 human-humane architecture. I am one of the co-hosts of the show and today's episode we are focusing on the Dokomomo Hawaii organization. Dokomomo is an international organization that studies and works to preserve mid-century architecture of the 20th century, specifically the 1950s through the 1970s. And today in honor of being a representative of Dokomomo, I'm going to be talking about hotels in Waikiki and the development of these hotels in the decade of the 1950s. This is the first of two shows which I'm going to be talking about that subject. Today I'm going to be looking at what I'm saying are the large hotels of this time period. Now large hotels in the 1950s were not what we would consider large today. They ranged from seven to 11 stories and only were about 100 feet in height. Today that is inconsequential and so small. However at the time they were very large and there were a number of innovations that came with these 1950s large hotels as well as the direction of Waikiki's development become the densely populated urban area that it is today. So this is the beginning, this time period of what Waikiki was to become and this is the first step on the road to that addition. The next show that I'm going to be doing that goes with this one is going to be talking about these small hotels which were only two stories in height. But today we're talking about the big ones and the montage of material that you see on the screen right now represents many of the hotels I'm going to be talking about but gives you a feeling for how many there were and how much development was beginning at this time. Tourism was beginning to grow very strongly in the 1950s but again by our standards today it was still very small and only a fraction of what it is today and what we expected to be today. Next slide. Here is an aerial photograph of Waikiki that was taken in about 1955 maybe 1956 and it shows a number of the hotels I'm about to tell you about and show you pictures of and starting from the left and you can see they are numbered so I'm not going to talk about all of these but the ones that I will be discussing and showing you are first number one that is the Waikiki Biltmore Hotel. Two is the Surfrider Hotel which is part of the Moana Surfrider today. Three is the Moana Hotel as I just mentioned. Four is the Princess Kakiulani built a little bit inland of the Moana and Surfrider and then we're going to skip over to number seven. That is the Reef Hotel and then just to the right of that is the Edgewater Hotel. Now all of those are from the 50s. All of them came up in a very short time period and that's what I'm about to get started on so let's go to the next slide. First on the list chronologically is this one. This is the Edgewater Hotel and this is a rendering from the early 1950s of the hotel. Now it was constructed on the site of something that would have been there before the Willard Hotel and then as you see in this picture it is the seven-story building on the right and then to the left are a group of cottages that were extending out to the ocean. They also are going to play a part in this story but we haven't gotten to that yet. The Edgewater opened in 1951. It was the first large hotel of this type in Waikiki with seven stories and its innovation was the first swimming pool for a Waikiki hotel. Up until then it had been considered unnecessary because if you wanted to go to the beach you just went to the beach and went swimming in the ocean but today in the 50s we're looking more modern saying no we've got a nice filtered pool for you to not only swim in but lounge around next. The Edgewater was joined by another building to the right of it in 1954 and it was part of the Edgewater. It was also seven stories tall and in these two pictures you can see the 1954 building to the right and the pool of course that I just mentioned in the foreground. These hotels were built by a man named Roy Kelly who was not only an architect but was a really workaholic I mean really workaholic developer and he was this was the start of his career as a major major player in development of Waikiki in the 50s 60s 70s and his family followed him into the business and he persevered in this tremendous amount of work in spite of some very significant physical disabilities and his focus was to create low cost hotels for travelers who didn't have as much money as the previous hotels the large hotels might require. So this is his first step we're going to be coming back to Roy Kelly in a little bit but now let's go on to the next slide and our next chronological hotel in this story of the 50s is the Surfrider. The Surfrider opened in 1952 and it was uh it's eight stories tall I am and I am looking at my notes as I tell you these things because I keep track of all of this just in my brain and the Surfrider was part of as I said earlier was connected to the Moana Hotel. Moana opened in Waikiki in 1901 so it was and still is our oldest surviving historic hotel but this was the first large and high rise it is a high rise even though it's small built directly on Waikiki Beach and we'll go to the next slide and this rendering it's it's difficult to see but if you look very carefully on the left you'll see a little bit of a suggestion of the existing Moana Hotel and the Surfrider was part of the Moana it was it was and is still connected physically to the Moana on the ground floor the rest of it is free standing the Moana uh was really the Surfrider was truly an adjunct because it did not have for example its own kitchen facilities so any of the food that was served in the Moana Hotel in the Surfrider hotel came from the Moana Hotel's kitchen so it didn't really function entirely on its own let's go to the next slide and here is the Moana Hotel I mean the Surfrider hotel seen from Palakawa Avenue because it also was not only the first modern high rise hotel on the beach but also directly on the main drag and if you look on the left you can see that there are some retail shop spaces in this front facade what's also notable is that there's a substantial amount of space on the sidewalk so at that time it was still like he was still not as jammed as it is today so it was possible to leave more space in the front just for the members of the public to be able to walk past the hotel and enjoy some open space and today of course that's long since been shut down because there is not much space in Waikiki for everything that is there now but at the time in 1952 it was possible to leave them okay next slide now continuing in our journey we come to the year 1955 and this is really pivotal because a bunch of new hotels all opened within months of each other and suddenly it seemed like Waikiki was this major growing place and again it seems silly to us now to think of these as big buildings but at time they really were this is the Biltmore hotel and it opened in February of 1955 and the Biltmore interestingly uh well I won't get to that yet but I will say there were two there were several innovations again that the Biltmore had which were brand new for Waikiki hotels the first one was that each room was equipped not only with a built-in radio and I say built in it was built into the furniture of the bedside table so that you it wasn't a free-standing radio that you could steal but also each room came equipped with a television both of these were the now forgotten and obscure Emerson brand that nobody's heard of today television broadcasting it only started in the Hawaiian islands in in december of 1952 so this is February 55 and now each room comes with television and also each room came equipped with a small refrigerator that's something we expect hotel rooms to have now but at the time this was very different and this was a small four cubic foot westinghouse refrigerator that was placed on the lanai of each of these hotel rooms which seems like a strange place but at the time just the fact that there was one was a big deal next slide the bill more also came with its own pool as you can see in the picture on the left but interestingly its history is a little more complicated when it was developed and that is that originally it was supposed to be built directly on the beach Waikiki beach on the makai side of alakawa avenue and it would have been just on the diamond head side of the surfwriter hotel that it just showed you but even at that early stage the city and county of formal lulu already was putting in place a master plan towards Waikiki's development and they didn't want to allow a new large building to be built directly on the beach and in fact the private property that the bill more was going to be built on was in fact condemned by the city and county a few years later in 1958 and by 1962 all of the buildings there had been demolished and it had been turned into the open park space that we have today which you may be familiar where the Duke Hanamoku statue is located well that's what that area is so the bill more was built across the street on the moka side of alakawa avenue and it left meaning that the beach side could be left open could be made open into public space which is a really admirable thing the bill more only lasted for 19 years because in 1974 it was Hawaii's first large-scale dynamite implosion demolition and thousands of people gathered in Waikiki to watch the bill more get blown up and I was one of them and so I got to see a building fall down that was very exciting back in 1974 next slide next on our list is this one this is the princess but you lani hotel and it opened in june of 1955 just a few months after the bill more that I just showed you this hotel was uh for its time the tallest building in the Hawaiian islands and they were very proud of that and they said they were they said it was 107 feet high and that made it not excuse me not the tallest it was the tallest in Waikiki but it was the third tallest building in the Hawaiian islands after tripler hospital and aloha tower and you can see how small the Hawaiian islands were then in terms of development well in any case the princess got you lani let's go to the next slide was part of the maths in hotels chain maths and navigation company still carries most of our goods to us on its ships its cargo ships but at the time it also was carrying passengers on passenger ships and it was one of four massive hotels in Waikiki the surf rider one that I just mentioned being one of them as well as the mono hotel and the Hawaiian hotel and that's in in a few years after this decided they were going to get out of the hotel business and they sold all four of these hotels to sherryton corporation that ended maths next slide one of the things that was notable about these fifties hotels is how much art they included in their public spaces a number of artists were commissioned to do works of different kinds like sculptures and paintings and other types of installations so this is the bar at the princess got you lani hotel that opened on to the swimming pool and the deck around the swimming pool and you can see it's got these Polynesian themed uh original pieces of art murals that are up on the wall and there's a color photograph just to show you exactly what those look like and it was not only painting it was also textures and also physical objects incorporated into these pieces and that that of course today are long gone next slide okay now we come to the reef hotel and I mentioned Roy Kelly a little bit ago well even as the second building of the uh the southern hotel was being built and I'm trying to remember the name of it because I just forgot it because I said it but regardless of that was the edgewater uh he was already building the reef hotel across the street directly on the beach and one of the problems with the reef hotel today which nobody could have anticipated back in 1955 is that if you look at the picture on the top you can see there's an expansive amount of beach directly in front of the hotel into the ocean well today most of that beach has eroded 100% and the water is coming directly up to the foundation of the reef hotel this unfortunately is probably what we're going to be seeing a great deal more of in the coming years of the future but at the time nobody could have known it uh let's go to the next slide and the reef hotel was really kind of the beginning of the Outrigger Hotel chain which was started by Roy Kelly and by the 1970s and 80s had grown to incorporate 20 or 30 hotels in Waikiki it was it was an amazing amount of growth but regardless of that this is a rendering which again doesn't look anything like the real thing does but it shows you the reef hotel on the beach and then across Aliyah Road which you don't really see in the picture is the Edgewater Hotel with its pool now there were some there were some additional innovations for the reef hotel and let's look at what those were in the next slide to begin with of course it had a swimming pool as was now considered regulation for hotels in Waikiki but it also was a swimming pool of a different type meaning it was no longer a rectangular shape the way most big swimming pools have been until then this was a very popular type in the 50s it's referred to as a kidney shaped swimming pool meaning it's a free form and let's go to the next slide something else that was an innovation for the reef hotel was the construction of Waikiki's first parking structure as well as underground access for the parking which was for 150 cars but it also was for people to be able to come and go from the hotel without having to do it directly from the lobby so you did it in those days via this ramp we're looking down on a circular ramp that goes from the first level of the hotel to the below grade level where it was possible to come and go through vehicles there was also a coffee shop down there in that level and a few years later in march of 1958 there was a tremendous rainstorm the heaviest rain that we've ever measured here in Honolulu and this entire ground level flooded to a depth of several feet which just damaged many parked cars as well as flooded the hotel's coffee shop but nobody knew that at the time next slide here's a room in the reef hotel and again it's got a level of kind of modern elegance that was notable it has Japanese elements as you can see on the left that's a Japanese inspired painting that actually came from Japan and it's also got a new arrangement of the beds which is something typical of the 50s which i'm going to get to when we discuss the next hotel as we continue on and next slide so now we're going to our final hotel of the 1950s to talk about and that's the Hawaiian village the Hawaiian village opened in uh 1955 let's see it opened in september of 55 it just checked the notes and it was the beginning of a complex that grew very rapidly and became a cluster of high-rise buildings and you can see in this picture from 1960 or 61 in the foreground there's the giant lagoon which was constructed for the hotel and inland of that you can see a variety of structures that are all part of the hotel it's group of high-rise buildings as well as low-rise let's go to the next slide so as i just said the Hawaiian village is notable because it's constructed by a man named Henry J. Kaiser very powerful very wealthy huge industrialist came from the mainland and settled here and decided he was going to start developing things the way he'd already been developing things elsewhere and one of the things he was able to do was to totally reconfigure the shoreline of this in front of his hotel to dredge a lagoon to build a new beach and to do a bunch of other stuff which today you'd never be able to do but that created the beach which is still there which is called the new kahanamoku beach and it's in front of what's today the Hilton Hawaiian village directly fronting onto it but even though there was a lot of beach access like these other hotels there were not all there was not just one pool but there were actually three swimming pools on the grounds of this hotel when it opened next slide the Hawaiian village in its early years when it was still owned by Henry J. Kaiser was just publicity craze they put out constant publicity things they did publicity photographs they did stories they did news stories there was a tv series that was filmed there etc and here are two fashion photographs taken on the grounds of the hotel released to publications just to again increase the amount of publicity it was getting next slide they also like gimmicks and let's just be honest about this Henry J. Kaiser was very conscious of publicity and one of the gimmicks that was created for the hotel which got a ton of publicity was this aluminum dome which was used as an auditorium and it was constructed it was put up from prefab aluminum sections within a matter of hours it just took like a day and a half to do it and it was considered incredibly futuristic it was aluminum that was owned it put together by a company called Kaiser aluminum which was one of Henry J. Kaiser's businesses and it did it was functional and it was modern and it was striking but again it was partly done for publicity which was very successful they also had a swimming pool that had a retractable cover so it could be a dance floor as well as a swimming pool not really that functional but again it gets publicity next slide so one thing that the the Hawaiian village offered which was new was a number of meeting room facilities and so this is one of those this is the carousel meeting room and these were so successful because hotels in Orlando didn't have those really that were as functional as these modern style that other hotels began to have to put these types of facilities in because the Hawaiian village was getting so much business from that and let's go to the next slide because the main place that was doing that was this which is called the Longhouse and it doesn't look very impressive to us today but at the time it was the only large modern multi-use space that was available anywhere in the city of Honolulu and people immediately took to this for all type different types of events so there were lunches and dinners as you can see in this setup but it was also used as a venue for a sports car show and a bunch of other things like that and it was so popular that the Matson hotels that they just mentioned were pushed to create their own little convention space on the grounds of the Princess Bayulani hotel in competition with what the Hawaiian village was providing to public. Next slide and as I've said these buildings were modern the Hawaiian village grew very rapidly in the 1950s it was constantly constructing new types of facilities and it was in the modern idiom so it looked like these pictures that you see here of the lobby not only was that trendy and not only was that what people expected to see and what they wanted to see but it also was low cost and it was possible to build quickly so that's one of the reasons that Kaiser did it. Next slide also in the Kaiser hotel and the various facilities built there were as I mentioned earlier as other places had done a bunch of retail stores so this is something that became required pretty much in the 1950s you had a bunch of retail stores and again in this photograph you can see modern type of construction very simple and very quick and easy to do but it looks modern and it looks like what people want to see at the time period. Next photo was something else that I mentioned a little bit earlier in the 1950s beds in hotel rooms began to be treated as part of the furniture and not just something to lie on when you went to sleep at night but something that you could sit on during the day kind of as though it was a couch so here are two photographs of rooms in the Hawaiian of a room in the Hawaiian village hotel during the day the beds are treated again as like their couches and at nighttime the maid comes in makes them up and moves them away from the wall so that you can sleep on them. This is something which you don't see today anymore but at the time was considered very very modern thinking um let's use our rooms to be more comfortable and rather than just lying down on the beds we can treat them like the furniture well it was a big deal next picture this uh advertisement from the 1950s shows you that this cluster of buildings was referred to as the Hawaiian village hotels uh plural well it wasn't it wasn't really a cluster hotels it was one just one hotel but because Henry J Kaiser was such a hard driving guy there was construction going on constantly on the grounds of the hotel and you can see here in the two pictures on the top uh left the low rise structures which is where the lobby was constructed and then that was joined within a short time by the one of the first high rises built on the property well there were three or four built on the property by the time Henry J Kaiser sold the Hawaiian village hotel to the Hilton Corporation in 1961 and that's why today this is called the Hilton Hawaiian village all of the 1950s parts of the Hawaiian village hotel starting from 1955 have long since been demolished but today it is a complex of very big buildings with lots of stores lots of people thousands of guest rooms and this is the beginning of what we are familiar with next picture so as I pointed out earlier the Biltmore hotel didn't last very long from 1955 to 1974 well here's one of the buildings at the Hilton Hawaiian village complex which didn't last very long either this is the village tower constructed in 1957 and imploded by dynamite in 1979 and that is showing you what has happened to many of the 50s buildings even if the high rises themselves are still standing from that time period they've been uh changed dramatically they've been redesigned they have been remodeled they have all new furniture there's very little of this 1950s boom that still is standing even though some of the buildings are there they don't look the same as they formerly did that's why it's important to be aware of history because you can't go to Waikiki today and necessarily see all that history because a lot of it has been replaced and so that's why me as a historian I want to be able to tell people these stories I want to be able to show people these stories I want people to know where we came from how we got here and what things used to look like so that was the purpose of this particular show again Dokomomo Hawaii honoring the work that Dokomomo does this is as I said the first of two shows the next show I do is also going to be on hotels in the 1950s in the Waikiki but I'll be talking about the low rides and small hotels as opposed to these bigger ones which we just looked at and heard about thank you for joining me I'm DeSoto Brown thanks for being here in Dokomomo Hawaii's program in the human-humane architecture series joining me again please on Think Tech Hawaii thanks for being here and I'll see you next time a lot