From Our Files

March

March 1912:
“The participants in Honolulu’s 1912 Washington’s Birthday Parade sent through the street a spectacle that delighted the largest crowds that ever gathered here for a similar occasion,” writes Paradise of the Pacific, predecessor to HONOLULU Magazine. Thousands of Hawai‘i residents turned out for the floral parade, which started at the Capitol grounds. The photo above shows the grand-prize winner, a half-open cockleshell on wheels entered by the Von Hamm Young Co. “An exquisite creation .. that sets a standard for future exercise of taste and skill in decorating automobiles,” the magazine proclaims.

March 1922:
A street scene in Waipahu, one of Hawai‘i’s sugar plantation towns. At the time, O‘ahu Sugar Co., which started in 1898, employed about 10,000 workers. The company closed down in the mid-1990s.

March 1957:
Restaurant advertisements in Paradise of the Pacific promote some of Honolulu’s hottest spots, including Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber.

March 1962:
Since the 1880s, the prominent Ward family had made its home at the Old Plantation—a Kaka‘ako estate once known for its elaborate lawn parties and balls. The photo at left shows the family, including the seven Ward sisters, on the porch of its southern-style mansion. But the death of the youngest Ward sister in 1962 signaled the end of an era for the grand estate. “The glories of the Old Plantation are gone—furnishings scattered, the home torn down to make room for a Municipal Auditorium (now the Blaisdell Concert Hall and Arena) … only a few persons remember life there when the Ward sisters were gay young girls,” HONOLULU writes. “But those who bought choice pieces at the recent auction … will remember, and wherever these piece go a bit of Old Hawai‘i will remain alive.”

March 1967:
“In prewar days … the few women who graced America’s newspaper city rooms were kept discreetly in the background, held there for the purpose of interviewing Eleanor Roosevelt, the Girl Scout chiefess and the Cherry Blossom queen,” writes HONOLULU Magazine. “But this has changed all over the nation and, notably, in Honolulu.” At the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for instance, 15 female reporters—including Kay Lund and Helen Altonn (photos left and right, respectively) covered such beats as courts, schools and the night police beat.