Kahului | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

April 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kahului Harbor

Before European contact, ‘Iao Stream served to irrigate lo’i in terraces that extended well up into ‘Iao Valley. Nearby is Kanaha Fishpond, which is said to have been built by Chief Kiha-Piʻilani, son of Piʻilani and brother-in-law of ʻUmi, (in about the 16th century.)

After contact, the port and town of Lāhainā was the first trading location to become established on Maui. As early as 1819, whaling lured thousands of sailors to Lāhainā. Meanwhile, even by 1837, Kahului was described as a settlement of 26-pili grass houses.

During King Kamehameha’s campaign to unify the Hawaiian Islands, the principal military encounter on Maui took place within Kahului Bay. For two days, there was constant fighting between the two sides until Kamehameha conquered them with the help of the western military expertise and firearms of his western advisors, John Young and Isaac Davis.

It was a bloody battle and by the time it was over, the beach between Kahului and Pāʻia was covered with the canoes and bodies of fallen warriors.

With the success of the first oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the whaling trade began to decline in the 1860s. It was about at this time when Maui turned to the emerging sugar industry to fill its economic void.

The isthmus between Haleakala and West Maui contained rich soils ideal for crop cultivation. Within a few short years, the region soon supported one of the largest sugar plantations in the world.

In 1876, following the Reciprocity Treaty, other Westerners gained interest in Maui’s agriculture potential, including Claus Spreckels (who came to Hawaiʻi from San Francisco.)

Spreckels leased land from the government and obtained the water rights needed to build a large irrigation ditch that provided water for crops. These events set the stage for the establishment of Maui’s first railroad system.

Rail transported cane from the fields to the harbor. Passenger cars were added to the rail system and in 1879 Thomas Hobron founded the Kahului Railroad Company, the first railroad in Hawaiʻi that provided passenger service between the population centers at Wailuku and Kahului Harbor.

Early development at Kahului Bay started in 1863 with the construction of the first western building, a warehouse near the beach.

In 1879, to facilitate the loading and unloading of goods and passengers, the first small landing was constructed in Kahului Bay. By the turn of the 19th century, Kahului supported a new customhouse, a saloon, a Chinese restaurant, and a small but growing population. (DOT)

When Bubonic Plague was noted in Kahului on February 10, 1900, “we found that the inhabitants of Chinatown, where the disease was discovered, had been moved to a detention camp some distance from the town, Chinatown destroyed by fire”. (Carmichael) The rebuilding of Kahului town coincided with the evolution of Kahului Bay into a full-scale commercial harbor. (Noda; DOT)

Kahului Commercial Harbor is a man-made port, dredged from naturally occurring Kahului Bay. As a harbor, its chief advantage was a narrow break in the coral caused by the fresh water from the Waikapu River, which emptied into Kahului Bay at one time. The break allowed ships to anchor inside the protecting reef.

The anchorage was less than ideal. It was exposed to the full force of the trade winds, there was very little deep water and a heavy surge as well. The harbor has a long history of development, including construction of breakwaters and harbor dredging dating back to the early 1900s. (DOT)

The development of the harbor began in earnest under the leadership of Henry Baldwin. During this time, the railroad and harbor depended on each other to provide service to the merchants and the sugar cane plantations. (Noda; DOT)

The harbor complex originated in 1900 when a 400-foot long east breakwater was constructed by the Kahului Railroad Company.

In 1901, the rail company purchased its first tugboat, the Leslie Baldwin, to tow lighters to and from vessels. Harbor development was initiated three-years later by Kahului Railroad Company, who was at the time a subsidiary of Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company.

“(T)he growing commercial importance of Kahului Harbor, a seaport of this Territory, in the Island of Maui, demands that adequate facilities be provided for the proper handling of freight and passenger traffic under government supervision and control”.

The Territorial Senate then addressed a Resolution, asking “That the sum of $100,000.00 be inserted in the Appropriation Bill for the purpose of defraying all costs incidental and necessary to condemn the new Claudine Wharf and moorings in Kahului Harbor, Maui, now owned and controlled by the Kahului Railroad Company, Limited”

“… whereby said wharf and moorings shall become the property of the Territory of Hawaiʻi; and also to construct a new wharf in said harbor at which large vessels may dock and load or discharge freight and passengers.” Wm T Robinson, Senator 2nd District; February 23, 1911.

Pier 1 was initially 500-feet in length and was constructed between 1921 and 1924, along with a pier shed that was 374 feet long. Subsequent construction lengthened Pier 1 to 929-feet.

The first 627-feet of Pier 2 was constructed in 1927 at the location of the old “Claudine Wharf,” and extended in 1929 by 894-feet.

The first involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers with the project came in 1913 when the east breakwater was extended 400-feet. The west breakwater was constructed to 1,950-feet in 1919, and the structures were extended to their current lengths in 1931. (DOT)

The harbor basin has been widened and deepened at various times to reduce navigational hazards due to increased traffic within the harbor and to accommodate larger vessels.

Kahului Harbor is one of nine commercial harbors (seven deep-draft and two medium-draft) found throughout the state. Because of Hawaiʻi’s geographic isolation, nearly all of its imported goods arrive via island ports.

Honolulu Harbor serves as the hub of Hawaiʻi’s commercial harbor system from where inter-island cargo distribution branches out to serve the neighbor islands. (Lots of information here is from Hawaiʻi DOT Harbors Master Plan.)

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SS Claudine docked at the Claudine Wharf-(MasterPlan2025)

Claudine Wharf, Maui, Hawaii. Photo form the collection of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum-undated

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Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co-Kahului,

Waialeale, Inter-Island Steamship. Pier 2. Kahului, Maui. Pre-World War II-hawaii-edu

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April 8, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

‘Pāʻia High School’

“Because of the fact that there is no site available for the proposed high school at Paia, Maui, the building of which was authorized by the last legislature, it was decided at the meeting of the school commissioners yesterday afternoon that the school will have to be located elsewhere on the Valley Isle, although no definite site was named.”

“When built, however, the school will bear the name of the Pāʻia high school in keeping with the order of the legislature.” (Star Bulletin, June 27, 1913)

“It was at first thought that the school would be located at Pāʻia, but there was difficulty in securing a good site there. The Hāmākuapoko location is an ideal one and the people of Maui are lucky in getting such a fine site for their High School.”

“The county will build the school and the structure will be an up-to-date one. The Department of Public Instructions provides three teachers, and it will be up to the people of Maui to pay the salary of a fourth instructor.” (Maui News, July 5, 1913)

“There will be no tuition charged for admission, although this was the first plan. It is expected that the school will open with some thirty-five pupils in September in the upper department and many more in the school as a whole.” (Star-Bulletin, July 14, 1913)

Maui’s first co-educational high school opened in 1913 in a small frame building at Hāmākuapoko, close to bustling Pāʻia town and near the large plantation camps of East Maui. (OMHS) (It was known as Pāʻia High School, Maui High & Grammar School and, more commonly, Maui High School – now, Old Maui High School.)

When Maui High School was founded, the island was a rural community of some 32,000, mostly immigrants working in cane fields and sugar mills. Education was available only through grammar school, though boys could continue into their teen years at Lahainaluna, then a vocational-trade school.

The upper classes hired tutors, or sent their children to Punahou on O‘ahu or to the Mainland for secondary education. But a growing Caucasian middle class wanted their children educated at home. (Engledow)

“The school is answering a long-felt need on Maui. The basis for admission is a good knowledge of English. Heretofore it was impossible for pupils that spoke English at home to get the full attention they needed at various Maui schools, where the students were held back more or less by those who did not know English.”

“This was the condition everywhere in spite of the most earnest efforts of principals and assistants to have the condition otherwise.” (Star-Bulletin, October 6, 1913)

“The special train that the Kahului Railroad Company put on for carrying the pupils to that school is a very great convenience, for now the boys and girls can leave Wailuku as late as 8:30 and still arrive in time for the school work at the usual hour. This train is patronized by the pupils along the line of the railroad. The children near by come by other conveyance.” (Star-Bulletin, October 6, 1913)

Over the years, the campus expanded to 17,000 square feet along with the enrollment. (EPA) Noted Hawaiʻi architect Charles W. Dickey was chosen to design a large and inspiring school building, taking advantage of the site’s climate, landscape and views. In 1921 the concrete, mission-style administration and classroom building was opened.

Many more classrooms were added to the 24-acre campus, as well as teachers’ cottages, a gymnasium, an agricultural complex, athletic fields and a cafeteria. Students came from surrounding communities, central Maui and Upcountry, often by horseback, via Kahului Railroad trains or buses, or over the well-worn footpaths from neighboring plantation camps. (OMHS)

At its peak, just before World War II, as many as 1,000-students attended Maui High, coming in from throughout central Maui, some even by train. (Napier)

But island demographics changed. Central-Maui landowner, Alexander & Baldwin, formed Kahului Development Co, Ltd (KDCo) (the predecessor of A&B Properties, Inc) to serve as a development arm of the agricultural-based entity.

This timing coincided with the sugar company’s plan to close down some plantation camps. To provide for housing for its sugar workers, as well as meet post-WWII housing demand, KDCo announced a new residential development in Central Maui, in the area we now refer to as Kahului.

“Dream City,” a planned residential community was launched and over the next couple decades 3,500+ fee simple homes were offered for sale in 14-increments of the new development.

Under this 25-year plan, Kahului quickly became one of the first and most successful planned towns west of the Rockies – and the first in Hawai‘i.

As the development proceeded, the plantation camps were closed down, one by one, according to a schedule that gave the workers and the workers unions ten years’ advance notice.

It was announced that the plantation planned to be out of the housing business within ten years of the start of the project, and February 1, 1963, was the date it was all supposed to shut down. It took a little longer than that, but the schedule was implemented pretty much as planned.

Enrollment at Maui High began to steadily decline, as plantation camps closed and families moved to modern subdivisions in central Maui.

In 1972, the present Maui High School campus opened in the Dream City of Kahului. The school is now comprised of twelve major buildings, 36 portable classrooms and several athletic facilities on 75 acres.

At the time, over 60% of the school’s student body traveled from the northeast sector, a predominantly agricultural and rural community. Central Maui students were added to the school’s population at that time. (Maui High)

A notable alum of the Old Maui High was Patsy Takemoto, a Hāmākuapoko Camp student in the class of 1944; we knew her as Patsy Mink.

She became the first Japanese-American woman to be elected to the Territorial House of Representatives, the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the US Congress, a 1972 candidate for US president (running on an anti-war platform) and the author of Title IX legislation, aka The Patsy T Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. (Wood)

Today, the Friends of Old Maui High School are working with government and private groups to develop a preservation plan, obtain funding and eventually rehabilitate the Dickey-designed building (to become the Patsy Takemoto Mink Center.)

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January 20, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Ossipoff Meets Mid-19th Century

The Walter Irving Henderson House in Kona was featured in a 1958 edition of Sunset Magazine – they said, “The house is small but takes care of a large number of guests without crowding.”

It is a combination of classics – the first floor structure was built, circa 1864, as a small church or meeting house; in 1953, the deteriorated church was renovated and the second floor was added, for use as a beach house.

The first-floor stone walls were part of the original Kahului Church building, and were constructed in a style that was typical of the Kona District in the mid-19th century.

Lava rock was a plentiful raw building material in Kona, while other construction materials such as wood were not as readily available. Once missionaries arrived, and began to build permanent houses of worship, they found that building with stone was the most economical and expeditious means of constructing what they needed.

These buildings were constructed with local lava rock held together with lime mortar produced with coral, typically burned on site. In some cases, the stones used came from local heiau. (It is not known if that was the case here, though there are records of heiau nearby.)

It is also not known who built the Kahului Church. One of the most well-known builders of Kona’s nineteenth century stone churches was the Reverend John D Paris, an American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Protestant missionary who was first in charge of the mission’s Kaʻū area, and then the North Kona area.

Many church buildings constructed in the Kona area are attributed to Paris; however this is thought to be a former Catholic church.

The first floor stone walls were constructed circa 1864 when the land was granted to Kapae in Royal Land Grant #2961, and the Kahului Church building is believed to have been constructed.

It is likely that the readily available lava rock building material allowed the missionaries to build in a similar style to Paris. For example, this type of construction was also used in the larger St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Kailua town.

An 1892 map shows Kahului Church, along with a nearby structure labeled “Makuakane” (which translates approximately to “father” in English, giving a strong indication that this was likely a Catholic priest’s house.)

The structure was modified from the original one-story church form to its existing two-story appearance in 1953; the entire second floor and interior of the first floor were designed by celebrated local architect Vladimir Ossipoff.

Ossipoff’s design for the Henderson House was innovative, and created an extremely unique house that, though it does not look like most of his other work, nonetheless embodies the majority of his aesthetic and philosophy of design.

Ossipoff was a prominent architect in the Islands, working between the 1930s and 1990s. He was recognized locally, nationally and internationally for his designs. He is best known for his contribution to the development of the Hawaiian Modern movement.

This style is characterized by the work of architects who “subscribed to the general modernity of the International Style while attempting to integrate the cultural and topographical character of the (Hawaiian) region.” (Sakamoto)

The main portion of the first floor of the house is one large open room, and has a scored, finished concrete floor, painted plastered walls, and an open beamed ceiling that exposes the floorboards of the second floor.

The thick stone walls create deep niches at the door and window openings; the center-opening doors and shutters installed do not extend beyond the width of the walls.

The property perimeter has a dry stack rock wall, dating possibly to the early- to mid-1800s. This was when a government commission began requiring formal property boundaries be erected by the year 1862.

Walls of this type, comprised of stones fitted together without mortar to hold them in place, had commonly been constructed in pre-contact times for a variety of uses.

As early as Kamehameha I in the 1820s, dry-stack walls were used in the Kona area as barriers to prevent wandering cattle. As ranching grew in the later part of the nineteenth century, more walls were needed to contain the growing number of cattle.

In Kona building and repairing dry-stack stone walls was common until the 1930s, but diminished throughout the Territory of Hawaii with the greater availability of alternate materials for walls and fences at that time.

The house was recently reviewed for listing on the State Register of Historic Places and the National Register. (Most of the information here is from Jones, NPS.)

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