping & useless incumbrance upon a king, but he allowed them to exist because as an obstruction they were more ornamental than rival.”  (Twain)

“He surrounded himself with an obsequious royal Cabinet of American & other foreigners, & he dictated his measures to them &, through them, to his Parliament; & the latter institution opposed them respectfully, not to say apologetically, & passed them.”  (Twain)

Kamehameha V modeled his leadership after that of his grandfather, Kamehameha I, believing that it was the right and duty of the chiefs to lead the common people. He refused to support the Constitution of 1852. By supporting the controversial Constitution of 1864, he expected to regain some of the powers lost by previous kings.  (ksbe)

“He was not a fool.  He was a wise sovereign; he had seen something of the world; he was educated & accomplished, & he tried hard to do well for his people, & succeeded.  There was no rival nonsense about him; he dressed plainly, poked about Honolulu, night or day, on his old horse, unattended; he was popular, greatly respected, & even beloved.”  (Twain)

In 1865, a bill to repeal the law making it a penal offense to sell or give intoxicating liquor to native Hawaiians was brought before the legislature.  Strongly supported by some, Kamehameha surprised the supporters saying, “I will never sign the death warrant of my people.” The measure was defeated in the second reading.  (Alexander)

Kamehameha V founded the Royal Order of Kamehameha on April 11, 1865 in commemoration of his grandfather, Kamehameha I. The stated purpose of the order was “to cultivate and develop, among our subjects, the feelings of honour and loyalty to our dynasty and its institutions and … to confer honorary distinctions upon such of our subjects and foreigners as have rendered, or may hereafter render to our dynasty and people, important services.”  (Royal Order)

Hansen’s Disease was rapidly spreading on Oʻahu.  In response, the legislature passed “An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy” in 1865, which King Kamehameha V approved. This law provided for setting apart land for an establishment for the isolation and seclusion of leprous persons who were thought capable of spreading the disease.  The first shipment of lepers landed at Kalaupapa January 6, 1866, the beginning of segregation and banishment of lepers to the leper settlement.

By 1866, the need for a new courthouse government building in the Hawaiian Kingdom was apparent.  The legislature appropriated funds towards a new palace and a new government building. Delays ensued.  Plans for a new palace were postponed, but the new courthouse moved forward.  On February 19, 1872, Kamehameha V laid the cornerstone for Aliʻiolani Hale (now home to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.)

King Kamehameha V encouraged the revival of native practices. On Maui, a group of eight Hawaiians founded the ʻAhahui Laʻau Lapaʻau.  In 1868, the Legislature established a Hawaiian Board of Health to license kahuna laʻau lapaʻau. Kahuna practices including lomilomi massage and laʻau kahea healing remained legal for the next twenty years.  (princeton-edu)

Later, his summer home in Moanalua Gardens became the home of the annual Prince Lot Hula Festival, the largest non-competitive hula event in Hawai‘i.  It honors Lot Kapuāiwa who helped to revive hula by staging pāʻina (parties) at his summer home.  (Save the date, July 19, 2014, for the 37th annual event at Moanalua Gardens.)

The Kamehameha V Post Office (built in 1871, one of the oldest remaining public buildings in Hawaiʻi, and so named because it was built at the direction of Kamehameha V) was the first post office building in Hawaiʻi. For many years, it also housed the publishing and printing office of the Hawaiian Gazette and other small companies and organizations needing office space.  (NPS)

December 11, Lot Kapuāiwa celebrated the first Kamehameha Day in 1871 as a day to honor his grandfather; the first celebration fell on Lot’s birthday.  Because the weather was better in the summer, the decision was made to move the Kamehameha I celebration six months from the King Kamehameha V’s birthday (so it was moved to June 11 – the date has no direct significance to Kamehameha I.)  The 1896 legislature declared it a national holiday.  (Kamehameha Day continues to be celebrated on June 11.)

He had a law passed by the Legislative Assembly in 1872 that funded and authorized the acquisition of the hotel on the corner of Hotel Street and Richards Street by the Hawaiian government, which he named the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.  (The “Pink Palace” in Waikīkī was a different/subsequent Royal Hawaiian, built in 1927.)

Bernice Pauahi was betrothed to Lot Kapuāiwa; but when Mr Charles R Bishop pressed his suit, Pauahi “smiled on him, and they were married. It was a happy marriage.”  (Liliʻuokalani)  Lot Kapuāiwa never married.

“On the 10th (of December, 1872,) (Liliʻuokalani and her husband) were summoned to the palace to attend the dying monarch; one by one other chiefs of the Hawaiian people, with a few of their trusted retainers, also arrived to be present at the final scene; we spent that night watching in silence near the king’s bedside. The disease was pronounced by the medical men to be dropsy on the chest (hydrothorax, accumulation of fluid in the chest.”)  (Liliʻuokalani)

“Although nearing the end, the mind of the king was still clear; and his thoughts, like our own, were evidently on the selection of a future ruler for the island kingdom, for, turning to Mrs. Bishop, he asked her to assume the reins of government and become queen at his death.”  She declined. “… he relapsed into unconsciousness, and passed away without having named his successor to the throne.”  (Liliʻuokalani) (Lunalilo was shortly after elected King of Hawaiʻi.)

December 11, 1872, Lot Kapuāiwa died; it was his 42 birthday.

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The Reef

In the mid-1850s, Honolulu had approximately 10,000-residents. Foreigners made up about 6% of that (excluding visiting sailors.) Laws at the time allowed naturalization of foreigners to become subjects of the King (by about that time, about 440 foreigners exercised that right.)

The majority of houses were made of grass (hale pili,) there were about 875 of them; there were also 345 adobe houses, 49 stone houses, 49 wooden houses and 29 combination (adobe below, wood above.)

The city was regularly laid out with major streets typically crossing at right angles – they were dirt (Fort Street had to wait until 1881 for pavement, the first to be paved.)

Sidewalks were constructed, usually of wood (as early as 1838;) by 1857, the first sidewalk made of brick was laid down on Merchant Street.

At the time, “Broadway” was the main street (we now call it King Street;) it was the widest and longest – about 2-3 miles long from the river (Nuʻuanu River on the west) out to the “plains” (to Mānoa.) What is now known as Queen Street was actually the water’s edge.

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 the Hawaiian Islands.

Honolulu Harbor was bustling at that time. Over the prior twenty years, the Pacific whaling fleet nearly quadrupled in size and in the record year of 1846; 736-whaling ships arrived in Hawai‘i.

At the time, Honolulu Harbor was not as it is today and many of the visiting ships would anchor two to three miles off-shore – cargo and people were ferried to the land.

To accommodate the growing commerce, from 1856 to 1860, the work of filling in the reef to create an area known as the “Esplanade” (where Aloha Tower is now situated) and building up a water-front and dredging the harbor was underway.

The legislature adopted a resolution directing the minister of the interior to remove Fort Kekuanohu (Fort Honolulu – then serving as a prison) and use the material obtained thereby “in the construction of prisons, and the filling up of the reef.”

However, it could not be removed until a new prison was built; construction for the new prison began in 1855, but not entirely completed until more than two years later. The Fort was then removed in 1857. (Kuykendall)

Prisoners from Molokai (“nearly every man in the village”) who were implicated in a cattle-stealing program; they were tried and sentenced to jail. These, along with other prisoners, cut the coral blocks and constructed the prison. (Cooke)

On the opposite side (ʻEwa) of Nuʻuanu stream was a fishpond, identified as “Kawa” or the “King’s fish pond.” Iwilei at that time was a small, narrow peninsula, less populated than the Honolulu-side of Nuʻuanu stream.

The new prison was on a marshy no-man’s land almost completely cut off from the main island by two immense fishponds. The causeway road (initially called “Prison Road,” later “Iwilei Street”) split Kawa Pond into Kawa and Kūwili fishponds.

Sometimes called the “Oʻahu Prison,” “King’s Prison,” “Kawa Prison” or, simply, “The Reef,” it was a coral block fortress built upon coral fill at the end of a coral built road over the coral reefs and mudflats of Iwilei.

“As one enters the heavy front gates one stands in a long, but narrow, inclosure that forms the front yard of the prison proper. Here a few of the prisoners are sometimes allowed to take their exercise.”

When one enters the prison building the first thing that strikes one is the absolute cleanliness of everything. The cells are all whitewashed and look as though they did not know the meaning of the word dirt, and a meal could be eaten off the floors without offending one.”

“Each cell is mosquito proof, and the doors of most of them open into a big court yard that reminds one of the patio of a Mexican rancho, with its immense banyan tree, the largest in the islands and its sanded floors.”

“Each male prisoner is supplied with a canvas hammock and two blankets. During the day the hammock must be tightly rolled up and hung in its place in a corner of the little cell. The blankets and hammock are washed once a month, and a new coat of whitewash given the cells at the same time. … The prisoners get up about 4 o’clock. They go to bed about 5:30 in the afternoon.”

“There are at present only three women prisoners … The women occupy, during the day, a good-size d room in one end of the building, which is used as their workroom. Here they make all the prisoners’ clothes.”

“The only difference in the cells occupied by the women is that they have a mattress on the floor instead of a hammock to sleep on. They wear blue denim dresses, while the men wear a combination of brown and blue.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, March 15, 1894)

In 1886, Mark Twain visited the prison and wrote: “… we presently arrived at a massive coral edifice which I took for a fortress at first, but found out directly that it was the government prison.”

“A soldier at the great gate admitted us without further authority than my countenance, and I supposed he thought he was paying me a handsome compliment when he did so; and so did I until I reflected that the place was a penitentiary”. (Twain)

“When I was at Honolulu, I had occasion to visit the reef. That is, the island prison of Oahu, where all classes of offenders, murderers, felons, and misdemeanants are confined at hard labor.”

“While I was there my attention was drawn to thirty-seven Galicians, subjects of Austria, who were confined because they had refused to fulfil their contracts to labor for the Oʻahu plantation. They were dressed in stripes like the other prisoners.”

“They were made to do the same labor in the quarries and on the roads. They were conveyed about the islands in a public vehicle, accompanied by armed guards.” (Dr Levy; Atkinson, 1899)

The Reef was about where the Love’s Bakery was in Iwilei, now the Salvation Army Building, next to what used to be K-Mart.  The Prison was later relocated to Kalihi (1916) and renamed O‘ahu Jail; this is now known as O‘ahu Community Correctional Facility.

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Joseph Paul Mendonça

Joseph P Mendonça was born in the Azores Islands (1,500 miles off the coast of Portugal) on May 19, 1847; serving as a galley hand on a whaling vessel, he arrived in Hawaiʻi at about the age of 17 – he jumped ship.

He started working with his uncle, Jason (Jacinto Pereira) Perry (1826-1883 – the father of Antonio Perry, who would later serve on the Hawaii Supreme Court from 1900-1934.)

He met and lived with Mary Anehe Sylva (1870-1962.) She was part Hawaiian her father a British sea captain with at least some Portuguese ancestry.

They had not yet married and had six children; each took the last name Sylva. The children included Dr Francis K Sylva, a dentist who also served in the Territorial legislature (1939-1945;) Edward N Sylva, an attorney and graduate of Harvard Law School, who was Territorial Attorney General from 1953-1956 …

… Joseph L. Sylva, who served in the Territorial legislature (1931-1937) and was also a member of the Honolulu Board of Supervisors; Dr Henry Sylva, a dentist; Rose Anehe Sylva and Mrs. Alice (Sylva) Ackerman. (HHF)

The couple later married in the 1920s and Mary Sylva became Mrs Mary A Mendonça.

Mendonça became active the Annexation Party. On January 14, 1893, he became a member of the party’s Committee on Public safety, which soon afterward moved to overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Mendonça helped seize the government offices at Ali‘iolani Hale, an act that later led to the Queen Liliʻuokalani’s forced abdication. (Chinatown)

In 1894, Mendonça participated in the constitutional convention for the then Republic of Hawaiʻi. After that, Mendonça left politics. (Punawaiola)

Mendonça had practical training as a carpenter and mason, and went into the construction trade. He also started to acquire land, lots of it.

His leases and other acquisitions included property in Chinatown, the North Shore and the Windward side.

As early as 1890, Mendonça and his partner C Bolte had been leasing the former Kāne‘ohe Ahupua‘a lands of Queen Kalama. (MCBH)

A journal entry on June 1, 1893, noted “We commenced today doing business under the name of Kāneʻohe Ranch”. (Mendonça and Bolte formed Kāneʻohe Ranch.)

They started with the herd with imported Angus cattle, purchased from James I Dowsett, one of the founders of the ranching industry in Hawai‘i. Horses, sheep, and goats rounded out the livestock assets.

A couple years later, the ranch was incorporated, with JP Mendonça and C Bolte as the only shareholders. (MCBH) Mendonça was one of the most successful ranchers on the island.

The future of that ranch was noted in an October 31, 1905 article in the Hawaiian Gazette, “James B Castle has great plans for the future of the Koʻolau side of Oahu.”

“He has bought the one-half interest of JP Mendonça in the Kāneʻohe ranch and has secured an option on the other half interest, which is owned by C Bolte, and on the entire Heʻeia plantation, also owned by Mr. Bolte. These properties cover a considerable amount of real estate and a complete sugar mill at Heʻeia.”

“It is Mr. Castle’s intention at an early date to join the two properties which formerly constituted the Kaneohe and Heeia sugar plantations, and to add thereto a large area of fertile land not heretofore under cultivation, which will be reached by pumping, and turn the whole into a sugar plantation.” (Hawaiian Gazette, October 31, 1905)

Mendonça was ready for a change. In anticipation of getting out of Kāneʻohe Ranch, the Ranch ledger entry for December 31, 1899 stated, “Joe Mendonça is ‘pau ke aloha’ with Kaneohe, he wants to sell out or do something, he does not exactly know what; he has bought about 20 acres land in Kalihi and is now in town … about 5 days every week.” (MCBH)

It seems he diverted his interest to Chinatown.

“(Mendonça) owned a lot of property in Chinatown, all of which had windows with either red frames or red brick around them. That was his building identity, to let everyone know how many properties he owned.”

“At one time there were more than 10 buildings in Chinatown with that signature red trim.” (Leineweber; HHF)

Two devastating fires swept through Chinatown in 1886 and 1900, reducing the majority of its wooden structures to ashes. (HHF)

Mendonça was one of the first landowners to rebuild after the 1900 fire. He hired architect Oliver G Traphagen to design his new building, sited on a block that consolidated many of his small landholdings. Traphagen was at the time working on the Moana Hotel, which was completed at the same time as the Jos P Mendonça Building in 1901. (HHF)

On the North Shore, Mendonça had property less than a mile from the Oʻahu Land and Railway Company’s Mokuleʻia train station (it was also accessible by automobile;) the family had a beach house there.

He sold some of the beach front land to CC Crozier, who created the Mokuleʻia Beach Lots subdivision. (The path of the original train track was on the immediate mauka side of Crozier Drive.) (HHF)

He also had an H-shaped, 2-story Mediterranean Revival Style house, designed by Robert Miller, on Judd Hillside Road on the slopes of Pu’u ‘Ualakaʻa in lower Manoa Valley (built in 1927.) Mendonça died in 1927.

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