Honolulu | Page 10 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

July 17, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pālama Settlement

Central Union Church dates back to the days of the Seaman’s Bethel Church in 1828. It was formally founded in 1887 and it moved into its present location in 1924.

In addition to developing new institutions within the church, the congregation made great strides in the field of missionary work in the city of Honolulu, including the beginning of the present Pālama Settlement.

Pālama, then a sleepy neighborhood of neat little cottages and taro patches, was chosen by philanthropist and Central Union members Mr. and Mrs. PC Jones as the site for a new chapel.

On the makai side of King street, opposite Liliha Street, the chapel was dedicated on June 1, 1896, and presented to Central Union by the Joneses, on the condition that the church …

… “maintain public preaching there on Sundays, a weekly prayer meeting, sustain a Sabbath school and also an occasional social for the residents of Pālama, the services to be conducted in the English language.”

Located west of Nuʻuanu Stream, near Downtown Honolulu, Pālama was home to mostly working-class Hawaiian families.

Walter F. Dillingham, long active in philanthropic endeavors in Honolulu, once observed of Pālama: “One must picture Honolulu at the end of the century with its mixture of races, their variety of foods, dress, cultures, customs and living habits. All this gave Honolulu a character and personality not duplicated in any American city.”

“The business section was composed mainly of low framed buildings with corrugated iron roofs near the water front. Streets were unpaved, horse-drawn vehicles, with the ox-cart was a common sight. Taro patches, duck ponds and even sugar cane grew in the section of Palama. It was in such a section that Palama Chapel was built and which grew to be Palama Settlement.” (HJH)

In 1900, as Honolulu health officials attempted to rid the nearby Chinatown area of bubonic plague, fire destroyed a four-block section. Displaced residents took up residence in newly built tenements in Pālama, changing the physical, social and economic make-up of the community.

The chapel’s staff located housing for many of the displaced and took care of the injured and children. It also ministered to the needs of immigrants who moved into the Pālama area soon after arriving in the Islands.

Social worker James Arthur Rath, Sr. and his wife, Ragna Helsher Rath, turned Pālama Chapel into Pālama Settlement (in September 1906,) a chartered, independent, non-sectarian organization receiving contributions from the islands’ elite.

“… they called them ‘settlement houses,’ the philosophy being that the head worker, as they called them, settled in the community. Instead of going in to spend the day working and coming out, they settled in, raised their families there and in that way learned …”

“… one, what the people needed; two, gained their confidence so that they could help them fulfill their needs; and then, three, went ahead and designed programs for exactly what the people needed.”

“So they were settlers and therefore they called them settlement houses. Which is what the origin of Pālama Settlement was because my father and my mother settled there and all five of us children were born and raised in our home in the settlement.” (Robert H. Rath, Sr)

The Raths established the territory’s first public nursing department, a day-camp for children with tuberculosis, a pure milk depot, a day nursery, a night school, and low-rent housing.

In 1908, an indoor swimming pool was opened, and a year later, a gymnasium and bowling alley were built above it. Later, outdoors, a playground, tennis court, and basketball court were added.

Also that year, a new Parish House was erected on an adjacent property at Richards Street, to be used for Sunday School classes and midweek meetings

After a territory-wide fund-raising effort, in 1925 Pālama Settlement moved to its present location with nine buildings spread over eight acres of land on Vineyard and Pālama streets.

Over the years, a medical clinic, an outpatient clinic and the Strong-Carter Dental Clinic were established along with annual circuses, athletic competitions, social and community-service clubs, boardinghouses for women and a preschool. Classes and events relating to music, arts, vocations, and athletics were also offered.

World War II and the postwar era brought about widespread changes in Hawai‘i’s social, economic, and political environment. These developments, in turn, led to changes in the way social agencies such as Pālama Settlement addressed community needs.

Observers noted that Pālama Settlement was departing from its original settlement house philosophy by offering programs for fees and catering to a broad cross section of people regardless of where they lived.

The 1960s and 1970s were periods of re-evaluation, adjustment, and growth, with the settlement’s programs becoming more people-centered rather than activity-centered, stressing human and community needs as opposed to uncoordinated, departmentalized activities, following the large-scale social and economic programs being implemented nationally.

Civil rights and anti-poverty legislation brought large amounts of federal monies to Pālama Settlement for local programs geared to at-risk youth and community development.

Pālama Settlement – a smaller one due to the widening of Vineyard Boulevard and the construction of the H-1 Freeway – continues to exist as a nonprofit, nongovernmental agency dedicated to helping needy families and at-risk youths.

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Palama Chapel-(centralunionchurch-org)-circa 1897-1901

Original Palama Settlement at King and Liliha streets-(HJH)-circa 1912

Palama_Settlement-(palamasettlement-org)

James Arthur Rath (1870-1929) and Ragna Helsher Rath (1879-1981)founded Pälama Settlement in 1905-(honoluluadvertiser)

Palama_Settlement

Palama Settlement Swim Meet-(hawaii-edu)-1932

Palama_Settlement

If you had a toothache in 1935, you could get dental work done at Palama Settlement

June 25, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Honolulu Chinatown

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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Chinatown was enclosed with a fence and access was restricted until May 17, 1900, no building was permitted.

River Street looking toward Punchbowl from King Street

Chinatown from King and River Streets. Only the shells of Kaumakapili Church and the fire station remain standing

Downtown_Honolulu-Chinatown_before_Chinatown-Map-1847

View_of_Honolulu_Harbor_and_Punchbowl_Crater._(c._1854)

Downtown and Vicinity-UH_Manoa-Hamilton-Map-1887-(portion)

May 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Downtown Honolulu In 1950

A picture is worth a thousand words; they (and maps) tell stories. This map tells lots of stories … and brings back some great memories.

OK, I wasn’t even born when the map was printed. But a few years later, when I was a kid, there are a lot of familiar places (and associated stories) depicted on this map.

Take some time looking at the ownership and operations up and down the streets. There have been lots of changes since then – but the memories are still here.

Back then, Bishop only went to Beretania – with no further mauka extension (it finally popped through and extended/ connected to the Pali Highway and became the windward gateway into “Town.”)
Bishop Street was the home of the Big 5. Bishop Street was and continues to be the center of Hawai‘i commerce and banking (in the center of the map, running up/down.)

Did you notice their placement on Bishop Street (and to each other) back then (as well as the battling banks across Bishop Street from each other?)

Five major companies emerged to provide operations, marketing, supplies and other services for the plantations and eventually came to own and manage most of them. They became known as the Big 5:

Amfac (1849) – Hackfeld & Company – a German firm that later became American Factors Ltd (Amfac.) It was started by a young German selling goods to whalers and grew to manage and control various sugar operations.
Alexander & Baldwin (1870) – started by Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin, sons of missionaries. It was the only Big 5 that started in sugar. Their irrigation project sent water 17-miles from Haleakala to 3,000-dry sugar cane acres in central Maui.
Theo H. Davies (1845) – a British firm that started as a small isle trading company and expanded into other businesses including sugar, transportation and insurance.
Castle & Cooke (1851) – founded by missionaries (Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke,) which originally sold sewing machines, farm tools and medicine in Hawaii. It later bought stock in sugar plantations and focused on sugar companies.
C. Brewer – (1826) founded by James Hunnewell, an officer on the Thaddeus that brought the original missionaries to Hawai‘i in 1820. He returned in 1826 to set up a trading company specialized in supplying whaling ships but then moved into sugar and molasses. The firm’s namesake, Capt. Charles Brewer, became a partner in 1836.

Another Hawai‘i family and company, Dillingham, started in the late-1800s, although not a “Big Five,” deserves some attention – it’s offices were down there, too (next to the Big 5.)

They played a critical role in agricultural operations through leasing land and controlling some operations, but mostly moved the various goods on OR&L.

Back in the ‘50s, Fort Street was “it” for shopping (to the left of Bishop Street, also running mauka/makai – now, it’s mostly a pedestrian mall.)

You can read the names of old Honolulu retail iconic institutions – Liberty House, McInerny, Watumull and Andrade – along with Kress, Woolworths, National Dollar and Longs Drugs.

I remember the “moving windows” during Christmas season; we’d pile in the station wagon and take a special trip over the Pali to downtown to Christmas shop (the Pali Tunnels and Ala Moana Center weren’t open until 1959.)

We’d walk up and down Fort Street and look at all the animated window displays, then stop in at a restaurant for dinner (one of our favorites was Fisherman’s Wharf at Kewalo Basin.)

‘Iolani Palace is on the site labeled Territorial Executive Grounds (we’re still nine years away from statehood;) mauka of it had different uses – it’s now the State Capitol and Hotel Street walkway.

The YWCA (just to the left of ‘Iolani Palace) is still going strong and nearby was the YMCA, now converted to the Hawai‘i State Art Museum and state offices.

The Alexander Young Hotel, opened in 1903 (on Bishop between Hotel and King,) was later converted hold offices and was demolished in 1981.

You can see some roads have changed or have been consolidated into adjoining properties. Did you notice, back then, Ala Moana/Nimitz on the map was called Queen Street?

In my early years in real estate (while still a student at UH, I used to do research in the Tax Office and Bureau of Conveyances (lower right of map.) Fifty-years later, I directed DLNR which now has the Bureau of Conveyances under its management umbrella.

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Downtown_Honolulu-Building_ownership_noted-Map-1950

Bishop Street ended at Beretania in 1959

American Factors Building was demolishe

Amfac-Building-corner-of-Fort-Queen-Streets

Theo H Davies Building-1920s

Queen-Street-view-of-C.-Brewer-Building

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In_front_of_Castle&Cooke-Building-1945-Star-Bulletin

Alexander&Baldwin-Building

First_Hawaiian_Bank_Building (old)

Dillingham_Transportation_Building

Queens_Hospital-1954

Schuman Carriage-corner of Beretania and Richards-the entire block was torn down to build the State Capitol Building-1950s

McInerny

Alexander Young Building

Honolulu Iron Works 1960. Today it is the location of Restaurant Row.

Honolulu Harbor-1950s

Fort Street looking mauka from King street-11-08-59

Downtown Honolulu in 1956. McInerny on the left, and the overhead lines are for trolley buses

Bishop_Street-1954

Bishop_Street_Looking_Makai-Dillingham_Transportation_Bldg-1940

Honolulu_Harbor-Downtown-aerial-1950s

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Honolulu and Vicinity-Transit-Map-1949

Honolulu-HVB-map-1952

April 17, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Alick

Alexander “Alick” Cartwright worked as a clerk for a broker and later for a bank, and, weather permitting, played variations of cricket and rounders in the vacant lots of New York City after the bank closed each day.

Rounders, like baseball, is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a ball with a bat; players score by running around the four bases on the field (the earliest reference to the game was in 1744.)

“In New York City in the 1830s and ’40s, young Alick Cartwright grew up playing all kinds of games that used bats, balls and bases — but none of them were called baseball, for that game had not yet been created.”

“In his teens, Alick and his friends ventured into other neighborhoods to play various ball games, including at the grassy squares at Madison Square and Murray Hill, and he earns a reputation as one of the best players in the city …”

“… whatever the game, be it cricket, rounders, barn ball, burn ball, stick ball, soak ball, goal ball, town ball or several “old cat” games — one old cat (one base), two old cat (two bases), etc.”

“But one thing drove Alick crazy – every area played by different rules, sometimes using two bases, sometimes five, and the number of players on the field varied from just a few to more than 20.”

“Sometimes a base was a tall wooden stick in the ground, sometimes a rock, sometimes a barrel top or just an old hat. Plus, the distances between bases were always different.”

“Worse, because the rules were always different, they spent as much time arguing about the rules as playing the game. Alick played for one reason, to have fun, and arguing was not fun.”

“After a particularly contentious argument that nearly comes to blows until Alick intervenes, he sits down with pencil, paper and ruler to create a more perfect game.”

“After his best pal nearly dies after getting hit in the head by a thrown ball during a game of town ball, Alick writes down the rules of modern baseball.” (Chapman; Amazon)

Baseball was based on the English game of rounders. Rounders become popular in the United States in the early 19th century, where the game was called “townball”, “base” or “baseball”.

In 1845, Cartwright organized the New York Knickerbockers team with a constitution and bylaws, and suggested that they could arrange more games and the sport would be more widely-played if it had a single set of agreed-upon rules.

Many of these ball-playing young men, including Cartwright, were also volunteer firemen. They named their team after a volunteer fire department in which Alexander Cartwright and several other players belonged to.

One of these wrote in his notes, “We were all men who were at liberty after 3 o’clock in the afternoon and played only for health and recreation… and merely wanted to join a club to set up new uniform rules”.

Cartwright played a key role in formalizing the first published rules of the game, including the concept of foul territory, the distance between bases, three-out innings and the elimination of retiring base runners by throwing batted baseballs at them.

The man who really invented baseball spent the last forty-four years of his long life in Hawai‘i and laid out Hawai‘i’s first baseball diamond, now called Cartwright Field, in Makiki.

When he left Manhattan, Cartwright took with him a bat, ball and a copy of the old manuscript rule book, that he helped to draft. Fifteen years later, he sent a letter from Honolulu …

“Dear old Knickerbockers, I hope the club is still kept up, and that I shall some day meet again with them on the pleasant fields of Hoboken. I have in my possession the original ball with which we used to play on Murray Hill. “

“Many is the pleasant chase I have had after it on Mountain and Prairie and many an equally pleasant one on the sunny plains of Hawaii … Sometimes I have thought of sending it home to be played for by the clubs, but I cannot bear to part with it, so linked in it, is it with cherished home memories.”

Cartwright went on to teach people in Hawai‘i how to play the game; and, he did a lot more when he was here.

In Hawaiʻi, he continued the volunteer fire fighting activities he had learned as a member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12 in New York City – and, he was part of Honolulu’s first Volunteer Fire Brigade.

Shortly thereafter, the Honolulu Fire was established on December 27, 1850, by signature of King Kamehameha III, and was the first of its kind in the Hawaiian Islands, and the only Fire Department in the United States established by a ruling monarch.

Then, on December 27, 1850, King Kamehameha III passed an act in the Privy Council that appointed Cartwright Chief Engineer of the Fire Department of the City of Honolulu. Shortly thereafter, he became Fire Chief.

Aside from his duties at the Honolulu Fire Department, Cartwright also served as advisor to the Queen. Cartwright was the executor of Queen Emma’s Last Will & Testament, in which she left the bulk of her estate to the Queen’s Hospital when she died in 1885.

Cartwright also served as the executor of the estate of King Kalākaua.

As part of its customs and traditions, cornerstone ceremonies were held for the construction of new Hospital buildings. Cartwright participated in the first public Masonic ceremony on the islands at the laying of the Queen’s Hospital cornerstone in 1860.

He also was appointed Consul to Peru, and was on the financial committee for Honolulu’s Centennial Celebration of American Independence held on July 4, 1876.

A group of men, Cartwright among them, founded the Honolulu Library and Reading Room in 1879. In the local newspaper, the Commercial Pacific Advertiser, editor J. H. 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 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.

Born in New York City on April 17, 1820, Mr. Baseball, Alexander Cartwright died at the age of 72 in Honolulu on July 12th, 1892. A large, pink granite monument in Oʻahu Cemetery marks the final resting-place of Alexander Joy Cartwright, Jr.

Many baseball greats, such as Babe Ruth, have visited this spot to pay tribute. Today, baseballs and notes can regularly be found lying at the foot of his large grave marker.

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cartwright

Alexander_Cartwright_1855_Daguerreotype

Alexander Cartwright (back row center) and some of the Knickerbockers

Alexander Cartwright, with apparently Mr. Kerr of Honolulu and friend of Cartwright-1855

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Cartwright Field plaque-KHON

alexander-cartwright-baseball hall of fame

Alexander-Cartwright-Jr-grave-in-Oahu-Cemetery

April 7, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Aloha Tower

Coral doesn’t grow in freshwater. So, where a stream enters a coastal area, there is typically no coral growth at that point – and, as the freshwater runs out into the ocean, a coral-less channel is created.

In its natural state, thanks to Nuʻuanu Stream, Honolulu Harbor originally was a deep embayment formed by the outflow of Nuʻuanu Stream creating an opening in the shallow coral reef along the south shore of Oʻahu.

Honolulu Harbor (it was earlier known as Kuloloia) was entered by the first foreigner, Captain William Brown of the English ship Butterworth, in 1794.

They called the harbor “Fair Haven” which may be a rough translation of the Hawaiian name Honolulu (it was also sometimes called Brown’s Harbor.) The name Honolulu (meaning “sheltered bay” – with numerous variations in spelling) soon came into use.

Boats either anchored off-shore, or they were pulled into the harbor (this was done with canoes; or, it meant men and/or oxen pulled them in.) It might take eight double canoes with 16-20 men each, working in the pre-dawn calm when winds and currents were slow.

A few years after, in 1825, the first pier in the harbor was improvised by sinking a ship’s hull near the present Pier 12 site. As Honolulu developed and grew, lots of changes happened, including along its waterfront. What is now known as Queen Street used to be the water’s edge.

Between 1857 and 1870, the coral block walls of the dismantled Fort edged and filled about 22-acres of reef and tideland, forming the “Esplanade” or “Ainahou,” between Fort and Merchant Streets.

In 1904, the area around South Street from King to Queen Streets was filled in. The Hawaiʻi Department of Public Works reported that “considerable filling (was) required” for the extension of Queen Street, from South Street to Ward Avenue, which would “greatly relieve the district of Kewalo in the wet season.”

With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and anticipated increased trans-Pacific shipping, government and business planned to further enlarge Honolulu Harbor by dredging Kalihi Channel and Kapālama Basin.

Even in today’s high-tech environment with tools and toys with satellite support, the simple illumination from a known point continues to serve as a navigational aid, as well as warn mariners of hazardous areas.

Carl W Winstedt and the National Construction Company began construction on the Aloha Tower in 1924. The project took a year and a half to complete.

Aloha Tower opened in 1926; at 10 stories and 184-feet, 2-inches tall it was the tallest building in the Territory (and remained such for the next forty years.) (LRB)

It has 4 clocks, each face 12 feet in diameter (by far the biggest clock in the Territory of Hawai‘i and one of the largest in the United States at the time) and facing different directions, were made of bronze and weighed 7 tons each.

“Large public clocks first appeared in the 1840s and 1850s. In 1842, James Hunnewell presented Kawaiahaʻo Church with the large church clock on the gallery wall below the new organ.”

The public clock served the functional purpose of telling passers-by the time. But it also served as a village landmark, a reference point, and a symbol of civic pride. Indeed, public clocks were something of a status symbol for a community, a sign that a town had reached a certain level of prosperity, that there was action there.

If a ship or person was too far away to read the clock, two other means of time synchronization were provided. A time ball was lowered to the bottom of the forty-foot mast atop the tower each day at noon, and the blast of a siren was sounded at 7 am, noon and 4 pm.

Aloha Tower was built as a control tower for the Honolulu harbormaster and a lighthouse as part of a modern freight and passenger terminal at piers 8, 9 and 10.

In addition, it provided offices for the harbor master, pilots and customs officials. The eleventh floor of the tower served as a lookout for the harbor pilots, with balconies on all four sides.

In the day (pre-1959 trans-Pacific jetliner service,) the method of travel to Hawai‘i was by ship. Aloha Tower welcomed cruise passengers/visitors to the islands.

When the attack on Pearl Harbor came on December 7, 1941, Coast Guardsmen took up defensive positions around Aloha Tower and protected it from being occupied.

The Aloha Tower received little damage during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but shortly thereafter, it was camouflaged with brown and green paint, and its light was extinguished for the remainder of the war.

Pre- and during WW II, the tower had been secretly a control facility for military convoy shipping for the Pacific Theater of Operations.

The military took control of the facility and painted it camouflage to minimize detection. (In 1947, the green camouflage paint was sandblasted from the tower and the brilliant white paint replaced.)

By the late 1960s, tall buildings were crowding the tower, and the Coast Guard decided to discontinue the beacon atop the Aloha Tower and install one on a 220-foot television tower.

This navigational aid served until 1975, when the present Honolulu Harbor Light was established on a metal pole at the end of Pier 2.

Owned by the State of Hawai’i, the Aloha Tower was renovated in 1994, at no cost to taxpayers, by the developer of the adjacent Aloha Tower Marketplace.

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Aloha_Tower-Honolulu_Harbor-Postcard-aerial-1935

19990624 CTY Construction of the Aloha Tower between 1924 and Sept. 1926 when the Aloha Tower was dedicated. COPY PHOTO BY DENNIS ODA FROM THE STATE ARCHIVES ON JUNE 23, 1999.