Island Architecture

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Celebrating 150 years of the American Institute of Architecture

Special Promotional Section

By Lavonne Leong

April 2007

ARCHITECTS KNOW: GOOD DESIGN MAKES A DIFFERENCE.  A good design can move a crowd smoothly through a stadium or make a single person stop and stare. Walking through a welcoming space can make a difference to your mood; inviting customers to gather or linger can make a difference to your bottom line. Architecture has the power to inspire, replenish, console, educate and bring people together. Communities can be strengthened through their built environments.

In Hawaii, good design in architecture has created world-class destinations, taught students how to care for the Earth, and started an ongoing conversation about what makes Hawaii special and how to keep it that way.

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects, here are the stories of buildings in Hawaii whose designs have reflected and affected their times. Many of them have stood for generations, and many will stand for generations to come. If these walls could talk, they would tell you the story of our Island home.

This painting by ship's artist Louis Choris is one of the first Western representations of Honolulu.  In the foreground, traditional village life continues; in the background, th earliest Western buildings have already changed the skyline. Courtesy of Honolulu Academy of Arts

A.D. 500-1000 Polynesians arrive in Hawaii.  Architecture begins in the Islands. 1778 Capt. James Cook makes landfall in the Hawaiian Islands, beginning the era of Western influence.   1846 Kawaiahao Church, built of 14,000 coral slabs quarried by hand from reefs 10 to 20 feet under water, is dedicated. 1857 Thousands of miles from Hawaii, the American Institute of Architects is formed in New York City. 1867 The cornerstone for Anglican St. Andrew's Cathedral is laid by Kamehameha V (Lot). 1882 Iolani Palace, commissioned by King David Kalakaua, the "Merrie Monarch," is completed. Photos courtesy of Hawaii State Archives

  

Ancient Times, the Missionaries and the Monarchy:  Polynesian Arrival to 1898

Built with locally available materials and appropriate for Hawaii’s climate, the constructions of the early Hawaiians already fulfilled an architectural ideal. The steeply pitched roof of the Hawaiian hale efficiently wicked heat upward, leaving its inhabitants cool, shaded and sheltered from the elements. Centuries later, these buildings’ bold rooflines would inspire some of Hawaii’s most memorable contemporary architecture.

The first missionary building in Hawaii was imported from Boston, arriving aboard the ship Tartar as pre-cut New England lumber, ready for assembly. The Oldest Frame House, with its clipped eaves and small windows for harsh winters, wasn’t suitable for the hot sun and rainy tradewinds of the missionaries’ new location—nor was it economically feasible.

They adapted. The second missionary building, the Chamberlain House, is constructed partly of coral from offshore reefs. It has shutters to keep out the heat and larger windows to take advantage of cooling trade winds. Both buildings are still standing, on view at the Mission Houses Museum in downtown Honolulu.

The political, religious and cultural changes wrought by American Protestant influence are manifest in the missionary era’s most important structure, Kawaiahao Church. Designed by Hiram Bingham in stark New England style, “Hawaii’s Westminster Abbey” was built of local materials (coral blocks, coral lime and local timber, carried over the Pali). For many decades, Kawaiahao was visible from almost everywhere in Honolulu, a cultural counterweight to the port’s other strong Western presence, sailors and merchants. As the icon of American Protestant power in Hawaii, whose severe spiritual essence was embodied in its design, the church’s presence helped to confirm Honolulu as Kamehameha III’s capital city in 1850.

Hawaii’s architecture took a European turn during the last half of the 19th century,. This period’s most prominent structures were built for an increasingly embattled monarchy during a time when the threat of American annexation was becoming clear. The Hawaiian monarchy’s interest in uniting with Europe’s fellow royals against crass American republicanism was evident in the design and purpose of the buildings it commissioned. In 1861, Kamehameha IV (King Alexander Liholiho) and Queen Emma left the American Protestant Church and embraced the Church of England, in order, as Liholiho’s brother Lot explained, to “get England to be interested in us by means of her Church.” The sophisticated Victorian Gothic cathedral they built, on a site named Beretania (Britannia), was a deliberate challenge to the low-church simplicity of Kawaiahao. To underscore the hoped-for political alliance with England, cut stone was shipped from Britain for use in the cathedral’s arches.

King David Kalakaua continued to practice politics through architecture, commissioning a spate of European-style building projects. Grandiose Iolani Palace was by far the most ambitious of these. This late-Victorian, Renaissance Revivalist building, now the only royal residence in the United States, was elaborately constructed at the then-staggering cost of $360,000. At a time when most Hawaiians still lived in grass-thatched houses, it stood out as a declaration of the struggling monarchy’s intention to align itself with the courts of Europe.

 

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