 Hello, everybody, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Dokomomo Hawaii show. Dokomomo is an international organization that studies and tries to preserve mid-century architecture of the 20th century. And today, and by the way, I'm your host, Soto Brown, for this particular show. I work at Bishop Museum here in Honolulu. Today we are going to be talking about and looking at the work of a particular architect from the mid-century period here in the Hawaiian Islands, whose name was Pete Wimberley. Pete Wimberley designed a bunch of fascinating, interesting, and very iconic buildings during the time period that we're talking about. Unfortunately, the great majority of those buildings are gone. So the only way we're going to see them and know that they existed was through photographs. So we've got a bunch of pictures to go through. And let me just also tell you, this is by no means everything that Pete Wimberley did during this time period. This is by no means all of his important buildings. It's just the ones that I could fit into this program. And also let me acknowledge the work of two of my friends, Don Hibbert and Kurt Sandberg. Both of them have written about and documented Pete Wimberley, and I used their published works to be able to tell you about this architect. So let's go to our first slide because we've got lots to do. So first slide. All right, here we go. This is just, we're just talking about some of Pete Wimberley's stuff. And what you see in this particular picture is two of his iconic and very typical pieces, the lobby of the Cocoa Palms Hotel and then the Waikiki Inn Hotel. But let's go onwards to something that Pete Wimberley did not do, and that is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened at Waikiki in February of 1927, and you see it here as it looked originally. But Pete did have something to do with this hotel. But before we go any further, this is the main thing I want you to notice is the original dining room of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. And pay attention to the picture on the top. This aerial photograph is something that you will want to keep in mind as we continue through the show, and you'll see why when we get towards the end. But let's go to our next picture. This is the inside of the original dining room of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and it was called the Persian Room. And you can see that when you were inside the Persian Room, you didn't see a lot of the outside. What you were supposed to look at was the interior decor of this room, which was very ornate. It had tile work, it had painted murals and so forth. That was the experience of dining at the Royal Hawaiian up through World War II. And next picture, that changed after World War II. World War II, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel was taken over by the U.S. Navy, and it was used only by military personnel. And when it got turned back to its civilian owners in 1945, they embarked on a very extensive renovation program. And the Royal Hawaiian reopened to the public after its renovation, 20 years after it first opened, which was February 1947. And as you can see, this was one of Pete Wimberley and his first business partners, first pieces of architectural work. That's what he did. He turned the Persian Room 180 degrees around. The interior decor was almost nothing. It was very minimal. Instead, he wanted you to look at the views outside so that you knew you were in Hawaii and you had this wonderful view of Diamond Head. Next picture. And so what we see with this original rebuild and renovation is that Pete Wimberley was very much a modernist architect. He is using modern techniques. He's using modern materials, and he is doing away very clearly with what had been going on before. So again, here's one of those early projects. We're going to see more of what Pete Wimberley did in that same vein. Next picture. Okay, another renovation that Wimberley did is this one. This is the Kaukau Corner Drive-In Restaurant, which got very hurriedly remodeled into Koko's Coffee Shop. So the original building of Kaukau Corner was built in 1941, and it closed in 1960. And in 1961, within about a year, it got renovated into the new building. Interestingly enough, you can see that what was done was this new exterior shell was put around the original Kaukau Corner building that made it look modern. And when it was demolished in 1986 for the construction of the new Hard Rock Cafe, underneath intact was still the facade of Kaukau Corner. And that's the picture that you can see on the right. It's a picture I took, and I had remembered it as happening this way when I was six years old. And when the demolition occurred and I saw that the original facade was underneath, I said, yes, my memory is correct. Next picture. So here you see from the side what Pete Wimberley did. He used that original structure and then built this much bigger exterior thing that looks much more modern. It doesn't look like a streamlined structure from the pre-war period. There was this big flaring roof and this very dramatic new roof line, and he did it very successfully so that most people didn't even realize there was an old building underneath there. It just looked modern in 1961. Next picture. So another restaurant project of Pete Wimberley's was this one. This is a drive-in restaurant on Nimitz Highway, which was called Kaukau Junior. And yes, it was connected to the original Kaukau Corner drive-in. Now that kind of bouncy yellow roof that you see in front that cars are parked under and it says cool car service. Pardon me. That's not part of the original roof line. That's not part of the original project. Wimberley did not do that. You could buy these prefab roofs for drive-ins from companies that just sold them. But what he did do is this very pointy structure in the background. And that type of really dynamic pointy thrusting roof line was something that he would favor. Next picture. Something else, another restaurant that Wimberley was a part of was the Don the Beach Comers Restaurant in Waikiki. Now there had been an original Don the Beach Comers that opened in 1947. And it was very much associated with what we later would be calling the Tiki phase or the Exotica phase, the Tiki craze. It was very much, very heavy on a fantasy version of Polynesia. Well, Wimberley didn't do that one. And these are the pictures that you're seeing here. That's the original one. But, next picture, Wimberley did design the redo of or the new building that contained Don the Beach Comers, which was part of the international marketplace, which Don the Beach Comer himself was part of the development of in 1947. I'm not going to talk about that right this minute. We're going to go on to our next picture and I'm going to get back to the international marketplace. But, next picture. Okay, another iconic restaurant by Pete Wimberley is this one, Canless. Canless Charcoal Broiler was a very upscale, expensive, steakhouse type of restaurant, again in Waikiki, as many of Wimberley's projects were, built in the early 1950s. And it was a combination of, as many of Wimberley's projects were, very much a combination of Polynesian elements, some Asian elements, but modern throughout. So you can look at, for example, at the roofline of this restaurant and see that it's got this kind of checkerboard of plexiglass skylight pieces, which make it modern. Next picture. Inside the Canless Charcoal Broiler, which was someplace I only went to a few times in my life because it wasn't a restaurant for kids. And I was a kid for most of this time. But in any case, you can see it's got, again, a very big dramatic open roofline. In the far distance, you see a bunch of vertical louvers through which you can see the palm trees outside. It's also got, very typically for the 1950s, a contrasting elements of surfaces. So it's got rough textured basalt. It's got a smooth terrazzo floor. It's got some rough textured wood. But it's all combined into a very modernist kind of a pastiche. Next picture. And again, part of that contrast that right as you walked into Canless, right in front of you, there was this tile panel, which was a fountain, which was surrounded by orchid plants. So the smoothness of that tile with some abstractions incorporated into it was a contrast to the rough rock around it. And this was, Wimberley was very much against air conditioning as much as possible. So this was an air-cooled restaurant as my friend Martin Despang would say. It is very easy breezy because it was cooled by trade winds or natural air movement. Next picture. So Wimberley also was involved in retail store design. And this is one of the stores that he did. This is the Ratan Art Gallery, again in Waikiki, built in the late 1940s. This was a structure. Look at the facade of this. It's got a glass facade, but the glass panels, the sheet glass or the plate glass windows are at an angle. Not only is that an architectural thing, but it also cut back on glare and reflection if you were looking in from the outside. Next picture. Inside the Ratan Art Gallery was a big open two-story space. There was a mezzanine against the back wall, and you can see that here on the left. And also, if you wondered what Ratan Art Gallery referred to, it referred to this type of furniture made of Ratan, which is the trunk of a type of palm tree that grows in the Philippines. Ratan furniture like this was extremely popular locally from the 1930s into the 1960s, and this store specialized in selling it. Next picture. So, I mentioned the international marketplace. This is probably, well, this is just retail. This is retail and restaurants. And so we're continuing the retail thing here. International marketplace located right in the center of Waikiki incorporated part of what had been the Don the Beachcomber site. And in a very prominent place. Interesting and a fun kind of a place because it was, again, a fantasy amalgamation of different Pacific ethnic graphic elements, with some elements also from Asia, particularly Japan, but China as well, mixed together into a fantasy for tourists to enjoy themselves in exotic Hawaii. Next picture. So here is the Don the Beachcomber second restaurant, which Wimberley designed. But you can also see in the picture on the right, which is the black and white picture of the restaurant, you see that from the street there were two similar architectural features like this that stuck out towards the sidewalk. You walked in between, in the space that was in between those two. And look at the roofline. Again, very pointy, and it's got this little prowl-like thing that's like the prowl of a canoe as an element at the end of it. Next picture. So, part of the fantasy, you walked into the international marketplace. The first thing you saw was this giant banyan tree. And in the banyan tree, a tree house. The tree house had been a small private dining room for Don the Beachcombers and eventually became a radio station studio from which people actually broadcast. You could stand down below, look up through the window and see these people doing their thing on the radio. Again, a tree house. It's like the Swiss family Robinson. It's part of the fantasy. Next picture. And also incorporated into the decor of the international marketplace were carvings and tiki's. So here you can see some pictures of those. And most of these, I think, are certainly some, if not all, were done by Edward Brownlee, who was a sculptor at the time. And he did not only wood carvings, but metal sculptures as well. And then on the right, you see the front of one of the stores in the international marketplace. Now, there's actually a steel and or cement interior to this store. You can see that by those, the pillars and the roof line there, the rafters. But you also see that it's got this facade or frontage that's just a screen made of pieces of bamboo. So when the rest, when the restaurant, when the store is closed, they just lowered those. You could still look in. But again, it's part of the fantasy that you're in an exotic, wonderful, tropical location. Okay, next picture. Wembley also did some banks. He was a very, he did all kinds of different types of buildings. This is the Bishop National Bank building, which was located on Lewer Street in Waikiki. Bishop National Bank was originally called the Bank of Bishop. It became Bishop National Bank. It became First National Bank. And finally today it's called First Hawaiian Bank. Now look at this, this particular early 1950s building. Initially it looks pretty straightforward. You've got four columns with a flat roof. But if you look more closely, those, first of all, those columns are textured. They probably, they have an exterior stone covering that's a light coral color. But notice the facade. See, it looks like it's just a regular facade of a building. But in fact, that facade, which is a framework of steel members with plate glass, is actually at an angle. So the two pillars on the left are inside and the two pillars on the right are outside because that thing goes at an angle between the pillars. And then also on the inside, this was famous for having a large fresco mural on the wall by a famous local artist Jean Charleau. And when it was demolished, many of these buildings didn't last very long. This was demolished in the 1960s. It was only there for maybe 15 years. Sections of the fresco were cut out and sold as art pieces, but otherwise the rest of it was destroyed. Thus it goes. Next picture. Well, another much bigger bank that was designed by Wimberley was this one. And this is the major competitor of First Hawaiian Bank. This is the Bank of Hawaii. This 15-story building was erected in Waikiki in 1965. And it's the beginning of Waikiki's real densification and the boom in building high-rises. It's just a regular high-rise, but it's got this latticework around it of this shape, whatever you want to call it. And there was a lot of speculation at the time as to what do these swooping things seem to represent. And the main thing that people said at the time that I can remember as a kid was, well, it's inspired by the top of a pineapple. I don't know that it actually was inspired by anything. It's just an interesting visual element put on as, again, a framework on the exterior of a high-rise. Next picture. And down at ground level, the Bank of Hawaii really had a very impressive entrance. It had this two-story high canopy over its main door into the bank. And the bank, as you can see in the lobby, had this big modern sculpture in it, and it was two stories. Very dramatic. Banks today no longer need to be as large inside. We do most of our banking electronically, so we won't see banks like this anymore. And this particular element of the building, the building is still standing, but this canopy is long gone. Next to the bank on the ground floor was a Woolworth store that had a very big restaurant in it. It had a fabulous souvenir department, let me tell you, as somebody who used to shop there. All of this has been removed. It's now a shopping arcade, which is called the Galleria. Building is still there. These elements are gone. Next picture. Okay. Here is one of Wimberley's most famous pieces, most iconic pieces. And this is the Waikikiyan Hotel. Now, if you look at this artistic vision or view or illustration of the Waikikiyan... Pardon me. Basically, it's following the same type of pattern that was already established in the United States for small hotels or motels. Two-story buildings, walk-ups to the... You walked up stairways to get to the second floor, no elevators, a swimming pool, parking lot, etc. The original structure was just the two-story buildings, but then they built... On the left-hand side, they built a small five-story building too. But the really important part of the Waikikiyan was the lobby. Let's go to the next picture and you will see it, and there it is. This is a form which was called, or is called, a hyperbolic paraboloid. And they were very happy at the hotel in their publicity to let you know that that's what this was called. But notice again, this is Wemberley at its finest. It's got these wonderful V-shape, really dramatic, again those little prowl-like things up on the top of the pointy part of the roof. And there were some architectural or engineering challenges in putting this thing up. But basically, it was an incredibly eye-catching thing to set this hotel apart from everything else in Waikiki at the time. Next picture. Now, inside the hyperbolic paraboloid lobby, however, was a little peculiar because it wasn't a nice big box. It had this very funny-shaped roof, and I would say that that perhaps impacts the utility of the interior space. But this is more for show. This is more as a theatrical statement, and as that succeeds very well. Next picture. Now, you can see in this photograph on the right what I was talking about those two small two-story buildings. This is a very skinny lot. It didn't have a lot of space, so they were forced to build in this way. But the lot, even though again it was small and even though the setting was not that exotic, the place was filled with tiki's. It was filled with the exoticness. They really played that up. And again, as a vacation spot, it was incredibly successful. It also contained a restaurant called the Tahitian Lanai, which was beloved at the time. It had a swimming pool. It had a little beach there, and it had between those two skinny buildings, so-called tiki garden. What else do you want in your vacation in Waikiki? Next picture. Okay. Another hotel project by Wimberley. This is the Coco Palms Hotel on Kauai. And in addition to the setting, which was magnificent, and it had ponds and it had coconut groves, et cetera. There also was a very dramatic lobby in the same kind of tradition we've already seen. And in this picture, you can see the lobby building on the right-hand side. Now let's go to the next photograph and see this is what it looked like from the inside and the outside. Again, dramatic, pointy, large, almost cathedral-like shape to this interior. Dramatic sculptural light fixtures hanging down, carvings. It is inspired by Polynesian architecture, indigenous architecture, but it isn't really strictly speaking connected to any particular culture in Polynesia. From the outside, again, it looks rustic. It looks like it could have been built by people in some Pacific location. And it has that structure in front of it. That little tower was based on an oracle tower structure, which would have been part of an ancient Hawaiian hei'au, or temple. But again, this is fantasy. Next picture. The setting also included a set of cottages. And these cottages, which were fairly unassuming looking, were actually the most expensive rooms in the hotel, because they were the suites. They were the biggest ones, and they have the biggest room. And also because you were not in a high-rise or a building with lots of other people, you had your own little house. Next picture. And inside there were some special features, primarily in the bathrooms, because the bathrooms used giant shells, giant clam shells, as the sinks. Now these are now endangered. You can't just go pull these out of the ocean and put them in places to have them be exotic accessories. But at the time, they were still being exported, and you could buy them for purposes like this. The interiors of these rooms, these cottages, were all, again, just cooled by not air conditioning, but by the trade winds. So they were easy breezy with vertical louvers, the type of thing that we like to talk about on ThinkTek Hawaii, certainly in the human-humane architecture series that I also participated in. But next picture. These were all appropriate things. These were all very appropriate elements for the Cocoa Palms Hotel, because the manager of the hotel was a woman named Grace Bushlander, and she had this wonderful theatrical sense of really making people part of this exotic experience. And so one of the things she invented was a so-called torch lighting ceremony, which every night men would go out and beat on this big drum that was prominently placed. They would blow conch shells, and then they would run around swinging a lit torch to light all the gas-fired tiki torches throughout the property. It's hokey, it's not traditional, it's not authentic, but it worked really well, particularly in the setting, and Wimberley's architecture was part of that. Next picture. One of the reasons the Cocoa Palms Hotel is remembered so fondly is because it was prominently featured in the 1961 Elvis film Blue Hawaii. And at the end of the film, as you see in this picture, Elvis got married to his girlfriend, Miley. They were on a barge going across one of these pools or ponds at the hotel. Wonderful and romantic. The Cocoa Palms has been closed since it was badly damaged by Hurricane Iniki in the 1990s, and it still has not reopened. It keeps getting talked about as though it's going to be reopening. We'll see if it will. The only thing is, of course, much of the original architecture will not be retained, so it will still be in a beautiful place, but it won't be exactly the same way it was as it appeared in the film Blue Hawaii. Next picture. So let's go to another island. Let's go to the island of Maui. And interestingly enough, in the early 1960s, not that many tourists were going to Maui, so people had to be convinced to go there. And if you look at this card, which is advertising the Sheraton Maui, it all says, be the first back home to talk about this out of the way, out of the world resort, out of the way. People now know Maui all over the world, but at the time they didn't know that much about it, because one reason being there weren't a lot of hotels there yet. Next picture. In 1960, there was an intentional development of a resort area called Kaanapalli, and this was intended to be sort of an anti-Wiki key, meaning it was all planned, there wouldn't be a lot of crowding it, and there wouldn't be a lot of traffic, things would be evenly spaced apart, etc. So it was all part of a plan. Well, the first hotel to be built in this setting got the optimum location, I think, which is up next to this big natural rock feature, which is called Puukikaa, or Black Rock. And this hotel, designed by Wemberley, of course, was the Sheraton Maui. And the Sheraton Maui was very unusual for its time because of the way it was built. Let's go to the next picture. And they very happily promoted how it was a hotel where you came in at the lobby on the top of the hotel, and you took an elevator down to your room, because it was located up against this natural rock feature, and they also like to say that everybody had his own private lanai, and it was almost like a bunch of hanging gardens, because there was vegetation hanging from these lanais. Again, that's part of the intention of creating an exotic experience for tourists so that it isn't like any other place that they might go. Next picture. And you'll notice something's happening here as we're going forward in time. What's happening? The buildings are getting bigger. I showed you buildings that Pete did early on, and they're still smaller. Well, now we're getting into the high-rise era. Now we're getting into the time of big concrete buildings. And here's another one. This is the Kona Hilton. Built about 1970. The Sheraton Maui was opened in 1963. This is about 1969 or 70. And it is just a high-rise, but you notice it's got this really dramatic swooping curve that gives it a really distinctive appearance in the distance when you're looking at it from the town of Kailua Kona. And again, it has hanging gardens, if you will, with bougainvillea growing on it. So it isn't just a box. It has more of a funny, appealing, or interesting appearance to it. But this is the direction that was happening. Next picture. Well, ironically, Pete Wimberley had gone to the City Council of Honoluluans and advocated for not building any more big high-rises on the beach at Waikiki. And then shortly after he advocated for that, his architectural firm was awarded the contract to build this building, which was the Sheraton Waikiki. And it was at the time an immense, it still is an immense building. So ironically, Pete's own desires kind of got pushed aside for the construction of this building, which was and is still very prominent in Waikiki. Next picture. And here we see an aerial picture of the new Sheraton Waikiki on the left. And right there in the center, what is it overshadowing? It's overshadowing the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Remember the picture I showed you right at the beginning, and I said to remember it? Well, here is the site of what Pete originally did. One of his first projects was to rebuild the dining room of the Royal Hawaiian. And within 25 years later, he's building this immense 31-story building right next door. Next picture. And here's the Sheraton Waikiki. And it wasn't just, again, a box. It did have a curve, a swoop to it. It was referred to as the butterfly. One of the things that I've always found strange is that the lobby of this immense monumental hotel is so small. It has such a low ceiling. In fact, from the very beginning, it felt very cramped to me. And I've always found out a strange contrast to the rest of the size of the hotel. In fact, this lobby is far less dramatic than the lobbies that I showed you for the Coco Palms or the Waikikian, which is a shame. But there it is. I can also point out that when this lobby first opened, it was criticized very heavily for looking really tacky and having a lot of contrasting colors and patterns all jammed together. However, it is what it is. Next picture. So we see there's the Sheraton Waikiki right in the middle of Waikiki, which is now a big city. Pete Wimberley himself died in 1996, but his name lives on in an architectural firm that he started. And interestingly today, that company called W-A-T-G is immense. It has offices in different parts of the world. It is the major designer of resorts throughout the world, internationally. If you go to their website, you'll see what Pete Wimberley created essentially through the work that he started back in the 1940s and what it's become today. And again, as I said, some of these buildings are still standing. The Sheraton is still there and others. But all of Pete's early work, the really distinctive stuff, there was stuff that was unique, unfortunately has left us. So this is just kind of a commemoration of Pete Wimberley and some of the wonderful things that he did. And that brings us to the end of this particular show of Doko Momo. Thank you all for joining us. I will be continuing to appear here on ThinkTekowai with my co-host Martin Despeng for Human Humane Architecture. And I also, in the coming months, will be doing more Doko Momo shows. So I hope you will continue to tune in and be educated and learn and be inspired. And until next time everybody, aloha.