 Hello everybody and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This is the Dokomomo Hawaii Show. Dokomomo is a group that preserves the heritage of the mid-century architecture of the 20th century. And today I've got a very, by the way, my name is DeSoto Brown. I'm the host of this program for this week. Today we've got a very interesting subject that I think is a very interesting subject. If you look behind me you'll see what that subject is. I'm talking about signs. Signs in Hawaii are very heavily regulated. We don't have a lot of signs, and not a lot of big signs anyway. But we have a heritage, particularly in the middle of the 20th century, of a lot of interesting and now vanished signs. Dokomomo pretty much concentrates on the period from 1930 to 1980, but today we're going to go back a little bit further than that for our story. So let's get started with our first slide. And what do we got here? Well there are all different kinds of signs here in the world of the Hawaiian Islands, and next to me you can see two highway signs. Now the one on the far distance over there is a very early sign for Kamehameha Highway around the island of Oahu. It's probably was put up in the 1920s or early 1930s. And as you can see it's a really unique sign because it's got this beautiful design painted on it. This is an entirely hand-painted design. Well unique signs like that for roads, we're not going to last very long because during World War II all of Hawaii's highways shifted to a standardized national type of sign. And that's the type that you see in this other picture next to me, which was taken in the 1970s, but this is a much older sign. So starting in the early 40s we shifted to just a basic street sign to identify routes. Nothing very exotic or Hawaiian about that. You're going to see that there are lots of other cool signs that we're here as well. Let's go to our next slide. And now one of the things about Hawaii, as I said, is that we have very strict sign laws. And I have to acknowledge that one of the reasons we have those strict sign laws is due to my great-grandmother who was the first president of a group called the Outdoor Circle from the early 1900s. The Outdoor Circle was a women's group that got together specifically to legislate or to make billboards illegal. In fact they were successful in doing that. The last billboards were taken down in the 1920s. But there were billboards before that. And look, here they are. These are billboards here on the island of Oahu. And as they got started in the early 1900s, people said, wait, this is a blot on the landscape. This is ruining the way things look. We are covering up our beautiful views. We need to outlaw these. And Hawaii was the first state to do so. We still have very strict sign laws thanks to the women of the Outdoor Circle. And it's kind of ironic being a descendant of one of them that I'm so interested in signs that I like signs. However, we won't go into that. Next slide we have here. Even without billboards being legal, even without big advertising signs in use, there still were times when buildings had big signs on them. And this is a picture from the 1920s. It's a wooden storefront type of building like the type that was used in different places throughout the United States, particularly in the Midwest and the West. It's got sort of a false front in the front. So you see there's this big facade behind it. The building is not so large. Well, that big facade allowed a big sign to be painted on it. So this is a Ford dealership here in Honolulu in about the middle 1920s with its name emblazoned in big letters across the front Pacific Motors. Next picture. You saw other buildings like that also with big signs painted on them. And today it's probably not probably be illegal for a sign to be as big as this one is. Again, a car dealership. This one was on King Street and colleague the Paloma auto company. And this is before car dealerships were the big elaborate buildings that they were going to become. But again, that is a fairly large sign. Now also notice the design of this building has an awning over the sidewalk across the facade. And underneath that are other smaller signs. Those type of signs became very common and you very much you saw lots and lots of those throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Next photo. And here is example of what I'm talking about. The remarkable thing about these types of signs is some of them were standard ones. So these pictures that you're looking at were taken in about 1964 on different islands and Hawaiian Islands. And you'll see that two of them, the Ahi Poi Shop, which is up there and the Keave Lunch Shop, which is down in the corner there. Those are hand painted signs. That is something that is pretty much a lost art. There used to be sign painters who did this type of lettering by hand. That was amazingly expert. It did not cost a lot of money. If you could even find someone today who could do this level of work, it would be extremely expensive. But at the time, it was just a commonplace thing. You also see that some of these other stores are sort of these signs are sort of prefabricated. The Coca-Cola sign, the Aloha Simon stand sign with the 7-up logo on it. Those are just stickers. So they were no longer a hand painted sign. But this is the type of sign, which was very common and which today is pretty much gone. So any of these types of surviving signs are really interesting relics of the time that they were created in. Next picture. Okay. Those were local businesses that we just saw. Those were local signs for small local businesses. But of course, there are a lot of national American companies represented here in the Hawaiian Islands. And when those companies come here, they want to make sure that their logo or their identifying sign is going to be on the locations that they are running or that are franchised. Well, when those companies began to come here, they had to conform to what our local sign laws were. On the far side, you see a Dairy Queen drive in and that picture, this picture was taken in the middle 1950s in Hilo. But there were Dairy Queens like this throughout the Hawaiian Islands. There was one right near where I grew up near Diamond Head. And it was a treat to go to that Dairy Queen and get the pop a pop or something wonderful like And next to that, you see a 76 Union gas station. Gas stations also were very big on making sure that their corporate logo, their corporate identity was well displayed to make sure that people knew that that was part of their chain of gas stations. These are standard signs throughout the entire United States. The difference here was that they were not allowed to be built very tall. You'll see signs like this next to freeways in North America that are immensely tall. Here, they had to be confined to a certain height, but they're still very much part of that corporate identity. Next picture, however, some businesses when they came to the Hawaiian Islands were very restricted and McDonald's was a very good example. At the time the first McDonald's opened here in 1968, the McDonald's stands throughout the country where these really garish, bizarre looking things with a lot of signage blinking lights, very tacky looking. When McDonald's came here, it was made very clear to them they could not build any of those standard golden arches types of restaurants here because of sign laws. So they went with a very restrained, very Hawaiianized type of building as you see here. This one was on Kauai, but the first one in Aina Hina on Oahu was very much like this as well. And you'll see the signage is very minimal. There are no giant golden arches. There's one standing sign, freestanding sign. There's one small sign on the front of the building. And that's it. Well, this is a good thing. It meant that McDonald's here couldn't get away with the type of thing that they were doing elsewhere. Next photo. Okay, now just because some of those sign laws didn't allow, for example, McDonald's to build a huge golden arches restaurant here. It doesn't mean we didn't have any advertising signs because we did. And like the wooden buildings that I showed you at the beginning, the two car dealerships, there were lots of other similar wooden buildings all throughout the Hawaiian Islands up until the 1970s. We began to lose a great many of them in the 60s and 70s. These wooden buildings often housed small grocery stores, and the grocery stores would be provided with quantities of metal signs, which they would nail up usually on the exterior, but sometimes on the interior. So these two pictures were taken in 1966 of small grocery stores on King Street in Kalihi in Honolulu. And you can see they're covered with signs usually for cigarettes and soft drinks. Those were the two types of companies that advertise the most. These are all gone. There are very few independent grocery stores anymore. And if there are any, they're not in these wooden buildings. So this whole concept of companies sending out millions or hundreds of thousands of signs all over the country is no longer happening. But you'll also notice in these two photographs, at the top of this welter of signs on these two buildings, you'll see that there are banners, which are political banners. And if we go to our next picture, this is an example of political signs. Political signs periodically have gone through sort of crackdowns in which legally counties have tried, the counties in the Hawaiian Islands have tried to legislate them and keep them under control based on our existing sign laws for advertising. And those types of restrictions have been overturned by courts because they are deemed to be an infringement of the First Amendment right or free speech. So every season that there is an election coming up, these types of signs, temporary signs, are legal to be put up pretty much on any kind of private property. You can't put them up on government property. So this photograph, which also is from 1966, shows campaign signs on trees in the front yard of a house in Windward, Oahu. Those types of signs are presumably going to continue to be with us as long as there are United States laws. Next picture. Okay, there are other quirky signs that have shown up and the outdoor circle that I mentioned earlier has tried to be vigilant about these to make sure that they don't get to run wild and go all over the place. This was a company, the photo that you see, that ran a series of trucks. Maybe they just had one truck, I'm not sure, after World War Two, in which not only did they have signs on the exterior of the truck, but if you look at the truck, it's got loudspeakers on the top of it. So somebody would drive it around with the truck, with the ad signs on it, announcing that this event is coming up. So in this case, it's the Hollywood on ice program that is being put on by presumed by the Shriners. Yeah. So this is 1946, 1947. Again, the outdoor circle has worked to eliminate these kinds of signs. Next photo. Well, there also are, there's another type of sign very common in the USA, or it was very common in the USA, which is the giant object. We haven't had a lot of those here because, again, our sign laws have prohibited them. But here's an example of a giant object. This is a photograph from 1926. And this is a gas station that was located on Baritania Street in Honolulu. And as you can see, the canopy roof over the gas pumps has got a gigantic Miller tire to remind you that they also sell Miller tires. Next photo. And there have been some other very eye-catching and sometimes iconic big object signs. The sign on the left, or that side, whatever it is, is for something called Hacks, which was Hawaiian Auto Exchange, which was a used car lot located at the very busy intersection of Kapilani Boulevard and Kalakaua Avenue. And it was known for this windmill sign that you see here. And it was a working windmill. It turned. And as I remember, it was edged with red neon to make sure you could see it at night. And then on the right hand side of the picture, right here, is a giant bowling pin. The giant bowling pin was the sign for the Kalihi bowling alley, which was located in the Kalihi Shopping Center on King Street, North King Street. And that opened in about 1955 or so. Both of these signs, of course, are long gone. Next photo. Okay. Now, I've showed you signs which were, for the most part, just sat there. They're just painted. They didn't do anything. Well, electrical signs were a step up from those painted signs. And electrical signs were certainly in place by the teens here in Hawaii. This is an ad from a newspaper from 1925 for The Plumbing Company. And The Plumbing Company, in addition to doing plumbing, obviously, also made signs. They fabricated signs out of sheet metal, cut them out, presumably had them painted. But they also had light bulbs. And that was something which, again, is a new fangled invention that makes your sign visible at night. Next picture. Those early electrical signs, like the two that you see here, didn't, they just used regular incandescent light bulbs that were clear glass. They just gave off a light, a regular white light. The picture on the far side for the Hollister Drug Company is a tall vertical sign which was located on Fort Street in downtown Otolulu. And in this photograph, the sign is being set up for the first time, 1918, 1919. And then closer to us, the General Tire. This is a tire store, again, in Otolulu in 1927. So the light bulbs don't spell anything. They just light up an existing metal sign that's got painted letters on it. And the plumbing shop sign, the plumbing shop advertisement I just showed you, states specifically that the sign could be made to blink. So that makes it even more eye-catching. It goes on and off. Next photo. Well, the next big step in signage was the neon sign. And this montage of neon signs in Otolulu is a photograph taken about 1935. And you can see there are two radio stations represented here, KGMB and KGU, the Aloha Fountain, the Hawaii Fountain, two theater signs for the Hawaii Theater and the Kapa Hulu Theater. Neon. What is neon? Neon is a glass tube that contains a certain type of gas. Electric current is run through the ends of the tube and the gas inside the glass tube will be made to glow by electricity. Next picture. Now, neon was first, people kind of figured out neon, the concept of putting gas into a tube and lighting it up in the late 1800s. The first actual neon application of neon didn't come until 1910 in France. And after that, by the teens, there were a number of neon signs in France. And it wasn't until 1923 that the first neon signs were installed in the United States. And not in New York, as you might think, but in Los Angeles. Well, neon grew very quickly. It was very popular. And as you can see by this advertisement that's next to me, which is from the 1954 telephone directory, there were a bunch of neon signs in use at the time. And some of the signs in this ad were really iconic in their time period. Kapilani drive-in and Li'ke'weke drive-in of this, of the signs on this ad. That's the only one that is still standing. Next picture. Here is the first neon sign in Hawaii. This is on the Gump's Store building, which was located in Waikiki on the corner of Kali, not Kaliakalakawa Avenue and Lewers Road. It was installed in 1929, and it was blue. So those are blue letters that say Gump's. The building is still there. It's still in use. It's one of the very few things that still remains in Waikiki. But the sign is very long gone. Next picture. So as neon grew, it required a number of companies to install it and to service it. And so in the 1950s and 60s, I'm going to say we had between five and ten companies here in Hortululu alone that just designed, fabricated, installed, and maintained electrical and neon signs. Now the problem with neon signs is they look wonderful. I mean they do have a very eye-catching quality to them. The problem is they're very fussy and they require a really high level of maintenance. They burn out. It was very common that neon signs were never fully working. When you were driving around and looking at them at night, there were sections that didn't work. There were sections that were kind of sputtering. There were light bulbs that were supposed to blink that weren't blinking. And some of these signs were very big and tall and they required machinery to get up to them. So while there were lots of these signs, they really were not very long-lasting and that's a significant consideration. But we'll keep looking at them. Next picture. All right. I showed you earlier the kind of signs which were used underneath awnings of buildings on their facades. Neon signs were installed in a very similar type of setting on a number of buildings. And this picture, which is from the 1950s, shows two of those types of neon signs under an awning which were, these were located on the Otani building, which is on King Street across from Allah Park. And you can see there's the awning up above where these big neon signs are located. Now it's quite a different thing to hang up a double-sided wooden sign versus a neon sign which required a metal structure as well as a transformer which is a box about like this inside to step up the current to keep the neon glowing which is a heavy object. So you had to install this large heavy metal object with glass tubes on it in order for signs like this to function and there has to be electricity running to them. Next picture. Neon really took off in popularity as it did all over the United States and internationally in the 1930s and these two pictures of Fort Street in downtown Honolulu show you that this main shopping street became lined with signs. So these existing buildings had signs put on them and the neon signs often were underneath the awnings as I said. In the lower picture right down here you can see, this is a picture taken in 1938, the signs on the facades under the awnings are left on even during the day. So it wasn't just nighttime that the neon was on, it was on during the day as well to attract people's attention. Next photo. This is probably the most famous neon sign in Hawaii for many years and it was in front of a drive-in called Kaukau Corner which was located at Kalaukaua Avenue and Kapiolani Boulevard. It was put up in the late 1930s and that's what you see on the far side over there. It just said Crossroads of the Pacific along with the map the globe and then the signposts, I mean the upright post with the signpost sticking out of it. At the end of World War II they changed it. They added that Kaukau Corner up there, whoops I lost my finger up at the top there and that was to make sure that you knew that this was the Kaukau Corner drive-in. The reason they did that was because this was a real, it was a feature of Honolulu. Numerous people posed next to this sign to have their pictures taken, have snapshots taken by other people for their own purposes. So they made sure, the company made sure, that when these pictures were being disseminated and taken to all kinds of different parts of the world, the people knew it was called Kaukau Corner. Next picture. And that Kaukau Corner sign was an example of something which became very popular particularly in the 50s and 60s. And that was the freestanding sign next to the road in front of a business that was a separate structure just by itself. And this picture, which you're looking at right now, which is from about 1965, shows you a whole bunch of those signs in place on School Street in Honolulu. So above this automobile here, this Chevrolet, look at all those signs. The value drug store, the Val supermarket, the Swan Bakery and the Lucky Spot Restaurant, there were tons of those signs. They were all over the place. We didn't pay really very much attention to them. They were so common. Next picture. And here are some examples of those. These freestanding signs were located, they were on a pole, as I said, usually next to the road. They were always pretty much always electrified in some way, so they had lights on them. Sometimes they even rotated and they were, sometimes I also had clocks in them too. So you can see how many there were and they were so common that again, as I said, we didn't pay much attention to them. They are now almost all gone. We have lost almost all of them. They were a huge feature of our lives for a long time. And now, if you're not old enough, you wouldn't even know they'd ever existed. Next picture. Here's an example of one of those signs. This is the Kau Kau Junior Drive-In, which was on Nimitz Highway. Now, look at how complicated this sign is. Again, it is a whole freestanding structure. It has to be supported by two poles. It is a large sheet metal structure. It has to have electricity running to it. It not only has neon on it, it has blinking lights on it, and it has a digital clock on it. Most people have to go out and change those letters on it too. So this is a really significant amount of time and energy goes into maintaining this sign, because you have to have one of those sign company people come and replace the bulbs and fix them as they needed them. As well as, the neon, as I said, is a thin glass tube which has been bent into the shape of the letters. Somebody drives by and throws a rock at that and destroys it. You've got no functioning sign. So again, a lot of maintenance was necessary for these. Next picture. Now, when signs like these were installed on older buildings, they really didn't have any integrated part of the structure. So you see things like these pictures here. The signs would just be sticking out at right angles to the building, and they weren't really part of the entire structure because they hadn't been built as part of the building originally. But, next picture, there are other types of, well, this is also an example of something not really integrated into the structure. There's this little small blockhouse like building for the Schumann used car lot, and the sign has just been put on top of it as a separate structure. This was on Nimitz Highway. Next picture. But, movie theaters made very ample use of neon during this period. The Hawaii Theater downtown is still standing, and it still does have this marquee. It's one of the very few marquees that are still left. Probably the only one that's still left like this. Certainly it's the biggest group of neon that we still have here. The Hawaii Theater was built in 1922. This marquee was put on in 1936. It doesn't really have anything to do with, again, with the structure architecturally. The building was not built to have this marquee. This was tacked on afterwards, so it really isn't integrated into it, but it's a very important iconic part of downtown Honolulu. Next picture. In contrast, this is the Kuhio Theater, which was located in Waikiki, and it was supposed to open at the end of 1941, but didn't open until the end of 1945 after World War II had ended. And here you can see that the neon has been completely integrated into the design and structure of the facade of the building. The neon is integral to how the building is designed. So not only is there this huge, wonderful curving marquee, and not only is there that upright the words with the word Kuhio on it, and it had three circles in it, that pylon structure that circles lit up in succession in neon. This is all part of the way the building was designed. Next picture. And it wasn't just theaters that used nighttime lighting to dramatize them. It was buildings like that. This is the Universal Motor Company, which was located on Atkinson Drive. And as you can see, it's got neon on it, but it's also a whole integrated structure that the lighting is a really part of the way the building was designed. Next picture. And as buildings were built during this signed period of time, you see that they are they're built into it, but they really aren't an integral part of it. This is a small business building in Kakaako. Next picture. But you also see that there are buildings which made use of flat surfaces as what essentially became billboards. And people began to push the limits of what was legal in signage. This all-star drive-in was located on either King Street or Baratania Street. And it's got a big neon sign. I bet those those stars blinked on and off in succession. And I was also astounded when I was a little kid to see that there were signs that said the prices of things, drinks, 10 cents, 20 cents, french fries, 14 cents. I thought, what happens when you change the price? You mean you have to change the neon sign too? I guess they did. Next picture. Well there are buildings that built signage into them. And particularly during the mid-century period, a common type of business building was composed of a low horizontal box or structure with one tall element, a pylon that was projecting upwards and kind of catching your attention. This is a remarkable used car or new car building, which was on Copilani Boulevard and built in the late 1940s. This is 1948. And notice this big V-shaped structure that sticks up with this big neon curve that says Dodge. This is a really remarkable structure. By the time I remember this building, I don't remember that upright part. It wasn't there anymore in the 50s. This building was standing until the early 1980s. Next picture. And here again is that same low structure with a pylon. And both of the pylons in this case have signs on them. So the punch ball fender works is still standing. It's in Kaimuki, not anywhere near Punch Bowl, on Wiley Avenue. The V-H-Y building on the upper part there was a car dealership also, and it has V-H-Y on it in metal letters. That stood for Von Ham Young. This was a Packard and Hudson dealer. Packard and Hudson cars both went out of business not too many years after this was built. So it didn't remain as a car dealership for very long. Next picture. Well the thing about neon was as wonderful as it was and it glowed and it changed color and it was all these wonderful things unfortunately by the late 1940s and certainly the 50s. Neon became associated with sleaziness. It became associated with the bad parts of town. And what you see in these two pictures is Hotel Street in downtown Honolulu and lit by neon. And people began to think neon was tacky. People began to think it implied crime and implied sleaziness. So it began to go out of favor and in fact the outdoor circle actually tried to have it banned because they considered it so tacky. Next picture. So that by the time Alamoana shopping center opened in 1959, all the stores in Alamoana as you see here, this is the Slipper House in about 1965, had very strict regulations on how big their signs could be and what their signs could look like. And open bare-balled neon was in fact prohibited by Alamoana because it made you think of Hotel Street and we didn't want people to think that. So that was one thing that led to kind of the dwindling away of neon, not to mention as I said earlier the maintenance issues, the cost issues, etc. So let's go to our next picture and we're back where we started and here's a wonderful neon montage. Again, photographed in the middle to late 1950s that gives you an idea of a legacy of signs that used to exist in Hawaii and would also make me say that we should seriously think about the preservation of the few that we have left. Leonard's Bakery has worked very hard to keep their 50s sign going and the Lique Lake you drive in has as well but those are pretty much the only ones we have left from this particular time here. Well thank you all very much for joining me, I hope I enlightened you, I hope I taught you about something you didn't know about, I hope you've been informed and you enjoyed seeing these old pictures. Next week I'll be back with another Doko Momo show, what it's going to be, not sure yet, but that doesn't matter, it'll be another historic and interesting show. Thank you very much for joining me, I'm DeSoto Brown, see you again next time, till then, aloha.