Honolulu | Page 10 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

September 8, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hawaiʻi’s First Skyscraper

At six stories, the Stangenwald building was considered Hawaii’s first skyscraper and one of the most prestigious addresses in Honolulu.

Designed by noted architect Charles William Dickey, construction of the steel-frame and brick building began in 1900 and the building was completed in 1901.

The Stangenwald Building melds Italian Renaissance Revival elements and a hint of the Romanesque Revival Style with arched windows, terra cotta ornaments, and a wide balcony with fine grillwork above the entrance.

Dr. Hugo Stangenwald, the “student revolutionist, Austrian émigré, able practicing physician, and recognized early-day daguerreotype artist (photographic process,)” left Austria in March 1845. After living in California, he arrived in Honolulu in 1853. He married the former Mary Dimond in 1854.

He opened a shop in late-1854 in a one-story frame structure on the site of the present Stangenwald building. His advertisement was well-known: “To send to them that precious boon, And have your picture taken soon, And quick their weeping eyes they’ll wipe To smile upon your daguerreotype.”

Stangenwald bought the Merchant Street property in 1869 and formed a partnership with his fellow-physician neighbor, Dr. Judd.

In January, 1899, Stangenwald leased his property to a hui, a limited partnership firm which was to lease his property from him and erect a building there to match the quality of the Judd Building (1898) next door.

Though the project was named for the well-known physician and photographer, Stangenwald had little to do with it. He died in June of that year.

The hui sold its interest in the land to the Pacific Building Company, newly formed to finance the project.

The building’s earliest occupants were lawyers, many of whom were in the hui and so had a vested interest in the building, so that early conceptions of the building included a law library and a Business Men’s Club, though neither were realized in the final building.

The Stangenwald Building’s steel frame supported a decorative structure, “with dark terra cotta and pressed metal trimmings and cornice, massive in design yet promising a pleasing effect. This building is of the most modern style of fire-proof architecture, designed with completeness of office conveniences equal to that of any city.”

Honolulu’s business community seemed to agree, for its prestigious address was claimed by several of Honolulu’s most prominent company names: The Henry Waterhouse Trust Company, BF Dillingham, Castle and Cooke, Alexander & Baldwin and C Brewer Companies.

It was part of downtown redevelopment plan and construction boom in the wake of the terrible Chinatown fire that destroyed blocks of buildings in 1900.

The Stangenwald remained the tallest structure until 1950, when the seven-story Edgewater Hotel in Waikīkī took over that title.

The building defined Honolulu’s skyline for more than 60 years and it was not until the 19-story First National Bank of Hawaiʻi Building was constructed in 1962 that Honolulu’s downtown would break the six-story mark (the only exceptions being the spires of Aloha Tower (1926) and Honolulu Hale (1929.))

Renovated periodically throughout its life – including alterations to the original ornate cornice, the Stangenwald was the subject of a major rehabilitation in 1980.

Today, the building is home to several architectural firms and the American Institute of Architects (founded in 1926, with Dickey as its inaugural president.)

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August 22, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Honolulu City Lights

The first discoveries of electricity were made back in ancient Greece. Greek philosophers discovered that when amber is rubbed against cloth, lightweight objects will stick to it. This is the basis of static electricity.

The credit for generating electric current on a practical scale goes to the English scientist, Michael Faraday. In 1831, Faraday found the solution that electricity could be produced through magnetism by motion.

Using electricity as a power source, in the period from 1878 to 1880, Thomas Edison and his associates worked on at least three thousand different theories to develop an efficient incandescent lamp. Incandescent lamps make light by using electricity to heat a thin strip of material (called a filament) until it gets hot enough to glow.

Finally, Edison decided to try a carbonized cotton thread filament. When voltage was applied to the completed bulb, it began to radiate a soft orange glow. Just about fifteen hours later, the filament finally burned out; Patent number 223,898 was given to Edison’s electric lamp.

In 1881, the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) was held in Paris; it was the first International Exposition of Electricity. The major events associated with the Fair included Thomas Edison’s electric lights, electrical distribution and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.

Shortly thereafter, the Brush Electric Light Company established New York City’s first electric company. A small generator powered street lights on lower Broadway.

In an era of gas lamps, King Kalākaua recognized the potential of “electricity,” and helped pioneer its introduction in the Hawaiian kingdom. The King arranged to meet the inventor of the incandescent lamp, Thomas Edison, in New York in 1881, during the course of a world tour.

During the King’s visit to NYC, the New-York Tribune (September 25, 1881) wrote an article about the King: “One of the sights that pleased him most was the Paris Electrical Exhibition. We spent some time there.”

“Kalakaua is going to introduce the electric light in his own kingdom; and he examined the different lamps on that account with the greatest interest. The life in Paris entertained him very much; they turned night into day there.”

“The visit, indeed, was not altogether one of curiosity, nor was the Edison light wholly unfamiliar to his Majesty, who had already observed it in operation in Paris.”

“It has for several years been one of the dreams of his Majesty, in the development of the civilization toward which his people are rapidly struggling to introduce the electric light in Honolulu and light the city with it, in preference to gas.”

“He has, however, patiently awaited the perfection of some one of the many systems before the public and will probably on his return reduce the purpose to practice.” (New York Times, September 26, 1881)

“He seemed particularly interested in the statement that after steam-power had been transformed into electricity and carried to a great distance in that form it could again be converted into motive power by means of an electrical motor …”

“… and sold to customers for the purpose of running elevators or operating hoist-ways. His eyes lighted when he was told that one of the most profitable departments of the business of the company would be the sale of power to manufactories and business firms …”

“… in quantities as small as a single horse power, costing, under circumstances of ordinary use, not more than 8 cents a day.” (New York Times, September 26, 1881)

Five years after Kalākaua and Edison met, Charles Otto Berger, a Honolulu-based insurance executive with mainland connections, organized a demonstration of “electric light” at the king’s residence, ʻIolani Palace, on the night of July 26, 1886.

To commemorate the occasion, a tea party was organized by Her Royal Highness the Princess Liliʻuokalani and Her Royal Highness the Princess Likelike. The Royal Hawaiian Military Band played music and military companies marched in the palace square. An immense crowd gathered to see and enjoy the brightly lit palace that night.

Shortly after this event, David Bowers Smith, a North Carolinian businessman living in Hawaiʻi, persuaded Kalākaua to install an electrical system on the palace grounds. The plant consisted of a small steam engine and a dynamo for incandescent lamps. On November 16, 1886 – Kalākaua’s birthday – ʻIolani Palace became the world’s first royal residence to be lit by electricity.

With the palace lit, the government began exploring ways to establish its own power plant to light the streets of Honolulu. A decision was made to use the energy of flowing water to drive the turbines of a power plant built in Nu‘uanu Valley.

Accordingly, “a head of from 300 to 330 feet could be obtained at the elevation known as Queen Emma lot in Nu‘uanu Valley (Hānaiakamālama,) this giving about 130 horse power.”

The new dynamo station was located instead “opposite the Wood estate, it having been found that the Queen Emma lot could not be secured.” The contract was awarded to Peter High, ground was broken November 23, 1887 and the government accepted the building on January 21, 1888.

Water was taken in a pipeline running past Kaniakapūpū, then fed a hydroelectric plant in an area known as “Reservoir #1,” near Oʻahu County Club. Power lines were strung on the existing Mutual Telephone Co. poles in the area, down to downtown Honolulu.

On Friday, March 23, 1888, Princess Kaʻiulani, the king’s niece, threw the switch that illuminated the town’s streets for the first time – the first of Honolulu City Lights.

The Minister of the Interior report to the Legislative Assembly in the 1888 noted, “We have at present one twelve-light machine, carrying twelve lights with five miles of wire, and using nine horse power; also one fifty-light machine, carrying forty-six lamps on fifteen miles of wire, using forty-two horse power, making a total of fifty-eight lights now in use in the city.”

A year later, the first of a handful of residences and business had electricity. By 1890, this luxury had been extended to 797 of Honolulu’s homes.

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Nuuanu_Homes-Monsarrat-(portion)-1920-(noting_Government_Electric_Works)
Iolani Palace, circa 1889
Queen_Kapiolani_on_the_Iolani_Palace_grounds with Antoinette Swan-(PP-97-14-016)
Iolani_Palace-early 1880s
Kalakaua

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 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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