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May 12, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

‘Ulumalu

After Kāne created the spring at Kapunahou, Kanaloa suggested that they return to their home at Kōnāhuanui. They traveled through Mānoa over ‘Aihualama to the heights of Pu‘u o Mānoa (Rocky Hill) onto the plains to the land of Kulumalu (also Kaulumalu or Ka ‘Ulumalu) “the shade of the breadfruit.”

Kulumalu was oʻioʻina o nā akua, the rest temple of the gods and the place where the food for the gods was cooked. According to legends, the menehune built a fort and a temple at the top of the hill ‘Ulumalu.

A hill labeled “Ulumalu” was plotted on the 1882 Baldwin map of Mānoa Valley on the west side of Mānoa Road. This map also shows that the hill was part of Grant 4166 to Mrs. Mary Castle.

In the late-nineteenth century, the Castles (descendants of an early missionary family) built a large estate on this hill, called Puʻuhonua. (Cultural Surveys)

‘Mother’ Castle was 81 when she moved into the great house with two middle-aged daughters. Her children, who by now all had homes of their own, thought to “add to the happiness of her few remaining years by building her a beautiful home.”

The 8.16 acres had been purchased at auction on May 12, 1898, for $6,250. A government survey station on the site had already been given a name from the past, Ulumalu. Many stone walls had to be erected.

One at the mauka end was built by a young engineer named John Wilson (long-time mayor of Honolulu), on his first job in Hawaii after graduating from Stanford. (In this same year he would be engineer in charge of the first carriage road over the Nuʻuanu Pali.) (Robb & Vicars)

One of the Castle sons, George (1851-1932), recalled “there being a beautiful grove of breadfruit and ʻōhia trees where native birds congregated in great numbers. The man who planted the grove was very old and I was a boy. Sand (volcanic cinders) came down … and choked the trees.”

Another son, William (1849-1935), gave the name Puʻuhonua to the property. Pu‘u (hill or protuberance) and honua (of earth; but also meaning a place set apart for refuge and safety.) (Robb & Vicars)

“The story is told that way back in the late-nineties when the Castle brothers were building the magnificent edifice as home for their mother, Mary Castle, the Hawaiian workmen digging the foundations had their picks snatched from their hands by the Pueos (owls) and at once ceased work on the sacred spot.”

“Mr George Castle, who remembers the incident, believes that the picks struck into (an) old cave”. (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, April 1925)

A large roomy barn was constructed first (“room enough for three carriages”), and here Mrs Castle with her daughters Harriet and Caroline, and Isabella Fenwick, their housekeeper, moved from the Castle homestead at Kawailoa (610 S King Street) in March 1899 while the Manoa house was being built. (Robb & Vicars)

Built as home for ‘Mother’ Castle, they moved into the big house in the early part of 1900; it was the first building in the islands in which passenger elevator was installed.

There were a porte-cochere, an entrance way, a great hall, a library (15 by 21 feet,) a music room (19 by 26), and a lanai (20 by 20). The dining room (15 by 20) had its own fireplace. And also on the ground floor were sewing room, bath, laundry, pantry, kitchen, and storage rooms.

The hydraulic elevator rose to the second floor, where there were six bedrooms, a sitting room, linen closets and one supportive bathroom. A third floor had two bedrooms (16 by 19), a third (19 by 21), and a loggia to the east. This comes to more than 6,000 square feet, without counting the balconies.

“The outlook from Puʻuhonua (high above what is now Cooper Road) has always been called the millionaires’ view, and it is, for there is probably no such view in the islands as that from the lanais of the big building.”

“Looking mauka are the mountains of Upper Manoa, Konohua Nui and Olympus, towering 3000 feet, and ever may be seen the tumbling cascades and waterfalls over the evergreen precipices. In the foreground is hedge of night blooming cereus second only to that at Punahou, and beyond the great level taro patches of the valley.”

“Looking makai is majestic Diamond Head and the shimmering water of Waikiki seen over the waving tufts of the coconut trees, some of which, it is said, Kamehameha planted with his own hands when he landed for the first time on Oahu Island to subdue and rule it.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, April 1925)

‘Mother’ Castle’s tenure of the Manoa house was not long. She died March 13, 1907, at 88 years. The next and different life of the house and area now commenced. It became the ‘Castle Home for Children’ on May 7, 1907.

Several cottages had been built on the property, with such names as Lodge, Gables, Chalet, Lanai (in one of these lived Miss Frances Lawrence, who was superintendent of “Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association” (FKCAA) for many years.)

Mrs. Harriet Castle Coleman headed the FKCAA. She died in 1924 and FKCAA was told to close the orphanage. Percy M Pond, a well-known realtor, bought the property on May 23, 1924, and put in two new streets parallel to and above Manoa Road, the top street named Puʻuhonua, the other Kaulumalu (this eventually became an extension of Ferdinand Street.)

Pond made 40 lots on 3.2 acres on the lower portion. That became called Castle Terrace. The Castle home (Pu‘uhonua) then became the research center for the Pan-Pacific Union.

Alexander Hume Ford, director of the Pan-Pacific Union (who had also organized the Outrigger Canoe Club and the Trail and Mountain Club,) intended the property is to be used solely as the home of Pan-Pacific research institute, or college of graduates to “tackle the scientific problems of the Pacific peoples, especially those of food production, protection and conservation.”

“The assistant students will, it is expected, attend the University of Hawai‘i, where they will take their degrees. Two such students from the mainland now with scientific party here, are expected to be the first of such entries in the University of Hawaii with others to follow from lands across the Pacific.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, September 1924)

In the following 16-years the Pan-Pacific Union became a sort of early “think tank” capable of providing “perfect quiet for study, remote from disturbances, with ample room for visiting scientists to live and work.”

Many other institutions were happy to cooperate. The Bishop Museum lodged research fellows there, often for a year at a time. There was one charge for the lodgers: a visitor was expected to give at least one of the weekly public lectures.

A Junior Science Council was added. In 1933 Ford wrote that “twenty students of all races and from many localities, members of the Pan-Pacific Student’s Club who are attending the University of Hawai‘i, are occupying the barn and carriage house in a cooperative housekeeping arrangement and working out in their own way ideas which may promote happier international relations.” (Robb & Vicars)

The big house was finally torn down in 1941. The other associated structures lay empty, and gradually they disintegrated. Termites had long been a problem.

Today, 79 owners share the original and lasting wonders of the legendary area: mountain and ocean views, a cool climate, just enough rain, frequent rainbows and sun-glinted waterfalls—all that Mother Castle had come to live with and enjoy in her last years. (Robb & Vicars)

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Castle's Manoa Home-PP-46-4-003-1886
Castle’s Manoa Home-PP-46-4-003-1886
Puuhonua-Castle_Manoa_home-Robb&Vicars
Puuhonua-Castle_Manoa_home-Robb&Vicars
Puuhonua and Castles on June 20, 1903-Robb&Vicars
Puuhonua and Castles on June 20, 1903-Robb&Vicars
Orphans at Puuhonua, about 1910-Robb&Vicars
Orphans at Puuhonua, about 1910-Robb&Vicars
Orphans at Puuhonua about 1910-Robb&Vicars
Orphans at Puuhonua about 1910-Robb&Vicars
Manoa_Valley-Baldwin-(DAGS)-Reg1068-1882-portion
Manoa_Valley-Baldwin-(DAGS)-Reg1068-1882-portion

Filed Under: Buildings, Place Names, Prominent People Tagged With: Puuhonua, Hawaii, Bishop Museum, Manoa, Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Association, Pan-Pacific, Mary Castle, Alexander Hume Ford

April 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Pan-Pacific Union

The first gathering from different Pacific countries met in Hawai‘i on August 2-20, 1920 in the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference. Later, the First Pan-Pacific Educational Conference was held in Honolulu, August 11-24, 1921. About this time the Bureau of American Republics was being organized into the Pan-American Union at Washington, DC.

“The Pan-Pacific Union, representing the lands about the greatest of oceans, is supported by appropriations from Pacific governments. It works chiefly through the calling of conferences, for the greater advancement of, and cooperation among, all the races and peoples of the Pacific.” (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, December 1924)

“In the beginning, the union may with justice be acclaimed the handiwork of one man, Alexander Hume Ford. He it was who in 1908 translated an idealistic dream of a brotherhood of Pacific races into an equally idealistic but more substantial organization dedicated to the furtherance of interracial good will and amity.”

“He it was who, after a long battle to gain the support of an at first skeptical Hawaii to the new Pan-Pacific Union visited the capitals of the oriental countries, the Australasian states, Canada and the United States, gaining pledges of support for the new movement from statesmen wherever he went.”

“And again it has been Ford who has fought for legislative appropriations to carry on the work, Ford who has personally fostered and built up a strong spirit of mutual respect and friendship among the diversified nationalities of Hawai‘i”. (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, July 1922)

‘Pan-Pacific Union’ was the local expression of the larger ‘Hands-around-the-Pacific’ movement, which embraced all countries in and about the vast western ocean – the future theatre of the world’s greatest activities. (The Friend, May 1, 1918)

Ford’s “‘The Mid-Pacific Magazine,’ published at the Cross-Roads of the Pacific, (served as a) Pan-Pacific publication, presenting monthly interesting facts, fictions, poetry and general articles concerning the lands in and bordering on the great ocean.”

The projected calling of a Pan-Pacific conference to meet in Hawaiʻi, the establishment of a Pan-Pacific commercial college in Honolulu and the project of a Pan-Pacific peace exposition here after the war was launched by a number of influential business men. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, 1918)

A Pan-Pacific commercial college was considered one of the best means to bring Hawaiʻi into closer communion with the countries of the Far East while the exposition and general conference would create a sentiment in the countries of the Pacific to make the Pacific independent in its resources and make Hawaiʻi a real cross-road of the Pacific. (Oregon News, June 26, 1918)

In 1924, the Mary Castle Estate allowed the Pan-Pacific Research Institute to use her former home, Puʻuhonua, in Mānoa for University of Hawai‘i student and other use to “tackle the scientific problems of the Pacific peoples, especially those of food production, protection and conservation.”

“The assistant students will, it is expected, attend the University of Hawai‘i, where they will take their degrees. Two such students from the mainland now with scientific party here, are expected to be the first of such entries in the University of Hawaii with others to follow from lands across the Pacific.”

“The gift will be used as the nucleus of the Pan-Pacific University, for which charter was granted some years ago. This will be graduate university chiefly for research work.”

“The chief work of the Pan-Pacific Research Institute will be along lines of research study of food resources of Pacific lands and of the ocean itself. It will be entirely Pan-Pacific Institute connected with no other body but cooperating with kindred bodies in all Pacific lands. It will be neither American, Hawaiian nor Japanese, but governed by scientists from all Pacific regions.”

“Conferences are being held with the heads of several delegations already here from Pacific lands, and cable invitations have been sent to others to hurry on and take part in the deliberations as to the work the institute shall undertake for the peoples of the Pacific area.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, September 1924)

In the following 16-years the Pan-Pacific Union became a sort of early “think tank” capable of providing “perfect quiet for study, remote from disturbances, with ample room for visiting scientists to live and work.”

Many other institutions were happy to cooperate. The Bishop Museum lodged research fellows there, often for a year at a time. There was one charge for the lodgers: a visitor was expected to give at least one of the weekly public lectures.

A Junior Science Council was added. In 1933 Ford wrote that “twenty students of all races and from many localities, members of the Pan-Pacific Student’s Club who are attending the University of Hawai‘i, are occupying the barn and carriage house in a cooperative housekeeping arrangement and working out in their own way ideas which may promote happier international relations.” (Robb & Vicars)

The big house was finally torn down in 1941. The other associated structures lay empty, and gradually they disintegrated. Termites had long been a problem.

A combination of lack of attention to administrative detail, inadequate long-term funding arrangements, declining governmental support (compounded by the global economic depression,) and, perhaps above all, a shift in support on the part of Hawai‘i’s socio-economic leaders from the Pan-Pacific Union to the new Institute of Pacific Relations, resulted in the group’s slow decline.

By the advent of WW II, Pan-Pacific Union had withered into insignificance and, with Ford himself in rapidly declining health, it simply disappeared.

This does not mean the Pan-Pacific Union and Ford were at last irrelevant. (UH) As a local newspaper editorialized at the time of Ford’s death in 1946, he “did more than any other man to acquaint the whole wide world with the importance of Hawai‘i in the Pacific theater.” (Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1946; UH)

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Pan-Pacific Union-1921
Pan-Pacific Union-1921

Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Pan-Pacific

May 2, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Waikahalulu Falls

‘Pan-Pacific Union’ was the local expression of the larger ‘Hands-around-the-Pacific’ movement, which embraced all countries in and about the vast western ocean – the future theatre of the world’s greatest activities. (The Friend, May 1, 1918)

The projected calling of a Pan-Pacific conference to meet in Hawaiʻi, the establishment of a Pan-Pacific commercial college in Honolulu and the project of a Pan-Pacific peace exposition here after the war was launched by a number of influential business men. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, 1918)

A Pan-Pacific commercial college was considered one of the best means to bring Hawaiʻi into closer communion with the countries of the Far East while the exposition and general conference would create a sentiment in the countries of the Pacific to make the Pacific independent in its resources and make Hawaiʻi a real cross-road of the Pacific. (Oregon News, June 26, 1918)

Folks selected a site along the Nuʻuanu Stream, in the heart of Honolulu, near two waterfalls, as the nucleus of a Pan-Pacific Park; here all resident races of the Pacific might re-create their national life and customs.

It turns out the site was at the former home of the former Queen, Liliʻuokalani. Here, once stood the grass house of the parents of Hawaiʻi’s last Queen. As a child she played and bathed in the pool below the falls. (Some call it the Queen’s Bath.)

At first, the Japanese offered to make of Liliʻuokalani Gardens a bit of old Japan. With more land, they suggested different nations around the Great Ocean come for the 1920 Exposition. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1917)

During initial discussions of the proposed Pan-Pacific Exposition came up, Mr Ishii announced that he would provide a Japanese tea house section that would be a credit and honor to his race in Hawaiʻi.

In the garden, and tea houses, there should be no intoxicants of any kind, and only the real lovers of simple pleasures, and those who enjoy the beautiful in nature, would be welcomed. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, August 1918)

Ishii’s Garden in Pan-Pacific Park, a bit of old Japan in Hawaii, was looked upon as one of the most charming spots in Honolulu. The entire grounds were formerly known as Yoraku-en—the Pan-Pacific tea garden.

The garden was planted with Japanese grass, and the landscape gardening there is patterned after the Land of the Cherry Blossoms. Buildings, too, are designed along Japanese lines. It was Ishii’s plan to will the park and garden to the Pan-Pacific Union as its headquarters.

For ten years, Ishii has been improving these remarkable Japanese gardens. They adjoin the Liliʻuokalani Park, one of the most beautiful bits of landscape in Hawaii. The building of a native Hawaiian village is contemplated, adjoining both Liliʻuokalani and Ishii’s gardens, so that in time all may be thrown into one Pan-Pacific park.

Here, perhaps each Pacific race in Hawaiʻi may have its individual club house and grounds. Mr. Ishii is a public benefactor in pointing the way for better understanding and co-operation among the men of all races in Honolulu. (Pan-Pacific Union, March 1923)

Glance up the Nuʻuanu Stream, beneath the finest (and most forgotten) avenue of monkeypod trees in the Island. It was a bit of Japan at its fairest, and there, far up at the end of the arching of green, were two tumbling white waterfalls.

There are many beauty spots in Hawaiʻi, but none more beautiful than those that congregate about that section of the Nuʻuanu Stream, flowing through Honolulu, where it was proposed to hold the Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition after World War I.

Their philosophy was, work hard enough and long enough for the thing you want, and you will get it; and so any good idea may be made to grow into a reality.” (Mid-Pacific Magazine, August 1918)

Unfortunately, there are no records of the Pan-Pacific Union holding the exposition (like a World’s Fair) in Honolulu. The City later acquired the Liliʻuokalani Park – it’s now a small, streamside passive park. Waikahalulu Falls are still there, too.

The City notes, portions of this garden were once the property and favorite picnic grounds of Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last reigning monarch of Hawaiʻi. She later donated her land to the City and County of Honolulu to be used for the public’s enjoyment. This developing garden is devoted to native Hawaiian plants. (C&C)

Records do note that the Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition was a world’s fair held in Japan from March 15 to May 31, 1937.

It was intended to promote industry, transportation, education, science, construction, architecture, social welfare, tourism, fine arts and crafts. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) erupted only two months after the Exposition closed.

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Queen-Liliuokalani-Gardens
Queen-Liliuokalani-Gardens
Waikahalulu-Falls
Waikahalulu-Falls
Waikahalulu-Falls-HonoluluBotanicalGardens
Waikahalulu-Falls-HonoluluBotanicalGardens
Waikahalulu-Falls-arjunaheim
Waikahalulu-Falls-arjunaheim
Waikahalulu_Falls-HonoluluBotanicalGardens
Waikahalulu_Falls-HonoluluBotanicalGardens
Lili'uokalani_Botanical_Garden
Lili’uokalani_Botanical_Garden
Waikahalulu_Falls
Waikahalulu_Falls
Part of Ishii's Pan-Pacific Gardens-Pan-Pacific Union March 1923
Part of Ishii’s Pan-Pacific Gardens-Pan-Pacific Union March 1923
Main tower at the Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition-1937
Main tower at the Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition-1937

Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Waikahalulu Falls, Pan-Pacific Park, Pan-Pacific

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