Oahu College | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 13, 2023 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Punahou – It Had More Than One Campus

Kapunahou, the site of the present Punahou School campus, was given to Kameʻeiamoku by Kamehameha, after the Battle of Nuʻuanu. The land transferred to his son Hoapili, who resided there from 1804 to 1811. Hoapili passed the property to his daughter Kuini Liliha.

Sworn testimony before the Land Commission in 1849, and that body’s ultimate decision, noted that the “land was given by Governor Boki about the year 1829 to Hiram Bingham for the use of the Sandwich Islands Mission.”

The decision was made over the objection from Liliha; however Hoapili confirmed the gift. It was considered to be a gift from Kaʻahumanu, Kuhina Nui or Queen Regent at that time.

In Hiram Bingham’s time, the main part of the Kapunahou property was planted with sugarcane by his wife Sybil, with the aid of the female church-members.

Bingham’s idea was to make Kapunahou the parsonage, and to support his family from the profits of this cane field, selling the cane to the sugar mills, one of which was in Honolulu.

The other mill was in Mānoa Valley, owned by an Englishman; but he also made rum, and Queen Kaʻahumanu’s consistent hostility to rum caused his failure, and also the failure of sugar-cane culture at Punahou. (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

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 Kapunahou was significantly larger than the present school campus size.

While many see Punahou today as the college preparatory school in lower Mānoa, over the years, the school, though based at Kapunahou, also had campuses and activities elsewhere.

All students who entered the Boarding department were required to take part in the manual labor of the institution, under the direction of the faculty, not to exceed an average of two hours for each day. (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

“We had a dairy, the Punahou dairy, over on the other side of Rocky Hill. That was all pasture. We had beautiful, delicious milk, all the milk you wanted. The cows roamed from there clear over to the stone wall on Manoa hill. There were a few gates and those gates caused me trouble because the bulls wanted to get out or some boys would leave a bar down … Occasionally, just often enough to keep me alert, there would be a bull wandering around across the road and down the hill onto Alexander Field or just where I wanted to go.” (Shaw, Punahou)

By vote of the trustees, the standard of the school was raised, and the course of study included a thorough drill in elementary algebra, Latin, colloquial and written French, and a careful study of the poems of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Bryant and Emerson. There is also regular instruction in freehand drawing and vocal music through the year. Lectures were given with experiments, designed to serve as an introduction to the study of physical science. A brief course in physiology and hygiene was given by the president of the College. (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

In 1881, at the fortieth anniversary celebration of the school, a public appeal was made to provide for a professorship of natural science and of new buildings. President William L Jones in his speech expressed the need for Punahou to meet the changing times.

He said: “The missionaries when they landed here were all cultivated gentlemen, trained in the colleges of the United States, and they were unwilling that their children would suffer from their self exile into this country. … A change has been coming over the aims of college education lately; people desire less Latin and Greek and more Natural Science, more Astronomy, more Chemistry, more modern language … We have to teach Chemistry without laboratory, Astronomy without a telescope, Natural History only from books. More men and machinery is what we want.” (Soong)

The appeal was so successful that the trustees moved to purchase the Reverend Richard Armstrong premises at the head of Richards Street (at 91 Beretania Street adjoining Washington Place) from the Roman Catholic mission for the Punahou Preparatory School (the property had previously been used by the growing St Louis High school.)

On September 19, 1883, the Punahou Preparatory School was opened for the full term at the Armstrong Home … Three of the trustees were present at the opening exercises, together with many parents of the pupils, of whom there were 85 present, with a prospect of a larger attendance … It is the design of the trustees to have no pupils at Punahou proper, except such as are qualified to proceed with the regular academic course. (The Friend, October 4, 1883)

By the 1898-1899 school year, there were 247 students in grades 1-8 in the Punahou Preparatory School campus downtown. Later, in 1902, the Preparatory School was moved to the Kapunahou campus, where it occupied Charles R Bishop Hall.

Near the turn of the last century, the Punahou Board of Trustees decided to subdivide some of the land above Rocky Hill – they called their subdivision “College Hills;” at that time the trolley service was extended into Mānoa, which increased interest in this area.

The College Hills subdivision, the largest subdivision of the time (nearly 100 acres of land separated into parcels of from 10,000- to 20,000-square feet,) opened above Punahou and became a major residential area.

Then, in January 1925, Punahou bought the Honolulu Military Academy property – it had about 90-acres of land and a half-dozen buildings on the back side of Diamond Head. (The Honolulu Military Academy was originally founded by Col LG Blackman, in 1911.)

It served as the “Punahou Farm” to carry on the school’s work and courses in agriculture. “We were picked up and taken to the Punahou Farm School, which was also the boarding school for boys. The girls boarded at Castle Hall on campus.” (Kneubuhl, Punahou) The farm school was in Kaimuki between 18th and 22nd Avenues.

In addition to offices and living quarters, the Farm School supplied Punahou with most of its food supplies. The compound included a big pasture for milk cows, a large vegetable garden, pigs, chickens, beehives, and sorghum and alfalfa fields that provided feed for the cows. Hired hands who tended the farm pasteurized the milk in a small dairy, bottled the honey and crated the eggs. (Kneubuhl, Punahou)

The Punahou dairy herd was cared for by the students as part of their course of studies – the boys boarded there. However, disciplinary troubles, enrollment concerns (not enough boys signing up for agricultural classes) and financial deficits led to its closure in 1929.

By the mid-1930s, the property was generally idle except for some faculty housing. In 1939, Punahou sold the property to the government as a site for a public school (it’s now the site of Kaimuki Middle School.)

In addition to these, there belonged in former times, as an appurtenance to the land known as Kapunahou, a valuable tract of salt-ponds, on the sea-side to the eastward of Honolulu Harbor, called Kukuluāeʻo, and including an area of seventy-seven acres (this was just mauka of what is now Kewalo Basin.) (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

It’s not clear how/when the makai land “detached” from the other Punahou School pieces, but it did and was given to the ABCFM (for the pastor of Kawaiaha‘o Church.)

September 17, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First Corporation

The first corporation granted a charter by the Hawaiian government were Punahou School, on June 6, 1849. (Schmitt)

In anticipation of the future growth of the Kingdom, in 1853 a new and enlarged charter was applied for and granted by the government to the Trustees of ‘the Punahou School and Oahu College.’ This granted the formation of Oahu College, which would offer two years of advanced coursework and delay students’ departures for U.S. colleges. (Punahou)

At the Privy Council meeting on May 23, 1853, Mr. Armstrong read the Charter of the Punahou School. After which state, in part:

“Resolved; That a Charter of incorporation for a school and Prospective College at Punahou, near Honolulu having been submitted to this council by the Minister of the Interior for the concurrence of the council in granting the same, said Minister is hereby authorized & empowered to grant said Charter to the persons therein named.”

In the 1856 Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions noted that, “The aim which the Board and its fellow-laborers at the Sandwich Islands have in view …”

“… is to assimilate the religious and educational institutions of the Hawaiian Christian community, in their constitution and methods of support, as nearly as possible to what exists in the newly occupied districts of our own country.”

“Of course, but a portion of the new Christian institutions will, for a time, find their full support at the Islands. It is desirable, were it possible, that a greater proportion of the island resources be devoted to the support of pastors, preachers and teachers of native growth …”

“… thus rooting the institutions of the gospel more speedily and firmly in the soil. We should be thankful, however, for the unexampled progress already made at these Islands.” It goes on to state,

“The ‘Oahu College’ was mentioned in the last Report. It has grown out of the Punahou school, commenced in 1841 for the children of the missionaries. Five years ago that school was opened to others besides the children of missionaries.”

“In May, 1853, the Hawaiian Government converted it into a College, by incorporating a Board of Trustees for ‘the Training of Youth in the various branches of a Christian education.’”

The charter further states, that, “as it is reasonable that the Christian education should be in conformity to the general views of the founders and patrons of the institution …”

“… no course of instruction shall be deemed lawful in said institution, which is not accordant with the principles of Protestant Evangelical Christianity, as held by that body of Protestant Christians in the United States of America, which originated the Christian mission to the Islands, and to whose labors and benevolent contributions the people of these Islands are so greatly indebted.”

There is also an additional security for the institution in the following article, namely: “Whenever a vacancy shall occur in said corporation, it shall be the duty of the Trustees to fill the same with all reasonable and convenient dispatch.”

“And every new election shall be immediately made known to the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and be subject to their approval or rejection; and this power of revision shall be continued to the American Board for twenty years from the date of this charter.”

“The Prudential Committee regard this institution as essential to the development and continued existence of the Hawaiian nation. ‘It is so because the missionary portion is really the palladium of the nation, and because a college is essential to that part of the community.’”

“The religious foreign community cannot otherwise long continue to perform its functions. It must have the means of liberally educating its children on the ground.”

“Without a college, its moral, social and civil influence will tend constantly to decay. This most precious Christian influence, now rooted on the Islands, now no longer exotic, needs only the proper culture to perpetuate itself.”

“The cheapest thing we can do for the Islands and for that part of the world, is to furnish this culture. It is better to educate our ministry there, than to send it thither from these remote shores. Indeed we are shut up to this, as our main policy.”

“The time is come for the reasonable endowment of this institution, which of course must be effected, if at all, chiefly in this country; and $50,000 are asked for this purpose by the Trustees.”

“It is interesting to know that the Hawaiian Government has engaged to give $10,000, or one-fifth of the whole, in case $40,000 more are secured by July 6, 1858.”

“The Prudential Committee have voted to subscribe $5,000, on behalf of the Board, towards this endowment; and also to pay the salaries of the President and a Professor for the years 1856 and 1857.”

“Meanwhile they commend the object most cordially to the benevolent in the United States, and especially to those large-hearted merchants whose wealth has been chiefly derived from the Pacific Ocean.” 1856 Annual Report ABCFM)

Dr Rufus Anderson, Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions traveled from Boston to Hawai‘i to attend the annual meeting of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association (the name attributed to the Hawaiian Mission). The General Meeting was held from June 3, 1863 to July 1, 1863.

Subsequent meeting minutes and other references noted that, “Dr. Anderson having recently returned from a visit to the Sandwich Islands, which he made at the special request of the Prudential Committee … for the purpose of ascertaining, by personal intercourse with the missionaries, the members of their churches, and the people generally to whom they had ministered, more fully than could be done in any other way, …”

“… the real condition of the people, the state of the churches, and the character of their members, and witnessing on the ground the results effected among the people of the Islands by the power and Spirit of God, through the labors of the missionaries; …”

“… for the further purpose of freely conferring and advising with the missionaries, and with members of the Hawaiian churches, upon the present condition and further prospects of the missionary work there …”

“… and devising such plans of future action, as should bring the native churches, as speedily as possible, in what is believed to be the natural order in such cases, (1) to a condition of self-government, and (2) by means of the greater activity and earnestness which would be developed by this self-government, to a condition of complete self-support …”

“… and, also, for the purpose of determining, by such free conference with the missionaries, what may best be their future relations to the Board and its work”. (Action of the Prudential Committee; Proceedings of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association)

“The state of things at the Islands is peculiar. They have been Christianized. The missionaries have become citizens. In a technical sense they no longer are missionaries, but pastors, and as such on an official parity with the native pastors.” (Anderson)

“Nearly one third of the population are members of Protestant churches; the native education is provided for by the government; houses for the worship of God have been everywhere erected, and are preserved by the people; regular Christian congregations assemble on the Sabbath …”

“… and there is all the requisite machinery for the healthful development of the inner life of the nation, and for securing it a place, however humble, among the religious benefactors of the world.”

“In short, we see a Protestant Christian nation in the year 1863 … self-governing in all its departments, and nearly self-supporting. And the Hawaiian nation is on the whole well governed. The laws are good, and appear to be rigidly enforced. The king at the time of this meeting was in declining health, and did not long after.”

“Better educated by far than any of his predecessors, more intelligent, more capable of ruling well, he was subject to strong feeling, and was said to be less an object of veneration and love to his people than was his immediate predecessor.” (Anderson)

The Prudential Committee of the ABCFM “Resolved, That … the Protestant Christian community of the Islands has attained to the position of complete self-support, as to its religious institutions, there is yet ample occasion for gratitude to God for his signal blessing upon this mission”.

It further “Resolved, That the proposition made by the Protestant Christian community at the Sandwich Islands, who have organized a working Board, called ‘The Board of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association,’ to relieve the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the American churches, from the responsibility of future oversight and direction in the work …”

“…And this Committee joyfully commits to the Board of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association the future care and direction of this evangelizing work in those Islands; and hereby concedes to that Board the right of applying for grants-in-aid, as specified in said proposition.” (Action of the ABCFM Prudential Committee)

Anderson wrote to inform Kamehameha IV of the Hawaiian Evangelical actions and dissolution of the mission in his July 6, 1863 letter noting, in part: “I may perhaps be permitted, in view of my peculiar relations to a very large body of the best friends and benefactors of this nation, not to leave without my most respectful aloha to both your Majesties.”

Click the following link for more information on Punahou/Oahu College:

Click to access Oahu_College-Punahou.pdf

March 18, 2022 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Daniel Dole

Daniel Dole was born in Bloomfield (now Skowhegan,) Maine, September 9, 1808. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1836 and Bangor Theological Seminary in 1839, and then married Emily Hoyt Ballard (1807-1844,) October 2, 1840 in Gardiner, Maine.

The education of their children was a concern of missionaries. There were two major dilemmas, (1) there were a limited number of missionary children and (2) existing schools (which the missionaries taught) served adult Hawaiians (who were taught from a limited curriculum in the Hawaiian language.)

During the first 21-years of the missionary period (1820-1863,) no fewer than 33 children were either taken back to the continent by their parents. (Seven-year-old Sophia Bingham, the first Caucasian girl born on Oʻahu, daughter of Hiram and Sybil, was sent to the continent in 1828. She is my great-great-grandmother.)

On July 11, 1842, fifteen children met for the first time in Punahou’s original E-shaped building. The first Board of Trustees (1841) included Rev. Daniel Dole, Rev. Richard Armstrong, Levi Chamberlain, Rev. John S Emerson and Gerrit P Judd. (Hawaiian Gazette, June 17, 1916)

By the end of that first year, 34-children from Sandwich Islands and Oregon missions were enrolled, only one over 12-years old. Tuition was $12 per term, and the school year covered three terms. (Punahou)

By 1851, Punahou officially opened its doors to all races and religions. (Students from Oregon, California and Tahiti were welcomed from 1841 – 1849.)

December 15 of that year, Old School Hall, “the new spacious school house,” opened officially to receive its first students. The building is still there and in use by the school.

“The founding of Punahou as a school for missionary children not only provided means of instruction for the children, of the Mission, but also gave a trend to the education and history of the Islands.”

“In 1841, at Punahou the Mission established this school and built for it simple halls of adobe. From this unpretentious beginning, the school has grown to its present prosperous condition.” (Report of the Superintendent of Public Education, 1900)

The curriculum at Punahou under Dole combined the elements of a classical education with a strong emphasis on manual labor in the school’s fields for the boys, and in domestic matters for the girls. The school raised much of its own food. (Burlin)

Some of Punahou’s early buildings include, Old School Hall (1852,) music studios; Bingham Hall (1882,) Bishop Hall of Science (1884,) Pauahi Hall (1894,) Charles R. Bishop Hall (1902,) recitation halls; Dole Hall and Rice Hall (1906,) dormitories; Cooke Library (1908) and Castle Hall (1913,) dormitory.

Dole Street, laid out in 1880 and part of the development of the lower Punahou pasture was named after Daniel Dole (other nearby streets were named after other Punahou presidents.)

Emily died on April 27, 1844 in Honolulu; Daniel Dole married Charlotte Close Knapp (1813-1874) June 22, 1846 in Honolulu, Oʻahu.

Daniel Dole resigned from Punahou in 1855 to become the pastor and teacher at Kōloa, Kauai. There, he started the Dole School that later became Kōloa School, the first public school on Kauai. Like Punahou, it filled the need to educate mission children.

The first Kōloa school house was a single room, a clapboard building with bare timbers inside and a thatched roof. Both missionary children as well as part-Hawaiian children attended the school. (Joesting)

Due to growing demand, the school was enlarged and boarding students were admitted. Reverend Elias Bond in Kohala sent his three oldest children to the Kōloa School, as did others from across the islands. (Joesting)

Charlotte died on Kauai in 1874 and Daniel Dole died August 26, 1878 in Kapaʻa, Kauai. Dole’s sons include Sanford Ballard Dole (President of the Republic of Hawaiʻi and 1st Territorial Governor of Hawaiʻi.) Daniel Dole was great uncle to James Dole, the ‘Pineapple King.’

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.

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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July 15, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Punahou School – Oʻahu College

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”,) about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

One of the first things the first missionaries did was begin to learn the Hawaiian language and create an alphabet for a written format of the language. Their emphasis was on preaching and teaching.

The missionaries established schools associated with their missions across the Islands. This marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of Chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

However, the education of their children was a concern of missionaries.

There were two major dilemmas, (1) there were a limited number of missionary children and (2) existing schools (which the missionaries taught) served adult Hawaiians (who were taught from a limited curriculum in the Hawaiian language.)

“During the period from infancy to the age of ten or twelve years, children in the almost isolated family of a missionary could be well provided for and instructed in the rudiments of education without a regular school … But after that period, difficulties in most cases multiplied.” (Hiram Bingham)

Missionaries were torn between preaching the gospel and teaching their kids. “(M)ission parents were busy translating, preaching and teaching. Usually parents only had a couple of hours each day to spare with their children.” (Schultz)

“(I)t was the general opinion of the missionaries there that their children over eight or ten years of age, notwithstanding the trial that might be involved, ought to be sent or carried to the United States, if there were friends who would assume a proper guardianship over them”. (Bingham)

“This was the darkest day in the life history of the mission child. Peculiarly dependent upon the family life, at the age of eight to twelve years, they were suddenly torn from the only intimates they had ever known, and banished, lonely and homesick, to a mythical country on the other side of the world …”

“… where they could receive letters but once or twice a year; where they must remain isolated from friends and relatives for years and from which they might never return.” (Bishop)

Resolution 14 of the 1841 General Meeting of the Sandwich Islands Mission changed that; it established a school for the children of the missionaries (May 12, 1841.) Meeting minutes note, “This subject occupied much time in discussion, and excited much interest.”

The following report was adopted: “Whereas it has long been the desire of many members of this mission to have a school established for the instruction of their children, and this object received the deliberate sanction of our last General Meeting; and”

“(W)hereas the Providence of God seems to have opened the way for this undertaking, by providing a good location for the school, suitable teachers to take charge of it, and a sufficiency of other means for making a commencement. Therefore,”

“Resolved 1, That the foundation of this institution be laid with faith in God, relying upon his great and precious promises to believing parents, in behalf of their children, commending it to his care and love from its commencement, and looking unto him to build it up, cherish it, and make it a blessing to the church and the world.”

“Resolved 2, That the location of the school be at Punahou, in the vicinity of Honolulu.”

“Resolved 3, That $2,000 be appropriated from the funds of the mission, to aid in erecting the necessary buildings, and preparing the premises for the accommodation of the school, as soon as possible; but as this sum is inadequate to the wants of the school, even in its commencement, that it be commended to the private patronage of the brethren of the mission.”

“Resolved 4, That a Board of five Trustees be chosen, of whom the teacher shall be one, ex officio, whose duty it shall be to devise a plan for the school, carry it into operation, as soon as possible, watch over its interests, and regulate its affairs generally.” (Resolution of the General Meeting of the Sandwich Islands Mission, 1841)

A subsequent Resolution noted “That Mr (Daniel) Dole be located at Punahou, as teacher for the Children of the Mission.”

By 1851, Punahou officially opened its doors to all races and religions. (Students from Oregon, California and Tahiti were welcomed from 1841 – 1849.)

December 15 of that year, Old School Hall, “the new spacious school house,” opened officially to receive its first students. The building is still there and in use by the school.

“The founding of Punahou as a school for missionary children not only provided means of instruction for the children of the Mission, but also gave a trend to the education and history of the Islands. In 1841, at Punahou the Mission established this school and built for it simple halls of adobe. From this unpretentious beginning, the school has grown to its present prosperous condition.” (Report of the Superintendent of Public Education, 1900)

Dole Street, laid out in 1880 and part of the development of the lower Punahou pasture was named after Daniel Dole (other nearby streets were named after other Punahou presidents.)

Click HERE to View/Download an expanded discussion on Oʻahu College/Punahou School.

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Punahou School, Photograph attributed to Charles Burgess-1866