“Those Honeymoon Isles are getting all sorts of publicity these days, says last Sunday’s Bystander … ‘The Valley Isle’ and Wailuku city of 30,000, a hundred miles or a half-day by boat from O‘ahu Island, and the gateway to the colossus extinct crater, ‘Haleakala,’ will step into the tourist limelight this season with the lure of the new Grand Hotel …”
“… a Wailuku Clift – snow white, solid and beautiful, with every San Francisco fad and fancy of comfort, convenience and service, and a capacity for 100 patrons.”
“General manager AJ de Souza of the Grand Hotel Company has just returned to the Maui Wailuku following a month at the Fielding, San Francisco, buying the equipment, engaging a manager Frederick McDonald and “planting” the Pacific Slope with patronage publicity.” (Maui News, October 6, 1916)
“General manager de Souza said that the new Grand will be the Maui ‘Mecca’ this season with its California high-type hotel accommodations, the want of which has until now decimated tourist travel to the deep and dead Vesuvius, whose dimensions are incomprehensible and its depth bottomless and unknown.”
“Thus Maui, Wailuku, the new Grand Hotel and the bottomless Haleakala will this season and henceforth vie and rank with Oahu, Honolulu.”
“Waikiki Beach and their horde of hotels in the eye and appetite of the rich and multiplying America winter and summer tourist, indefinitely barred out of Europe.”
“The Maui ‘Mecca’ Wailuku and the new Grand will soon bid Western Hotels and Travel fans to the added development of the ‘Hawaiian’ paradise.” (Maui News, October 6, 1916) Folks also learned, “The Grand hotel is going to work in conjunction with the St Francis of San Francisco.” (Star Bulletin, September 23, 1916)
The early hype helped, but shortly after, the hotel was in bankruptcy proceedings, “it is quite true that the Grand Hotel company is involved and unable to pay its debts”. (Star Bulletin, July 21, 1917)
Associated litigation suggested “Rumors are flying thick and fast as to the nature of the probable adjustment of the case. One theory is to the effect that the Grand will be purchased and turned into a Japanese hospital. This is more or less of an old story, but is probably one of the plans upon which those interested are working.” (Maui News, September 28, 1917)
The hotel, the largest hotel on Maui until after World War II, later ended up under the operation of William H Field and his Maui Hotel Company. “Mr. Field built and opened the Maui Hotel 21 years ago which at that time was considered far in advance of Maul’s needs for years to come.”
“Later he built additions and enlarged the Maui into the present building. Three years ago he formed the idea of securing a string of hotels on Maui and leased from George Freeland the Pioneer Hotel at Lahaina, the West Maui port being considered the main gateway to Maui for tourists and traveling men, and he conducted the two hotels under his one management.”
“To these he added the Grand Hotel two years ago and conducted the three under one management. Finding it unnecessary to conduct two dining rooms he closed the one in the Maui Hotel and used that building as an annex or for room accommodations only for guests who took their meals at the Grand.” (Maui News, January 6, 1922)
Later, EJ Walsh owned the Maui Grand Hotel. Walsh was “one of the big wheels for Kahului Railroad”. He also “ran the observation station in Haleakala.” Back then (the 1930s and 40s,) Haleakala was not a national park. It was run privately. (Haleakala National Park was established in 1961.) (Kaneshiro)
Walsh began furnishing meals and other services for visitors at Haleakala in 1936, becoming the first concessioner in this section of the park. (NPS)
One famous Grand guest was Georgia O’Keeffe; she was in the Islands to submit two paintings for a Dole Pineapple ad campaign. More than six months after her arrival in Hawaiʻi, O’Keeffe had produced 20-paintings, not one included a pineapple and she subsequently “submitted depictions of a papaya tree and the spiky blossom of a lobster’s claw heliconia” for the Dole ads.
“This little hotel is very good – the Japanese boy carries my things up and down stairs for me – There is a Danish man (Harold Stein) who has charge of recreational work for the island who treats me as if I am his own special guest – It makes things easy”. (Georgia O’Keeffe, March 25, 1939; Saville)
The large two-story wooden structure stood on Wailuku’s Main Street; cars drove into the hotel’s semi-circle driveway and it was the center of social life and fine dining into the 1960s. (Tsuchiyama) In 1961, The Maui Grand Hotel closed and was demolished for a service station (the site of the Chevron at Main and Church.)
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