General | Page 129 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 30, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

College Hill

In 1829, Hiram Bingham was given the lands of Kapunahou – he subsequently gave it to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) – to establish Punahou School.

Founded in 1841, Punahou School (originally called Oʻahu College) was built at Kapunahou to provide a quality education for the children of Congregational missionaries, allowing them to stay in Hawaiʻi with their families, instead of being sent away to school. The first class had 15 students.

The land area of the Kapunahou gift was significantly larger than the present school campus size. Near the turn of the last century, the Punahou Board of Trustees decided to subdivide some of the land – they called their subdivision “College Hills.”

Inspired by the garden suburb ideals then becoming popular both in North America and Europe, and especially England, College Hills was initiated as a way of raising revenue for the school.

College Hills was one of several enclaves for Honolulu’s wealthier residents and marked the true beginning of park-like suburban developments in Hawaiʻi.

Following upon earlier subdivisions, such as the 1886 Seaview Tract in the area now known as “lower Manoa,” the College Hills Tract was an important real estate development in the history of Honolulu.

Using nearly 100 acres of land previously leased out as a dairy farm, Punahou subdivided the rolling landscape into separate parcels of from 10,000- to 20,000-square feet.

The “Atherton House” was built on one of the most attractive of these parcels (actually six lots purchased together.) Situated on a slight rise, and protected by the hillside of Tantalus rising to the west (Ewa) side, the Atherton House, part of the new wave of Mānoa residences. It represented the move of one of Hawaiʻi’s elite families into an area thought before to be countryside.

College Hills soon became a desirable residential area served by a streetcar, which traveled up O‘ahu Avenue and made a wide U-turn around the Atherton home on Kamehameha Avenue.

The Atherton House was the residence of Frank C Atherton and his wife Eleanore from 1902 until his death in 1945. (Mrs. Atherton continued living in the house until the early-1960s.)

Designed by architect Walter E Pinkham, the shingled two-story wood-framed house reflects the influence of the late Queen Anne, Prairie and Craftsman styles, but its lava rock piers, ʻōhia floors and large lanai denote it as Hawaiian.

The house was a gift to Atherton from his father, Joseph Ballard Atherton, the family patriarch in Hawaiʻi, who was one of a small group of North Americans and Europeans that became prominent in Hawaiʻi’s business and political life toward the end of the 19th century.

Arriving in Honolulu from Boston in 1858, JB Atherton worked first for the firm of DC Waterman, before taking a position with the larger company of Castle and Cooke.

In 1865, JB Atherton married Juliette Montague Cooke, a daughter of the Reverend Amos Starr Cooke, one of the islands’ early missionaries. Together they had six children (including Frank.)

JB Atherton became a junior partner of Castle and Cooke; by 1894, as the sole survivor of the firm’s early leadership, he became president.

He worked closely with the Pāʻia Plantation and the Haiku Sugar Company on Maui, and in 1890 was one of the incorporators of the ʻEwa Plantation Company. Together with BF Dillingham, he organized the Waialua Agricultural Company, Ltd and became the first president

Atherton served for many years the president of Castle and Cooke, one of the “Big Five” companies in Hawaiʻi. At Castle and Cooke, he distinguished himself as an energetic and progressive leader, who helped transform Hawaii’s economy away from the single agricultural crop of sugar toward greater diversity.

Eventually, Frank C Atherton would become vice-president and then president of Castle and Cooke.

For 60 years the “Atherton House” was the home of the Atherton family; the Atherton’s children donated it to the University of Hawaiʻi in 1964 to serve as a home for the University of Hawaiʻi president – the University named the home “College Hill.”

While it is the designated home for the University of Hawaiʻi president, and now bears the name “College Hill,” it didn’t get its name because the UH president lives there. (The Mānoa residence was built five years before the University was founded.)

Oʻahu College – as Punahou School used to be called – was located nearby. Thus, the Mānoa Valley section where Frank and Eleanore Atherton had their country home was called “College Hills Tract.”

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College-Hill-Miyamoto-Collection-Oct.-1974

College-Hill-Miyamoto-Collection-Dec.-1966

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College-Hill-Miyamoto-Collection-Oct.-1964

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Aerial photograph,(UH_Manoa)-04-04-26-noting College Hill

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October 29, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Waiāhole Ditch

In 1897, the Oʻahu Sugar Company established a large-scale sugar plantation on the dry, southwestern side of Oʻahu. Irrigation water for the sugar-cane plantation was initially pumped from the Pearl Harbor aquifer.

Because of the high pumping cost, the Oahu Sugar Company constructed the Waiāhole Ditch System to transport, by gravity, surface water from the northeastern side of the Koʻolau Range. The Waiāhole Ditch collection and delivery system was initially constructed during 1913-1916.

The system intercepts large amounts of dike-impounded ground water at high altitudes (above approximately 700 to 800-ft) that previously discharged to Waiāhole (and its tributaries Waianu and Uwao), Waikāne and Kahana Streams through seeps and springs.

The main tunnel through the Koʻolau Range was primarily designed as a transmission tunnel. The success of this tunnel in intercepting large amounts of dike-impounded ground water in the Koʻolau Range led to the construction of additional high-level ground-water development tunnels.

Between 1925 and 1935, six tunnels with headings directed into the Koʻolau Range were added to the ditch system to develop ground water stored in dike compartments. Four development tunnels (Uwao, Waikāne 1, Waikāne 2 and Kahana) were considered successful.

For nearly a century, the Waiāhole Ditch System has diverted an average of approximately 27-million gallons per day of water from the wet, northeastern part of windward Oʻahu, to the dry, central part of the island to meet irrigation needs.

This diverted flow consists of ground water gained from the connecting tunnels, the four development tunnels, and the trans-Koʻolau tunnel and of surface water gained primarily from Kahana Valley.

The flow diversion through the tunnel is pretty low tech; a redwood board determines the flow direction and amount. Depending on which marker the board is raised or lowered to, more or less water flows to leeward or windward areas.

If the board is raised, more water flows to the leeward side. Conversely, the more the board is lowered, the greater the amount of water that flows to Waiāhole stream.

The Waiāhole Ditch collection and delivery system is a 26.5-mile-long system, also called “the ditch,” extending from Kahana Valley on the Windward side to the Kunia area on the Leeward side.

The effects of Waiāhole Ditch diversions received significant attention in 1993, when it became known that large amounts of diverted water were not being used for irrigation and instead were being released into streams on the leeward side of Oʻahu. This coincided with the Oʻahu Sugar Company announcement of the closure of its sugar-plantation operations.

Windward stream water for leeward uses initiated a legal proceeding (Waiāhole Ditch Contested Case) before the Hawaiʻi Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM) over rights to the water.

The Waiāhole case arose from the efforts of small family farmers and Native Hawaiians, led by citizen groups Hakipuʻu ʻOhana, Ka Lahui Hawaiʻi, Kahaluʻu Neighborhood Board, Makawai Stream Restoration Alliance and a coalition of supporters (collectively the “Windward Parties”), to restore streams originally diverted by Central O`ahu sugar plantations.

But large scale agricultural and development interests, including Campbell Estate, Robinson Estate, Kamehameha Schools, Dole/Castle & Cooke, and others, joined by the State, pushed to continue the flow of Windward water to leeward lands to subsidize golf course irrigation, short-term corporate agriculture, and housing development.

After seven months of administrative hearings, the Water Commission issued its first decision in 1997, which both the Windward and Leeward parties appealed to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

The Windward Parties argued that not enough water had been restored to the streams, while Leeward interests complained that too much water had been returned.

In August 2000, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the first appeal. Although the Court acknowledged the Commission’s efforts at stream restoration, it vacated the Commission’s decision and sent the case back to the Commission.

After holding more hearings, the Commission issued a second decision in December 2001, which the Windward Parties again appealed.

The Court ruled that much of the decision failed to comply with the State Water Code and public trust principles, and the Commission had failed to make sufficient findings, based on evidence in the record, to support its various rulings.

It ordered the Commission to reconsider the amount of water the Windward streams need to support native stream life and community uses, vacated permits the Commission had issued to Leeward interests, and ordered the Commission to make a new decision on the permits that followed from the evidence.

On July 14, 2006, the Hawaiʻi State Commission on Water Resource Management issued a split decision in the landmark water rights litigation over the stream flows diverted by the Waiāhole Ditch System on O`ahu.

Four members of the Commission (a majority) voted to largely maintain the allocations the Commission approved in its original 1997 decision, including extensive diversions for Leeward uses, such as corporate agriculture and golf courses.

However, two Commissioners issued a dissent criticizing the majority for failing to give more protection to Windward stream resources and uses.

As Water Commission Chair, I was happy to have authored the dissent (with significant assistance from the Attorney General’s office) and pleased that Chiyome Fukino, state Department of Health Director, joined me in the dissent.

In 2010, the Intermediate Court of appeals vacated the water use permit issued in the 2006 decision and remanded the case back to the Water Commission. (Lots of information here from USGS and EarthJustice reporting on the ditch system and Waiāhole Ditch case.)

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Byron Alcos, superintendent of the Waiahole Irrigation Co., shines a light pon the source of the Waiahole water-(star-bulletin)

Monument at the Waiahole Ditch announces the completion date and names of contractor Mizuno, his surveyor, stonemason, and workers-(hawaii-gov)

Waterfall at one of the water sources of Waiāhole Stream, windward O‘ahu, Hawai‘i-(USGS)

Waikane_Valley-Loi_Kalo-Bishop_Museum-photo-1940

Waiahole Ditch-Land-use and land cover-(USGS)

Waiahole Ditch-generalized geology-(USGS)

October 28, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bradley, Voorhees & Day

“At one time hoop skirt manufactories were numerous, and a large capital was engaged in the business. Since the hoop skirt went out of fashion, the factories have nearly all disappeared, and the capital has gone into other enterprises.”

“The New York Sun reports Mr Bradley, of Bradley, Voorhees & Day, as saying:

“‘It was in 1857 that hoop skirts first came into use. I remember the first article, of the kind which were imported from Europe. They were cumbrous affairs, the hoops made of bamboo, cane or rattan. Iron was considered too heavy a material.’”

“‘Steel hoops were introduced by American makers. It was a long process to get the right quality of steel. If made too hard the steel would snap, and if too soft the hoop would bend in wear and lose its shape.’”

“‘Now the steel is so well tempered that the hoop skirt retains its shape and at the same time conforms to changes of attitude in the like a woven fabric.’”

“‘The weight of a wearer skirt like that now coming into fashion is less than one-fourth of that of the old style of skirt, and the new skirt will wear four times as long as the old.’”

“‘I recollect the time when we employed 1,200 hands, and our product was 10,000 skirts a day. That was during the war, but about 1868 the hoop skirt went out of fashion and the trade died out.’”

“‘There was a transient revival in 1870, but it disappeared, and from then until now the hoop skirt trade has been a very small part of our business.’”

“‘We have always continued the manufacture to some extent, getting orders every now and then, mostly from the South and West.’” (Yorkville Enquirer, August 4, 1881)

The company then got into ‘union suits;’ reportedly they were the first. The union suit involves the combination of both a shirt and pants (drawers) in a one piece suit. The garment commonly included a drop seat. This term began to be used in the 1890s.

A spokesperson for the company was Johnny Weissmuller; in 1924, he and Duke Kahanamoku raced in the Olympics. Weissmuller beat Duke (Duke was 2nd) in the 100-meter freestyle final. (Duke’s brother Sam came in 3rd.)

After becoming one of the most famous swimmers in the world, Weissmuller translated his success into being a spokesperson for Bradley, Voorhees & Day.

In 1929, he signed a 5-year contract that paid him $500 per week. He was to tour the country giving swimming exhibitions.

Weissmuller then turned that into a long series of hit films playing first Tarzan, King of the Jungle (it was Weissmuller’s films that debuted the legendary ‘Tarzan yell.’)

At the beginning of the 1930s, Bradley, Voorhees & Day was purchased by the Atlas Underwear company located in Piqua, Ohio.

During the Great Depression they were successful in manufacturing swimsuits for men, women and children. They patented their own fabric, Sea Satin, a rayon woven satin backed with latex for stretch.

Later, in the 1940s and 50s, Bradley, Voorhees & Day, using Rayon, started to make Hawaiian Aloha Shirts; sometimes with island-related themes, sometimes not.

They also used knits of cotton, wool and Rayon, and cellophane. Their swimsuits were featured in major fashion magazines and high fashion stores. In 1951, the brand was purchased by Superior Mills.

Bradley, Voorhees & Day were first to start packaging underwear in plastic bags for the mass market. In the 1960s and 1970s, they started introducing sportops, a pocket T-shirt, and fashionable underwear made of nylon.

In 1976, Bradley, Voorhees & Day was purchased by Fruit of the Loom, which brought the brand to a worldwide market. On April 9, 2002, Berkshire Hathaway purchased Fruit of the Loom.

Over time, the products were simply known as BVD (using the first letters of founders’ names;) ‘BVDs’ became a genericized trademark in reference to any brand of underwear.

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BVD Flying Fish Shirt

BVD Aloha Nui

BVD-Rayon

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bvd-shirt-001-collar

BVD-swim trunks

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BVD-Weissmuller

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BVD-Men

BVD Swimsuits 1932

BVD Swimsuits 1934

BVD Swimsuits 1935

BVD Swimsuits 1937

BVD Swimsuits 1938

BVD-label

October 25, 2019 by Peter T Young 5 Comments

Glass Balls

I suspect many people would believe the occasional glass fishing float found on our shores is strictly a Japanese and Pacific Ocean phenomenon.

Actually, the first glass fishing floats probably came from Norway and were used in the Atlantic. From 1762 to 1880, a Norwegian glass company was in business and it is believed they were producing glass floats as early as the late-1700s.

The first time these “modern” glass fishing floats are mentioned is in the production registry for Hadelands Glassverk in 1841. The registry shows that this is a new type of production.

However, there might have been some other versions of glass floats in use before that time. In the early 19th-century, the Schimmelmanns Glassverk (1779–1832) produced dark brown and very thick, bottle glass floats.

Aasnaes Glasvaerk, in business from 1813 to 1883, produced 122,493 glass floats just in the year 1875. A glass float with Aasnaes’s mark on the seal button is a collector’s item.

Early evidence of glass floats being used by fishermen comes from Norway in 1844, where small egg-sized floats were used with fishing line and hooks. Around the same time, glass was also used to support fishing nets.

The Japanese started producing small glass floats in the early-1900s and the first Asian floats came ashore along the West Coast just before 1920.

These Japanese floats are part of early recycling efforts – initial Japanese floats were made from recycled sake bottles. Most floats are shades of green because that is the color of glass from these sake bottles (especially after long exposure to sunlight).

Other brilliant tones such as emerald green, cobalt blue, purple, yellow and orange were primarily made in the 1920s and 1930s. The most prized and rare color is a red or cranberry hue.

To accommodate different fishing styles and nets, the Japanese experimented with many different sizes and shapes of floats, ranging from 2 to 20 inches in diameter. Most were rough spheres, but some were cylindrical or “rolling pin” shaped.

Asahara Glass Company had several factories and made a variety of sizes. Asahara made baseball- to orange-size floats for tako jigs, salmon gillnetting and seine fishing; grapefruit-size floats for seine and long-line cod fishing; basketball-size for tuna operations, bottom trawls and crab trapping; and the small rolling pin floats were used for tako jigs and troll fishing.

The earliest floats, including most Japanese glass fishing floats, were hand made by a glassblower. Recycled glass, especially old sake bottles, was typically used and air bubbles in the glass are a result of the rapid recycling process.

After being blown, floats were removed from the blowpipe and sealed with a “button” of melted glass before being placed in a cooling oven. This sealing button is sometimes mistakenly identified as a pontil mark (scar where the punt was broken from a work of blown glass.) However, no pontil (or punty) was used in the process of blowing glass floats.

While floats were still hot and soft, marks were often embossed on or near the sealing button to identify the float for trademark. These marks sometimes included kanji symbols.

A later manufacturing method used wooden molds to speed up the float-making process. Glass floats were blown into a mold to more easily achieve a uniform size and shape.

Seams on the outside of floats are a result of this process. Sometimes knife markings where the wooden molds were carved are also visible on the surface of the glass.

By 1939, millions of Japanese glass floats were being used; although Japanese glass fishing floats are no longer being manufactured for fishing, there are thousands still floating in the Pacific Ocean.

By the 1940s, glass had replaced wood or cork throughout much of Europe, Russia, North America and Japan.

Today most of the glass floats remaining in the ocean are stuck in a circular pattern of ocean currents in the North Pacific Gyre.

Off the east coast of Taiwan, the Kuroshio Current starts as a northern branch of the western-flowing North Equatorial Current. It flows past Japan and meets the arctic waters of the Oyashio Current.

At this junction, the North Pacific Current (or Drift) is formed which travels east across the Pacific before slowing down in the Gulf of Alaska.

As it turns south, the California Current pushes the water into the North Equatorial Current once again, and the cycle continues.

Although the number of glass floats is decreasing steadily, many floats are still drifting on these ocean currents. Occasionally, storms or certain tidal conditions will break some floats from this circular pattern and bring them to ashore.

They most often end up on the beaches of Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Washington or Oregon in the United States, Taiwan or Canada.

Today, most of the remaining glass floats originated in Japan because it had a large deep sea fishing industry which made extensive use of the floats; some were made by Taiwan, Korea and China.

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Large_Glass_Fishing_Float_with_Net-14_inches

3-piece mold float thought to have originated in Korea. It has an amber seal button

14-in diameter-honey amber color. The float on the right is purple about 12-in diameter

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Blunt Nosed Torpedo

Camaleyre-French

Duraglas, made in USA, vintage 2-piece molded float with the Duraglas mark on the base

Estonian-Teardrop

‘Fortex’ were made in Scotland in the period 1910-1920

Hokkaido roller & is about 6-in long

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Japan_Bullet_Rollers

Mexican Swirl Float

Norwegian Amber M Egg Float

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Pie Crust seal honey amber glass fishing float

Russian_Snakeskin

Sapri-brown-amber Italian Societa Altare

October 22, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sticky Wicket

Cricket has an unclear origin, but it probably was developed in medieval England before 1400 – by the end of the 18th century, it became the national sport in England.

Cricket has a long and illustrious history in Hawaiʻi dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. It is believed that the game was first played in Hawaii by Scottish engineers working at sugar companies in Oʻahu, the Big Island and Maui.

Cricket was sweeping the British Empire in the 19th century, and there were a number of Brits in the islands – and the Hawaiian royals had forged such a strong connection with the House of Windsor that Queen Lili‘uokalani even traveled to England to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. (Hana Hou)

Established in 1893, Honolulu Cricket Club is the oldest sporting club in the Pacific (according to Guinness World Records) and the second oldest cricket club West of the Appalachian Mountains.

One of the first enthusiast cricket supporters in Hawaiʻi was Alexander Liholiho (1834-1863), King Kamehameha IV. Reportedly, English cricket was one of the King’s favorite games.

The first cricket pitch in Honolulu is near where Makiki District Park is located and was known as the Makiki cricket grounds. There are several reports of teams travelling around the islands playing local teams, as well as crews from visiting ships.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball team sport for two teams of eleven players each. A formal game of cricket can last anywhere from an afternoon to several days.

Although the game play and rules are very different, the basic concept of cricket is similar to that of baseball. Teams bat in successive innings and attempt to score runs, while the opposing team fields and attempts to bring an end to the batting team’s innings.

A cricket field is a roughly elliptical field of flat grass, ranging in size from about 100-160 yards across, bounded by an obvious fence or other marker.

There is no fixed size or shape for the field, although large deviations from a low-eccentricity ellipse are discouraged. In the center of the field, and usually aligned along the long axis of the ellipse, is the ‘pitch,’ a carefully prepared rectangle of closely mown and rolled grass over hard packed earth.

Behind each batsman is a target called a wicket. One designated member of the fielding team, called the bowler, is given a ball, and attempts to bowl the ball from one end of the ‘pitch’ to the wicket behind the batsman on the other side of the pitch. The batsman tries to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket by striking the ball with a bat.

After each team has batted an equal number of innings (either one or two, depending on conditions chosen before the game,) the team with the most runs wins.

Gamers use terms like: Arm Ball, Asking Rate, Ball Red, Bat-Pad, Belter, Blob, Bosie, Bump Ball, Bunny, Bunsen, Chest-on, Chinaman Chin Music, Corridor of Uncertainty, Cow Corner and Cross Bat – and that’s only a few of the words from the A, B & Cs – there are tons more if you are really curious.

For additional Cricket information and rules, you can visit: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/hosking/cricket/explanation.htm

Established ‘pitch’ cricket grounds are reportedly at Kapiʻolani Park and Baldwin Beach Park on the Hana Highway in Pāʻia, Maui.

The Honolulu Cricket Club notes on its website that it plays the Maui Cricket Club regularly for the Alexander Liholiho “Ipu Pilialoha O Hawaii” (Hawaiian Friendship Cup.)

Reportedly, today, cricket is second only to soccer as the most popular sport in the world.

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