 Hello everybody and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Dokomomo Hawaii program. I am the host Soto Brown and I'm from Vision Museum here in Honolulu. And we're talking about mid-century architecture, that's what Dokomomo is, that's an organization that supports and studies mid-century, 20th century architecture. So today I'm looking at a specific type of trend that occurred during the 20th century and that's modernizing or updating or changing architecture or interior direction, decorations. For various reasons, sometimes it's to improve a building, sometimes it's to fix things that are outmoded or replace things that are now no longer in use. It's to improve the conditions of things using more modern materials, but very frequently this type of modernization occurred specifically to make something look more up-date. And behind me you can see the surf bar at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel as it appeared when it was remodeled or created for the first time in 1947. There had been bars in the hotel before that, but this one as you can see is very much from that time period. And modernizing was not just for the other reasons I said, but also particularly because in cases where there was business competition, you wanted to look new, you wanted to look better, you wanted to look more modern. And it was also because as time passed in the 20th century, older forms of architecture or interior decoration became obsolete and looked not only not modern, but they were actually considered ugly, so they were replaced. So let me take you on a journey through modernizing in the 20th century and let's go to the first slide. Okay, now, first we're going to look at pictures of buildings that changed their exteriors. We start with a picture of the Hawaii Theater. This building was built in 1922 and is still standing today on Bethel Street in downtown Honolulu. And it has a very classical appearance to its facade. It's got Grecian style columns. But as you can see, there's very little exterior advertising, the fact that this is a movie theater is not really very prominent. This picture was taken in the early 1930s and while there is a marquee, as you can see in the canopy over the sidewalk, there's some decoration on it. But it doesn't really tell you that it's a movie theater and there's no easy way to see what movie is now playing. This is not, by the way, the original marquee. This has already been replaced once since the theater opened. Well, from this very understated one, let's go to the next picture. And here's what happened when the theater got remodeled in 1936. They put on this really big neon lit up marquee. Here's a picture of it in 1946. One of the reasons it hadn't had a big marquee before was because neon had not come to the United States yet, didn't get to the United States until 1923. It was invented in France and didn't come to the Hawaiian islands until 1929. But then after that, big things like this one were created. And so now this is the way we think of the Hawaii Theater today and as of other theaters from that time period, big lit up marquees that told you what was going on and attracted you. This is the next picture. This is another building that was used for entertainment at the time in Honolulu. It's a civic auditorium. It was built about 1930. And in the upper photograph, you can see the way it looked originally. In the 1930s, it has one small sign and it's got banners that are hanging from that overhang over the sidewalk that say what the upcoming events are. Well, in the early 1950s, it got remodeled. And among the things that got changed were that awning now has a wider edge to it with multiple bands of neon in it. And they've got this big front section on the front of the building that covers up the older part. And it says civic auditorium really big and it's got some 50s motifs that are sort of pagan or primitive or Hawaiian style. And it's also got marquees on either side that can tell you that wrestling is coming up, that they've got wrestling every week. And I can tell you, by the way, that I used to not only attend some of the wrestling matches here, but I went to some other events in the civic auditorium before it was demolished in 1973. It was pretty much of a dump. Anyway, let's go to the next picture and here's downtown Honolulu. This is Fort Street seen from King Street. And we've got two views of that, 1938 at the top and 1954 at the bottom. Fort Street was the main shopping street of Honolulu at the time. This is where the biggest stores were located. So if you wanted to go shopping for important stuff, you came downtown to Fort Street. The buildings in both of those pictures are exactly the same, but you can tell that they look quite different. And that's because after World War II, the facades were remodeled quite dramatically to make them look different. So first, let's look at what was on the left side of this intersection. Let's go to the next picture. And here we've got a comparison. Now, these again are the same buildings, but they don't look very much the same. And that's because in the older view, you can see that these buildings have these ornate facades, lots of carved stone, lots of ornate little details. But ironically, that only is on the part that faces out to the street. You can see that the other sides of the building are left completely plain. So this big tall building has got just a plain brick wall, which looks pretty peculiar. But in any case, that now has turned into this featureless, mostly white group of boxes that looks like it's one big building. Actually, it's those same three buildings that were all taken over by the Liberty House Department Store. And they've all had this facade put on them to make them look like they're all part of one complex. And that was the style that was done at that time. It was considered, again as I said earlier, Victorian style or old fashioned style exterior decorations were considered obsolete and unattractive. You wanted to cover them up and that's what they did. And we'll go to the next picture, which is the other side of that same intersection. This is the McIntyre building from 1900. And again, look at all of the carvings that are on this facade here, particularly on the sort of diagonal part that's facing us right on the corner. But also look up the street on the left, that's Fort Street. And the entrance to this building looks like a Gothic cathedral. I mean, it's actually been carved to look like that. Nothing to do with a religion, but that's just the style that was popular at that time. Eventually, this whole building was taken over by McInerney, which is another big local store. And after World War II, 1947, the building got changed. And it went to look like this in our next picture. And here it is in 1954, again. Same building, doesn't even look like it. An entirely new facade has been constructed. And if you look at the second and third stories, they're just the upper part. Not only is that mostly featureless with just one big logo on the corner. You can see that they've kept the same general outline of the building as it was with the two facades facing the street. But then a diagonal section on the corner where the logo is. But those panels, which have been put on the outside of the building, it may not show in the picture, are actually corrugated metal. That's an inexpensive material to use to, again, cover up the detailing, make it featureless, make it plain, sleek, and modern. Next picture, directly next door to the McInerney store was this building, which is the Kauike-Olani building, built probably about 1915. Again, very classical. It's got Grecian style columns on its facade. There's also a difference between the bottom floor, the first floor, and we've got these horizontal grooves. And then much more vertical elements in the other two floors. Well, if you look at the building on the right, if you look at the picture on the right, the building now has been completely disguised. It's had a very quick and easy makeover in the front with the installation of a tall metal screen, which serves to obscure but not completely cover up the original facade. And now at the bottom level on the first floor right against the street, it's been sheathed in patterned marble. And when I looked at this picture again, I could remember it came back to me, what that used to look like when you walked by. So again, we've covered up the detailing and we've made it look more modern and more up to date. More in keeping with what the architectural styles were of the time. By the way, don't go looking for any of these buildings. Most of the ones that I've showed you already are gone and that's gonna be true of a lot of the things I'm gonna show you in this. Can't see them again because they've all been demolished. Okay, next picture. Now, this is another downtown building. This was the Central YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association, built in about 1910, 1915. In the top picture, that's the way it looked originally. YMCA moved to its new facility on Atkinson Drive near Waikiki in 1952. And it left this building behind. And it was remodeled into an office building and renamed the Merchandise Mart building. So as you can see, most of that exterior has now been completely covered up with again, the smooth facade that was popular. But they left those two open colonnades on the top floor. So that there's a little bit of the old building still showing it. As a kid, I always remember thinking that that looked weird. Why were those sort of disparate elements in this otherwise modern appearing building? Well, that's why I didn't know at the time what the original building looked like. Although, when you went inside, it looked considerably older inside than it did on the outside. And I do remember thinking that in the 1960s. Again, this building is gone. But this was on the corner of Bethel Street and Hotel Street. Next picture. So, in Waikiki, there was a somewhat landmark building, a noticeable building, starting in 1937. And that was the, what's called the Waikiki Theatre Block. The Waikiki Theatre itself had opened in 1936. And it was this streamlined, modern style building. It was a real landmark in Waikiki when it was created. Next door to it, the following year, the Waikiki Theatre Block was constructed. Now, despite the name, there was no physical connection between the two buildings. There was actually a driveway between them. But the Waikiki Theatre Block mimicked the appearance of the Waikiki Theatre itself. Again, a streamlined 1930s style structure. The Waikiki Theatre Block was made up of small individual retail spaces. And if you look at the picture on the bottom, on the far right, you can see part of the name, the Liberty House. Well, I showed you the Liberty House earlier in downtown Honolulu. That was the main local department store. And after these pictures were taken in the early 1950s, Liberty House took over most of the Waikiki Theatre Block, took out a lot of the interior partitions, and turned it all into a Liberty House store. And the next picture from 1967 shows you what the result was. This is a 1950s style remodeling. It doesn't even look like the same building. And as I think with most of what I've been showing you, some of these you wouldn't even recognize were older buildings. I didn't, as a kid, realize that these things had happened until many years later when I actually studied the older photographs and figured out that these remodellings and modernizing had occurred. The 1950s remodeling of the Waikiki Theatre Block incorporated something that we've talked about in the past, very typical of the time period. They planted full-grown coconut palms in planter boxes on the sidewalk in front of the building, and they made circular holes in the canopy that covered the sidewalk for the palm trees to go through. And that was something very popular in the 50s and 60s. You saw a lot of it in Waikiki. So here, and if you're wondering where this was, I can tell you in the distance behind the building, you can see a big tree. That's the Banyan Tree that's still standing at the international marketplace. And beyond that is the original high rise of the Princess Kayu Lani Hotel, which is still there, although it may not be for very long, however. So again, you cannot go see this building. It was demolished in 1969. This is where the Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel is now standing today. Just like everything else, Waikiki is a land of high rises, and we've lost most of these older buildings. Next picture. So now, we've looked at exteriors of buildings. Let's look at interiors of buildings. And changing the interiors for interior decor is something that was very popular even before the time period. I've just been discussing the post-war period. These are two pictures from the Lewers and Cook Company, which was located downtown. It was the main building supply company here in the Hawaiian Islands at the time. The upper picture is from about 1920, and it is the wallpaper department. The lower picture from 1939, that's the flooring department. But look at the difference. The wallpaper department has a lot of different stuff going on, lots of patterns, lots of different elements. And it also has this wicker seti or wicker couch that's kind of a complicated looking thing. You look at the Armstrong flooring department, now we've got this one cohesive wall display element that shows all those flooring patterns without a lot of other stuff going on, and the furniture has been replaced so that it is now this chrome streamlined chairs, super fashionable at that time. Let's go to the next picture, and here again is Lewers and Cook. And look what they've done here. In 1920, at the top left, we've got offices, we've got desks that are just sitting out in the middle of the open space, where people are also selling hardware. They're selling doors and hinges and stuff like that. Well, in 1939, in the lower picture, in a different department, they've now walled these places off. They've created cubicles, but they've got these nice streamlined, sleek, art deco style walls that they've put in and a low sort of a barrier with a swinging gate there as well. This is, again, to make this look modern. It's for your customers to realize you're up to date, and that's very important for a lot of businesses. Next picture. I work at Bishop Museum, and Bishop Museum went through a lot of significant interior modernizations of various exhibit halls in the early 1950s when we got a new director who was Dr. Alexander Spore. Dr. Spore very wisely realized that he needed to engage with the community more, and he needed to be bringing people back into Bishop Museum to see changing exhibits. Bishop Museum's main buildings, all being very Victorian and very old-fashioned looking, were kind of a barrier to people thinking that there was anything happening. So in order to get people in, in order to get them to support the museum, these changes were made. So here is what was called the vestibule gallery, and the vestibule gallery was one of the first exhibit spaces in the museum when it opened in 1891, and although you can't clearly see here, this gallery consisted of three standing cases, plate glass surroundings where the objects were placed, held within Ornate Coa frame. Well, this picture from the 1920s shows that originally thing, and next picture, early 1950s the vestibule gallery was stripped of all the Victorian detailing, and it was turned into a modern style room. If you look at the lower picture, you can see the floor now is covered with patterned linoleum from the 1950s. You look right next to the door, you see this freestanding white panel that's supported by just one metal rod. Again, to look modern, and then up at the top there's this sort of rough textured lath laid vertically in sort of a free-form pattern to again make this look 50s. This then became a changing exhibit room. Next picture. Another of the original galleries, the Cahili room, was very dramatically changed. Upper picture, you see again, original cabinetry, original display cabinets to display Cahili, and those are Cahili, the feather standards that you see in the picture. The room was specifically created with a high ceiling to accommodate Cahili. And in the lower picture, you can see what happened. After it got remodeled, it became, again, a changing exhibit space. If you look against the far wall, you can see there are windows set up near the top with kind of a vaulted ceiling above them. You can see that in both of those pictures that you sort of place yourself as to where you are. Next photo. And again, the Cahili room. If you look at the picture on the left, this is again in the 50s after the remodeling had occurred. And what they've done is very typical of the 50s. There's this sort of free form sign that says, what does it say? Something of old Hawaii, I can't remember what it says. But it's displayed against and with actual Hawaiian artifacts. But primitive art, as we say, or as was called at that time, was very popular at the time. And the juxtaposition of the primitive with the modern was considered very trendy and very fashionable. So those vertical things that you see with the sign against them, those are spears. Those are original traditional ancient Hawaiian spears. So they've been incorporated into a 50s style interior decor. And the picture on the lower part shows, again, what the Cahili room turned into when it was a changing exhibit gallery. Which, by the way, we've taken it back to being the Cahili room. And it no longer looks like that. Next picture. The major change in Bishop Museum was in what was called Polynesian Hall, which was constructed in 1894. And as you see in this early photograph, it was very typical of Victorian museums. It's got lots of stuff. It's got ornate detailing of wood as well as other textures and colors and shapes. So it's a very busy interior. And all of these things are displayed. Against the wall, there's an array of spears. Against the far wall. Hanging overhead, we've got a fake octopus. All of this stuff put together. Well, that was all going to change in the 1950s again. Next picture. And all of this, I showed you earlier with the other two rooms, completely stripped out. Now, at the time, this made a lot of sense. But in later years, of course, we're sorry that we lost that detailing. And part of the problem with modernizing is sometimes you lose things that you cannot replicate. Because the technique isn't there anymore. The material isn't there anymore. Whatever. Well, what Polynesian Hall eventually looked like, next picture, is this. There is the top picture looking from the mezzanine down to the first floor in its original configuration, and then what it eventually turned into. I never liked that 1950s remodeling. It felt small and cramped and claustrophobic. And I was very grateful in the not too long ago, 10 years ago or so, when we totally took it back to a very close approximation of what it had originally looked like. So in a subsequent renovation, we took it back to its original appearance. It looks much better now. Next picture. Here, this is an interior of the Bank of Hawaii building in downtown Honolulu. And look very carefully. This is the way it appeared in the 1920s. And the next picture is exactly the same view, but it doesn't look anything like it. That's because what had been a two-story open space has now been turned into a one-story. So that big, tall ceiling has now been covered up with a 50s remodeling. That's the way it was done back in those days. There were other downtown buildings that did the same thing, where they had big sort of atriums and they filled them in. Wasted space, that was what was thought of. Next picture. OK, let's look now specifically at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, opened in 1927. And originally, again, very different from what it turned into. Look at the ceiling, how the beams here have stenciled painted designs. Look at the abundance of different styles of furniture and lamps. Look at the carpeting on the floor. That's, again, another texture. Well, all of that changed with the remodeling in 1947. This same lounge looked like. Let's go to the next picture. This, and they've stripped away the carpeting. They've put all the plotted plants together in certain enclosed locations. All those different lamps, different styles of things are all stripped away. The painted ceiling is gone. And now it's very sleek and modern. Next picture. And let's look here at a hotel room. And again, lots of different stuff going on on the far wall of a fussy drapery pattern, different styles of furniture. And from that, in the 1930s, next picture, we go to this in 1947. Detailing stripped away, sleek, similar, unadorned surfaces, some bold patterns, but not a lot of ornate stuff. And next picture, the thing that really changed the most at the Royal Hawaiian was the dining room. This is the original dining room. Look at all the stuff going on, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. There are stars painted on the ceiling. Original dining room, very ornate and very detailed. But we go from this view to the next picture. And this picture explains why the Royal Hawaiian underwent such a major amount of renovation. Because right after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, the US Navy took over the Royal Hawaiian, used it for R&R, just for military men. And after several years of that during the war, a lot of wear and tear, as you see here, here's our ornate dining room again, not only did they have to redo all the interiors and fix them up, but they chose to entirely demolish the old dining room and replace it with, next picture, this dining room. Here, it's totally stripped down. There is no decoration. The point is that it went from an enclosed room where you looked at the room around you, and not what was outside, to a room that instead was focused on the view, not on the interior detailing. And so in the next picture, this is the whole point. They wanted you to now look out on the ocean, look out on the beach, and look at diamond head in the distance. So it's got a steel framework that contains late glass, so that now you look out rather than stay inwards. And this today is called the Monarch Room, and it is still present like this today. Next picture. OK, we're going to end by looking at some religious structure. This is St. Andrew's Cathedral on Baratana Street in downtown Honolulu. St. Andrew's was started in the 1800s, and it looked very traditional and very cathedral-like, cut stone, exterior, et cetera. But as big as it was, they never had enough money to totally finish it off the way they wanted to. So the part facing onto Baratana Street just had this plain wooden facade on it. However, next picture, by 1957 there was so much termite damage to the building that they needed to do a major renovation. And when they did that, they built a whole new front to the building. And so as you can see in this picture, they've built this exterior. They put more construction on the outside. And next picture, this is the end result. We now have a 50s style facade containing the stained glass window, a metal framework contained within stone that mimics the back of the building, the rest of the building. But this front part is totally 50s and totally modern. Next picture. And even more dramatic change occurred in Waikiki with the St. Augustine Chapel, Catholic Chapel. It started out in 1901 as this small wooden building. Looks very picturesque. And if we go to the next picture, this is the inside of the building. And this was a really remarkable building because it didn't have solid walls. As our friend Martin likes to say, it was very easy breezy because the whole building was latticework. The air just came in and out. Very pretty, very nice, very tropical. But termites took their toll. And next picture, 1961, that building was replaced by the present St. Augustine's Church, which is typical of that time period in that. In the United States, churches, which had been the most traditional structures in many communities, suddenly shifted, in many cases, to being the most avant-garde structures in their community. So St. Augustine's turned into this pointy, angular, space age thing. Unlike the rendering that you see here, however, the facade never faced directly onto the street. There was always a building in front of it that they were not able to remove. So unfortunately, you never got the full view of the church. Next picture. So this is what the church ended up looking like, a space age modern building in a growing Waikiki that was increasingly filled with high rises. It's still there today. And it used to be a lot more prominent than it is now, because of course, buildings have grown up a great deal around it. Unfortunately, again, as I say, you've never been able to look at it, unobstructed, without something right in front of it. OK, thank you all for joining us. That brings us to the end of the program. Again, this is just a touch of the many different things that could be discussed from the mid-century period of architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands. It's just one part of it. Thank you for joining me. I'm DeSoto Brown. And I'll see you again on Think Tech in the very near future for further discussions for human-humane architecture and Dokomomo Hawaii. Till then, aloha, everybody.