Wailuku | Page 3 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

June 5, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Baldwin High School

It’s situated on the sand dunes midway between Wailuku and Kahului on the main highway … it was named and renamed four different times: Wailuku Junior High School (1928) … Wailuku Intermediate (1932) … Wailuku High School (1936) … Baldwin High School (1939.)

Let’s look back …

In December of 1924 a resolution was introduced by Supervisor R. A. Drummond to establish a new high school in or near Wailuku.

While Maui High School was available for students pursuing a secondary school education (back then, it was located in Pā‘ia,) the supervisors felt that it was too far and inconvenient for students to travel to Hāmākuapoko and that a high school should be located near the population center of the island.

But it took a while for the High School to be built. First, in 1928, Wailuku Junior High School was constructed. Situated in the heart of Wailuku, it drew students from Waiheʻe, Kihei, Waikapu and Wailuku.

Enrollment skyrocketed from 225-students in 1928 to 498 in 1931. The next year the school name changed to Wailuku Intermediate. After four years the name changed again, to Wailuku High School.

By 1937, Maui High School was becoming crowded and a new school was needed to relieve pressure from the school. However, building a new high school was not a unanimously approved plan.

As reported in the Maui News (June 5, 1937): “Talk of building a new high school found Supervisor HL Holstein asking the question as to whether the school was being built so as to thrust another batch of white collar job hunters on the market or whether a vocational school was being built that would teach a man a trade so he could earn a living.”

The supervising principal, Richard E Meyer, pointed out that only 25% of students who began the first grade finished the twelfth and that the new school was to be a senior high school with some shop and vocational work.

The community received news that on October 6, 1937 the legislature provided funding for the new school construction. Fifty acres of land were purchased below the sand hills.

A number of Honolulu architects submitted their applications to the Department of Education, including CW Winstedt and CW Dickey.

However, as a cost saving measure, plans and specifications were prepared by Department of Public Works architect Henry Stewart and County architect Noboru Kobayashi.

Bids for the first unit, the Cafeteria, were called on November 1938. Construction for the shop unit began in December. Then bids for the last four units, which were the largest, administration, homemaking, science and utility buildings, were awarded.

In April 1939, Harry Baldwin, president and manager of Maui Agriculture Company, turned up the first shovel of earth, marking the beginning of the construction of these units.

On October 27, 1939, ceremonies were held celebrating the final inspection and acceptance of the administration and classroom unit. The school then received its lasting name, Henry Perrine Baldwin High School. Later that year the auditorium was built.

Students and teachers moved furniture and equipment into the new buildings before beginning the 1939 Christmas vacation and after vacation, January 8, 1940, students started at their new school.

The school’s namesake, Henry Perrine Baldwin (born August 29, 1842 in Lahaina,) was a son of Dwight and Charlotte Fowler Baldwin, early American Protestant missionaries to Hawai‘i.

He and Samuel Thomas Alexander, another son of American Protestant missionaries (William Patterson Alexander and Mary Ann McKinney Alexander,) grew up together, became close friends and went on to develop a sugar-growing partnership – Alexander & Baldwin (A&B.)

In 1883, Alexander and Baldwin formalized their partnership by incorporating their sugar business as the Pā’ia Plantation also known at various times as Samuel T Alexander & Co, Haleakala Sugar Co and Alexander & Baldwin Plantation.

By spring of 1900, A&B had outgrown its partnership organization and plans were made to incorporate the company, allowing the company to increase capitalization and facilitate expansion.

A&B was one of Hawaiʻi’s five major companies (that emerged to providing operations, marketing, supplies and other services for the plantations and eventually came to own and manage most of them.) They became known as the Big Five.

Hawaiʻi’s Big Five were: C Brewer (1826;) A Theo H Davies (1845;) Amfac – starting as Hackfeld & Company (1849;) Castle & Cooke (1851) and Alexander & Baldwin (1870.)

What started off as partnership between two young men, with the purchase of 12-acres in Maui, has grown into a corporation with $2.3 billion in assets, including over 88,000-acres of land.

(In 2012, A&B separated into two stand-alone, publicly traded companies – A&B focusing on land and agribusiness, and Matson on transportation.)

A&B is the State’s fourth largest private landowner, and is one of the State’s most active real estate investors. Its portfolio includes a diversity of projects throughout Hawaiʻi, and a commercial property portfolio comprising nearly 8-million square feet of leasable space in Hawaiʻi and on the US Mainland. (Lots of information here is from Baldwin HS, NPS and A&B.)

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Maui-Baldwin-HS-frontlawn

Baldwin High School

Maui-Baldwin-HS-gym

Baldwin High School

Maui-Baldwin-HS-auditorium

Ku Kila Kila-3 tiers-grandparent (past)-parent (present)-youth (future)-Baldwin High School

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Baldwin_High_School NPS

Maui High School vs. Baldwin High School. Katsugo – Kahului Fairgrounds (nisei-hawaii-edu)

Henry Perrine Baldwin

June 17, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Maui Grand Hotel

“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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Maui Grand Hotel-PP-41-8-039-1937

Grand Hotel-Wailuku

Maui Grand Hotel

May 18, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Alexander House Settlement

The Hawaiian settlement house movement was a smaller version of the American movement best represented by Chicago’s Hull House. Staffed by members of the middle class, these institutions sought to help immigrant families adapt to the language and customs of their new country.

The word ‘settlement’ had connotations of the frontier middle-class ‘settling’ in the inner city. Settlement houses in Hawai‘i and the US offered educational services, staged community events, build libraries and in general tried to enhance the lives of their neighborhoods.

Behind the settlement house effort was the progressive belief in the importance of social cohesion, the belief that individuals are not autonomous but part of a web of social relationships and that welfare of any single person is dependent on the welfare of society as a whole. (Castle)

“The ‘Settlement’ as developed both in England and the United States is concerned with the social and moral well-being of its community in both concrete and spiritual form.”

“But since its field is among people of many races and creeds and of widely different economic standing it cannot restrict itself by adhering to any channel of dogma or belief which represents only a portion of the community. Like any rule this one has its exceptions, but that is the general principle upon which a Settlement must work if it wishes to be a community organization.”

“The Settlement field is that of applied social science; what we might call the firing line of our social, political, and economic theory.”

“This field always represents the frontier between the great body of theory and principle and the great body of condition and fact – applying, adapting and proving or disproving the one to the other by concrete expression. That is the field and the fundamental principle adopted by the Alexander House Settlement.” (The Friend, December 1922)

The precursor of the Alexander House Settlement was a Chinese Mission located in Wailuku to which Miss Charlotte L Turner came to take charge in 1893.

After seven years of this work Miss Turner and Miss NG Malone, also formerly a mission worker on Maui, were on a vacation in the East and while visiting ‘Settlements’ in Chicago, New York and Boston conceived the idea of establishing a settlement on Maui. Both returned to Wailuku and went to work to put this idea into concrete form.

These two finally secured contributions enough to start building and also secured the land upon which to build. The land, about two acres, was deeded by the “Directors of the Wailuku Sugar Co. to the Hawaiian Board of Missions for Educational, and Christian work only,” reversion to the Sugar Company when no longer so used being a part of the deed.

In 1900 work was begun. No stone was left unturned to help along in the good work. Prison labor was given by the county. Even the Mission workers (Miss Turner and her assistants), literally “by the sweat of their brows” with hoes and other implements did a share of the work. (The Friend, December 1922)

The first building erected was known as the “Settlement Building” and was situated on the corner of Main and Market streets. It was completed and opened in 1900, its main use being for a kindergarten.

The name “Alexander House Settlement” was chosen as Miss Turner says because “It was customary to name them (settlements) after the men and women whose lives had been consecrated to the uplift of humanity, hence, the name ‘Alexander House’ after ‘William and Mary Alexander’ the influence of whose lives is still felt on Maui, and throughout the Islands and whose names we love to honor.”

The settlement house should not be confused with the former Alexander home of missionaries William and Mary Alexander farther up Main Street in Wailuku.

After the Settlement began functioning, it was found necessary to build a residence for the workers and the present residence was erected in 1901. In 1909 they added a gymnasium and swimming tank (pool) and bowling alley.

A reading room was finally opened, papers were subscribed, books were donated and finally a Library Association was formed which enlarged the library and each year raised enough money to keep the “Library” open at stated hours afternoons and evenings. From this effort has grown the Maui County Free Public Library.

In 1916 land was also acquired on which to build a tennis court; later a second court was constructed and then four more. In 1919, a new field, or rather a new organization of its field of endeavor, gave the Settlement a much larger scope.

At this time the plantations entered into an agreement whereby their welfare work was put under the general supervision of the Settlement. (The Friend, December 1922)

The Alexander Settlement served as the address of the Maui Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) recruitment office from 1934 to 1941; the CCC later changed to the “TH Employment Service, Wailuku, Maui.”

Throughout the years of its existence, Alexander House hosted concerts, parties and entertainments as fundraising events. Community outreach programs in health care and physical education were developed by Alexander House and the complex housed the Chamber of Commerce, the Red Cross, Community Chest and other public service groups.

Later, the Alexander House Settlement’s kindergarten and land was transformed into a United Service Organization (USO.) By 1950, Alexander House closed its doors and was replaced by the National Dollar Store and by American Security bank. (Later the corner bank site was redeveloped as an office building.)

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Alexander House Settlement

Alexander House, Kindergarten Class, Wailuku, 1903

Alexander House_Settlement

Alexander House

Alexander House Settlement-Sewing Class-1903

Alexander House Settlement-Kindergarten group-1903

Alexander House Settlement-Japanese Kindergarten group-1903

Alexander House Wailuku

Alexander House-Wailuku

Alexander House Settlement-Workers House-1903

Alexander House Settlement Church-Maui News

National Dollar Store 1960

October 30, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Halekiʻi and Pihana Heiau

The Wailuku area was a major gathering place and royal center of the Maui high chiefs and those of rank. The area from Waiheʻe to Wailuku was the largest continuous area of wet taro cultivation in the Hawaiian Islands.

Royal Centers were where the aliʻi resided; aliʻi often moved between several residences throughout the year. The Royal Centers were selected for their abundance of resources and recreation opportunities.

To the southeast of ʻIao Stream, below Pihana Heiau, was Kauahea where warriors lived and were trained in war skills. This was a boxing site in the time of Kahekili. (Naone)

The Wailuku spring was located below Pihana Heiau and the taro grown in this area was for the use of the aliʻi (nobility class) only. Much of the evidence for this agricultural system was destroyed by the 1916 flood and by historic cultivation for sugarcane and pineapple.
When Kekaulike, father of Kahekili and Kamehameha Nui, heard that Alapaʻi (the ruling chief of Hawaiʻi) was at Kohala on his way to war against Maui, he was afraid and fled to Wailuku in his double war canoe.

Others with him went by canoe and some overland; the chiefs prepared a litter for Kekaulike and bore him upland to Halekiʻi. There, in March 1736, Kekaulike died.

Fearing the arrival of Alapaʻi, bent on war, the chiefs cut the flesh from the bones of Kekaulike in order to lighten the load in carrying the body to ʻIao for burial. (Kamakau)

The body of Kamehameha Nui (an uncle of Kamehameha I,) who ruled Maui before his brother Kahekili succeeded him, was laid here before being taken to a final resting place on Molokai. Kahekili himself lived here at times (ca. 1765.)

It was at Pihana, in about 1778 or 1780, that Keōpūolani was born (daughter to Kiwalaʻo and Keku‘iapoiwa Liliha.) After Kamehameha defeated Kekaulike’s grandson, Kalanikupule, at ʻIao in 1790, he followed Keōpūolani and her grandmother, Kalola, to Molokai – later taking her as a wife.

In 1797, she gave birth to a son, Liholiho (later known as Kamehameha II,) was born in Hilo; Kauikeaouli, her second son (later Kamehameha III,) was born in Keauhou, North Kona.

Liholiho, after he had been established as heir to Kamehameha’s kingdom, recited the prayer rededicating Pihana Heiau to the gods of his father.

Halekiʻi and Pihana Heiau are the most accessible of the remaining pre-contact Hawaiian structures of religious and historical importance in the Wailuku-Kahului area.

Located about ¼-mile inland along the west side of ‘Iao Stream, they overlook ‘Iao Stream, Kahului Bay and the Wailuku Plain.

Traditional history credits the menehune with the construction of both heiau in a single night, using rock from Paukukalo Beach.

Other accounts credit Kihapiʻilani with building Halekiʻi, and Kiʻihewa with building Pihana during the time of Kakaʻe, the aliʻi of West Maui. Some say that they were built under the rule of Kahekili.

Halekiʻi or ‘house of images’ is thought to be a chiefly compound with thatched hale (houses) built atop the stone platform of the heiau and guarded by the kiʻi (images) placed on the terraces around the sides of the platform.

Pihana was the major heiau of the Wailuku area, historical references suggest, and it is reported to be a luakini, where human sacrifices were offered.

The full name of Pihana is Pihanakalani or ‘gathering place of the aliʻi.’ Others have recorded the name of the heiau as Piʻihana. (Naone)

The two heiau are constructed of stacked waterworn basalt boulders collected from ʻIao Stream. The sides of the heiau were stepped or terraced and an ili-ili (waterworn basalt pebbles) paved platform existed on the top of the heiau.

Constructed upon the terrace and platform surfaces were a number of features, including depressions, pits, walls, and small enclosures. Kenneth Emory of Bishop Museum was in charge of the reconstruction of portions of Halekiʻi in 1959.

The heiau were important for the ritual ceremonies prior to the battles that eventually resulted in the uniting of Maui with the other Hawaiian Islands under Kamehameha I

The site is also important for its association with Kahekili, a major figure in Maui’s history who is connected with Halekiʻi-Pihana from circa 1765-1790, and with Kamehameha I during his conquering of Maui (1792.) (Lots of information here is from NPS and Naone.)

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Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau_State_Monument

Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau-Iao_Valley-West_Maui_Mountain-(maui-mike)

Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau-Kahului_Bay-(maui-mike)

Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau-Iao_Valley-West_Maui_Mountain-(maui-mike)

Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau-Iao_Valley-(maui-mike)

Haleki’i-Pihana_Heiau_State_Monument-Sign

April 9, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Wailuku Female Seminary

Back in the beginning of the 19th-century, it was believed that women should be educated to understand domestic economy, because they were to play the major role in educating the young, primarily in their homes, and later (as the school population grew and there was a shortage of teachers) as school teachers. (Beyer)

Gender segregated schools were established. Although schools for upper-class women were in existence prior to the 19th-century, the female seminary for middle-class women became the prevailing type of institution from 1820 until after the Civil War.

The most prominent female seminaries on the continent were Troy Seminary (1821,) Hartford Seminary (1823,) Ipswich Seminary (1828,) Mount Holyoke Seminary (1837) and Oxford Seminary (1839.)

The seminary’s primary task was professional preparation: the male seminary prepared men for the ministry; the female seminary took as its earnest job the training of women for teaching and motherhood. (Horowitz, Beyer)

Western-style education did not begin in Hawai’i until after members of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) arrived in 1820.

Because the primary educators responsible for developing the education system of Hawai’i were Americans, the educational practices for Hawaiian girls tended to mirror, but not necessarily duplicate, what was taking place on the continent. (Beyer)

In 1835, at the general meeting of the Mission, a resolution was passed to promote boarding schools for Hawaiians; several male boarding schools and two female boarding schools were begun (Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui and the Hilo School for Girls on the island of Hawai’i.)

Wailuku Female Seminary (or the Central Female Seminary, as it was first called) was the first female school begun by the missionaries. It received support at a time when the missionaries were experimenting with both boarding schools and a manual labor system.

In 1837 the missionaries opened the Wailuku Female Seminary to educate girls to be “good Christian wives” for the graduates of Lahainaluna a school for boys at Lahaina. A boarding school, they thought, would have a deeper influence than day classes.

The opening of the school raised some concern by the Wailuku missionaries: “It will be remembered that our station is really on West Maui, and now may be considered as having only one man to attend to the appropriate missionary work of the station.”

“The Seminary about to go into operation is for the benefit of the islands generally & will occupy the whole time of its teacher. So that E Maui with a population of some 20,000 has really no missionary”. (Wailuku Station Report, 1837)

Rev. Jonathan Green, his wife Theodosia and Miss Maria Ogden were the first teachers, followed by Edward Bailey and his wife Caroline.

Green noted, “the object of our Seminary is to impact to the pupils, and through them to the entire population of Hawaii, a thorough going Christian education.”

The missionaries felt that in order to run “a good Christian household”, the girls needed to learn domestic skills: housekeeping, washing and ironing, sewing and mending. They also learned how to spin cotton and weave cloth.

A strict schedule was considered to be an important part of their education. An hour of gardening before breakfast, each girl having her own little plot, was added to relieve the stress. (MHS)

As to their studies, “They have attended to Reading, Writing, Mental and Written Arithmetic, Geography Sacred and Civil, Exhibition of Popery, Gallaudet’s Book on the Soul, and Natural Theology.” (General Meeting Minutes, 1841)

The plan for the school included a two story stone building, used for classes but including a room for a chapel and a dining room, which was completed in 1837; and an adobe building, used as a dormitory, also completed in 1837.

An additional building was added before the end of 1839. It was made of stone, attached to the original two story building, and used as a dining hall. It is the only building of the Wailuku Female Seminary that is still standing today (part of what is now known as the Bailey House.)

No sooner was the Seminary open than a letter arrived from the Missions’ headquarters asking that no more money be spent on the school. By 1849, however, the Mission Board was unable to raise money, and the Wailuku Female Seminary was closed after its 12th year. (MHS)

Edward Bailey and his wife Caroline Hubbard Bailey arrived in Honolulu April 9, 1837. Not long after their arrival, the couple was transferred to Wailuku to head the Wailuku Female Seminary.

Bailey worked at the Wailuku Female Seminary until its closure in 1849. At that time he purchased the fee simple title to the Girls’ boarding school, the house and lot, and began his interest in what was to become Wailuku Sugar Company.

Edward and Caroline lived in their Wailuku home for 50-years; at the time of his death in 1903 Edward Sr was the oldest living missionary sent to Hawaiʻi.

The Bailey House is now the Maui Historical Society’s Hale Hō‘ike‘ike (House of Display) showcasing Hawaiian history and culture, as well as paintings and furnishings from nineteenth-century Maui.

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