 Today, Long Beach, California on a little Hawaii and near Munich, Germany. And while with pandemic projections and try to see what's next, we're sort of going with a flow of opening up a little bit, hopefully carefully and or for sure carefully. And so the challenge is obviously now to find ways to proceed, especially on our islands where our main economy has basically gone away, which is tourism. We are charged and we charge ourselves to look for our event ourselves. But in terms of going ahead, we believe you should look back and see where you came from in order to have a chance to move ahead. And in some ways, the tourism industry has been invented to a large degree on our islands of Hawaii. And we want to talk about that today. So before we can reinvent it, we want to look back in how it got invented. And in order to do so, we can get the first slide up, please. Because one company that's mostly related to hospitality worldwide is the Hilton Corporation. There's one in every city, including as you see at the top right in Munich. And their resource part in these, they're strong ties to our islands. And so the next slide is going to be clearing up a misconception because most tourists, as shown in the previous slide, associate Hilton with the Hilton Hawaiian Village. That is actually not the case because that one was developed by another very important person in the American economy, Henry J. Kaiser, with the Kaiser Hawaiian Village that we see in the background of the big picture. The foreground is a little confusing always, is a neighboring development by Pete Wimbley and the Waikiki and the Haitian Waanai, and many of us, when he and pop people vividly remember. And Henry J. Kaiser sold that property to Conrad Hilton. So the Hilton beginnings of hospitality design on the islands are somewhere else. For that, we can go to the next slide and we have the most perfect team members on the panel today, which is one DeSoto Brown, Bishop Museum historian, welcome DeSoto. How do you do? And good morning everybody. And we have back our friends Ron Lindgren from Long Beach, California, long-term friends and business partner of the legendary Edward Pillingsworth. And why don't you Ron, kick in and explain along with slide three that we're on, list the secret of how this all came about. Yeah, I might say in front of us, we're going to be dealing with the original Kahala Hilton hotel. It was a very important structure. In some respects, it was the first international tropical destination in New Zealand, although in fact, it shares that honor with the wonderful Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. It's just that those two examples of modern concrete architecture opened the same week in January of 1964 and the Kahala opened two days earlier. So it's the first. At the same time, it's the finest and the most influential piece of work by my boss and mentor and friend Ed Pillingsworth. What we're all thinking about now is what might be the future of travel and tourism and what a building like the Kahala, which is now called the Kahala Hotel and Resort. How suitable is it for the pandemic and post-pandemic days coming up? But I'm happy to note this very first photo was really appropriate because it chose Conrad Hilton, very charismatic hotelier and it was celebrated with some Hawaiian aunties. I don't doubt that that was probably something that happened at the Kahala. Maybe during the opening, Hilton started his namesake hotel company during the very final years of the Second World War. And like any good hotelier, a successful hotelier, he brought style and glamour or whatever it was, but especially when he was accompanied by his then wife, Zaza Gabor, the reason that the original Kahala Hilton was even built was because of his continuing openings of a Long Beach, California architect named Edward Pillingsworth. This patron first met Ed in 1952 when Hilton had discovered the city of Long Beach and he was remodeling the premier Sky Room night spot in Long Beach, a very upscale downtown penthouse restaurant nightclub. It happened to Thomas, the designer and a project architect or his boss at that time. He wasn't working for himself yet until eight years later. And that was the architect Kenneth Lee. If we go to the next slide, Kenneth Lee was quite successful and famous with very upscale large homes and some kinds of states in very affluent proportions of Los Angeles. But interestingly enough, besides all of these expensive homes, he also designed the very first public housing project in Los Angeles. He worked for Wayne for eight years, becoming his chief designer. And as you can see on the top two pictures, that's an example of work that Wayne and Pillingsworth worked together, very comfortable, elegant, California indoor-outdoor living, but it was still very traditional. I mean, most of his experience designing traditional homes with sort of neo-Georgian interiors. And as a result of that, he developed a real skill in doing really good proportions of what a human scale and residential were. He managed to bring Kenneth Wayne kicking and screaming, screaming into the modern world because the bottom photo shows the long modern house that Pillingsworth had air designed himself completely in 1952 called the Sealy House. And it's a flat-roofed post and being slanted with all of that glass looking out into extensive gardens. If we go to the next slide, in 1954, Hilton built his eight hotel, his eight company hotel in downtown Long Beach. And all of these early Hilton properties were urban, and at that time, none of them were identified as being from the Hilton company. Ed got involved in what was called the Lafayette Hotel, a very complicated mix of remodeled existing mid-rise office buildings, turning them into guest rooms, new low-rise systems, as you see in the color photographs, and then a very large ballroom over a parking structure. This was the venue for the Televised Miss Universe Contest for many years. Hilton was pleased with Ed's results, as I quote, being elegant, innovative, functional, and labor-saving. And you can see the elegance of the architecture, but Hilton is a businessman, so the innovation, the functionality, and how much it served on labor was just as important, and rightly so, as the design itself. If we go to the next slide, this satisfied client, Hilton, then asked Ed to design a prototype for a very new venture. It was only called the Hilton Motor Inns. And what Hilton had come to think of was that in his trouble, although he stayed generally in the finest of hotels, including some of his own, he really wanted to inject resort fun into roadside lodging. And of course, that's completely missing from typically gearing hotels. But Hilton thought he would have a leg up if he could do a modern hotel that was memorable, and he would respond to it by, first of all, making sure that all of the buildings had very steep, modern lines. But Ed was also interested in the fact that every building should be memorable when you arrive. And so, as you see in this handsome water color, it's a very large architectonic site, so the site could be seen from quite some distance away. And more importantly, below that signage was a memorable, very expensive court crochet. It was an entry pavilion of just posts and beams. And if you go to the next slide, once you got out, come under the court this year, instead of walking into a little narrow office, reading the bell and having normal dates come up to tell you what your room is, instead, you walk into this very bright, two-story post and beam structure with some handsome traditional sandal leaves. And from there, this view was shown back out to the parking lot, but a view in the other view also would have shown what was awaiting the guest as resort sun, and that was a nice new landscape garden and courtyard with the swimming pool. Yeah, these are the references that earned the respect and the trust of Conrad Hilton, right? Yes, indeed. By this time, if you go to the next slide, Ed had had really proven his proficiency in handling the larger scale projects with some confidence and some artistry at the same time. Conrad Hilton felt entirely comfortable in commissioning Ed's office to design what became a modern, career making also resorts in front of jail in the tropical paradise of Hawaii where the soda is enjoying now. And incidentally, Hilton felt that only modern architecture should be should be what hotels are built like, because that best represents the American success, power, and technological superiority. And the result of the hotel where Ed became the source and last one for 37 successful years of hotel and resort design that followed. In fact, 222 conditions for 37 different countries. And that kept him going so busy with the hospitality work that he changed his whole practice to basically zero lean on hospitality design for the rest of his, rest of his career. This is a view of the original Hala site. What I might say about this a bit is the site was not applicable really for an international hotel, because it was basically a six point five acres of just piece of the scrub glass. And to make things even grow on this on the site, I want to bring in 50,000 cubic yards of steel, pothole, lay it all over to enrich the grounds. And the thing is the one in the state parks that will work joy, planted 102 coconut palm trees there so that when the hotel was, would appear to have been constructed within an existing old growth growth. Today, there wouldn't, the Hollywood couldn't have been built because very unsound ecological mistakes would be called today, to be followed there to make a hotel that would be viable. Thousands of tons of sand had to be barged in from the island of Molokai to curate any kind of 800, it was about 1800 foot long beach. And then you couldn't swim offshore. And so they had to reach a lot of these different coral, complete no node today, to provide a swimming area that to a depth of about 10 feet. And then flanking this new beach, they built peninsulas of lava rock and topsoil, prevent the beach from eroding. That too is pretty much illegal. And if I may also say too, we've made a very big impression on me when I was 10 years old, that when the hotel opened, they had built a small fake island offshore too, which is what you can see in this picture. And the idea that you could build your own little fake island, I thought was incredibly intriguing and wonderful. But again, if that's just a 10 year old, and today you could not do that. If we look at the next slide. Yes, please Martin. I'll go ahead with the next slide. Yeah, if we go to the next slide, we'll see what looks as if it might have been some sort of advertisement. It's the it's the shape of the island or one who and someone has selected some high highlights of what's at the island, sitting in the North Shore, several hotels. When you look at the bottom right of the Oahu, it almost looks like the Hala is very close like tea, maybe just a few minutes walk away. One of the concerns that Hilton's second in command and other people who in charge of finance was that it was perhaps way too remote. It was way too much of a gamble from where the action was beginning to happen in Waikiki. Now that there was jet flights. And that continued to be a concern all through the planning of the hotel itself. And it was too far away. And that's something we will get to as we talk further. The fact that in its first years, it didn't get enough tourists because it wasn't in Waikiki. And it was not within walking distance. And actually ran two small shuttle buses between the hotel and Waikiki to make people think it wasn't quite as inconvenient. But after a while people said, Oh, no, do we actually like it being out there? And things took off. But it took a while. Yeah, the honor of the long early years, the hotel would look like it looks now in the pandemic. That's right, right. That's not what it was. But but let's go to the next slide because you've got something that Ed did, you can talk about something that did that was really remarkable for this hotel and made a difference. Yeah, I'm holding back from any sort of glances ahead of what the hotel in essence really looked like. In other words, the macro version of the hotel. But one of the most important things that the hotel held was the result of Ed's own mastery of residential architecture. Not only had he spent those eight years with Kenneth Wiening on very expensive traditional homes, but then he had contributed to enrich and informed very iconic Southern California mid-century modern architecture, and was in fact the architect who provided more designs for case study houses in the pages of Alton Architecture magazine. But first what you see on the right hand side of the photo is what the interior designers managed to accomplish within this modern building. What was wonderful at the time was that the two chief modern interior designers were actually architects from Seattle, Washington, even in Roland Cherry. You can see that they've created it's very much in the 1960s modern idiom, but there are plenty of touches of Hawaiian, which warmed it up and brought a sense of place. What Ed provided on the left were absolutely revolutionary guests in the plant. Now almost everyone who goes to a hotel, they open the front door, it's a long narrow courtyard, and way at the end of the room there's a light from a window or maybe a sliding door. But in this case, the guestroom modules were so wide that in fact they were wider than deep. And so there wasn't that feeling of narrowness of constriction. And you can see how the furniture ranges very nicely and very, very spaciously. And this meant that the wonderful tropical sunlight and the moonlight on a full moon, which is a gorgeous sight to see, could come into the room fully all the way to the back wall. The back wall is the wall of a very revolutionary garden as far as tropical hotels. What put together a his and hers bathroom so that they really wouldn't go in each other's way when they were bathing or prepping or preparing whatever they were doing before heading downstairs to the bottom of the resting. This wasn't a new invention, because Ed loved the Waldo Fristoria in New York. He often stayed in a suite which had a his and her arrangement. But in my research, I think it is in fact the first time that this very humane and practical elegance of his and her boss appeared in any tropical hotel in the world. That's very likely, I think you're right. Let's go to we've got another picture here that's just sort of as a general ambience of the wonderful setting of the Cahill Hilton after it had it. And that's that's your favorite and that's your favorite child of Treasure Island. That's right. That's right. That's right. And you can see what it looked like with the beach, etc. And talking treasure is while we move on, I just want to say that what we will see is comprised of a beautiful collection of both mental and physical archival treasures from from both of you, the pictures from many of your presentations, Ron, and then the brochures, the marketing brochures from from your personal and your bishop in the archives. I read correct or to that. Correct. And I want to and I want to say, Ron, I really appreciate the educator and me. I really appreciate that's why we have set up the narrative that way, logically, that the hotel was designed inside out. It has a very intriguing form that we slowly but surely get to. But it's important that it was designed from what you had just explained in the very true modern tradition of not making fetishized objects, but making architecture that justifies itself from inside out. So thanks for explaining that to us. Right. And in fact, before we get before we get to all that, as we look at this wonderful sunrise with Cocoa head off to the left. There's a little little history to talk about. You have to imagine that back in 1795, somewhere along the Kahawa sewers, so necessarily that some 16,000 warriors landed their canoes there as an invading military force. And of course, they were led by the great chief Kamehameha, who thus conquered Oahu. At that time, Oahu was the six of eight populated islands of the chain. And by his conquering Oahu, he established what would be known then to the next century as the kingdom of Hawaii. Right. Now, many years later in 1947, the descendants of Kamehameha, many of whom served on the board of the Bishop of State lands, were considering what to do with their lands, their wonderful property in the Kahawa Wailaea area. And some people thought it was best to take an existing golf course that was there and completely subdivide it. In other words, make a new community there and get rid of the golf course. There'd be homes, parks, schools, shopping center on that sort of acreage. But others urged that the estate leave the golf course as it was, and then retain those very gracious house lots along Kahawa Beach, and build what they termed superior homes on the perimeter, on the periphery of the golf greens. Additionally, it was suggested that a beach site be developed there for a world class hotel. The idea being to enhance and maintain the exclusive character and ambience of this neighborhood. This later advice, a lot of advice was actually what the Bishop State trustees chose to follow. And then we jumped to 1960 when a local Hawaiian developer, Charles Peach, who was born and raised in the nearby Pinewood Key District, managed to obtain a 1960 lease on 12 acres of what happened, a part of the golf course, to build a luxury hotel, but also to build some condominiums next to it. With his lease in hand, he started to walk to Los Angeles and put together a financial package with his friend Conrad Hilton. Interestingly, Conrad put some of his companies money in and some of his personal money in. And there were many other investors, including as the soda well knows some of his relatives. Yes, my uncle was one of them. And check out the art. Go to the next slide. The next slide. Again, although I'm holding back on showing what the hotel really looked like. Very famous architectural photographer, perhaps the finest one of the United States, Julie Shulman, many, many photos of the hotel. He was entranced by it. And when you first look at this photo on the left, it's a little hard to know what it is. He's looking down through some structure, which we'll talk about soon. But it looks very interesting to say the least, artistically. To the right is one of the service stations, an early gross here, before the hotel opened, I would say. Yes, introducing the dollar open to the public. Correct. And this beautiful woman happens to have a sort of symbolic Helleconia plant that is printed over her lovely Hawaiian dress. Yeah, and that actually is the logo of the hotel. Helleconia flower. Yes. And if we have time for the next slide. This is the site plan of the hotel. I promise, next week, we're going to speak what the hotel looks like for those viewers who haven't been there. Because it is, as I promise, a site we're waiting for. As you can see here, that there were two guest room wings planted a skew from each other a bit and roughly parallel to the beach. This means that the people on the south side, at direct ocean views, the people on the backside, I'm sure you had some handsome views, but they were across the wild off course with the Virgin Coalile Mountains. And many people have asked over the years, why didn't it just simply turn the guest rooms perpendicular to the beach so that everyone who came to the hotel actually got both those views, even though it would be oblique views. But the reason that happened was that this was not in early 1960s. And the how was your conditioning system was well, the very first major installations of its type. But at that time, if those rooms had been turned perpendicular to the ocean, they would have been facing do east and do west, the guest rooms would have been facing that way. And the air conditioning systems at that time just could not bear up to that kind of exposure. And you can also see in this, you can also see in this view that there's a big lagoon, you can see the ocean and the beach, but you can also see the lagoon, which the hotel project out into, as well as the entryway, which you said is a very important part of any Hilton hotel coming in on the left. And this is also really crucial to how you see it and how you experience it when you first get there. Which we're so ears to see more. The only problem is we ran out of time, but I can listen to you guys forever. So I will continue to do that. Just take a little break of the week. And then we're going to be back with more of this here. And thank you guys so much for sharing this exciting story of a project that you probably all know on the island. And hopefully in the world, many know most likely but the story behind we didn't. So thanks for shedding a light on that. And until then, please stay tropical, exonically, easy breezy, which we increasingly know is the best we could do in these days. And we're privileged to have that in more tropical climate. So Ron and DiSoto, thank you very much. And I can't wait to hear the rest of the story next week. Goodbye. Keep safe. I like it.