 Hello everyone and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Dogo Momo Hawaii show and this is when we talk about and talk about the preservation of mid-century architecture of the 20th century here in the Hawaiian Islands. And I'm DeSoto Brown and I am the Bishop Museum Historian, I'm also the host of this program for the right this minute. And we've got two guests today and guests may I ask you to both introduce yourselves. Sure. I'm Allison Chu with Dogo Momo Hawaii, I'm an Architectural Historian and I'm Alyssa Carson Dogo Momo Hawaii and I'm an Architect. Well thank you both very much and I'm happy that all three of us are here. I'm going to talk about metal railings and metal work today and this is something which is kind of a lost art today, something which you very rarely see, specifically the type that we're going to be talking about as we go through our program. Let's go to our first slide and behind us has been this wonderful Ethereum shaped railing which is the type of thing we're talking about today, but you have pointed out to me because I'm not an architect that today this wonderful type of thing, artistic expression that it is, would be illegal because it doesn't fulfill the requirements for railings these days and people could get caught in this and injured potentially so we don't do it anymore. So as wonderful as this is, it's not something we're going to be repeating in the future. So let's go to our next slide and what we're talking about now is railings, but custom railings. Now railings were not always customized. Railings could come from a factory and this is from a catalog, do you even remember what this was? It was, the Econo rail was a proprietary name and it was the catalogs were produced by the Newman brothers in the 50s. So this is an easy, cheap way to get a railing made for a new building, however, we're not talking about this type of thing, but let's go to another picture that looks very similar or from a similar type of situation. This is from the, what company? This one was a catalog from the Tennessee fabricating company. It was produced in 1963 and this is one page of many which showed the variety of ornamental metal railings that people could choose from and they could order it and this was produced on the mainland and then shipped to the customers. Correct. And the one that we chose to pull out is the so-called Oriental motif which is identified, which is described as, quote, adapted from the best designs of the ancient and wise Oriental artists. That's the way they thought about it in Tennessee. I also want to point out the one underneath it which says non-directional design for the space age in which we live. We do live in the space age. I mean, I agree completely, diamond patterns and jet age, et cetera, et cetera. Next slide, we see another interior application, we see interior applications of the similar, this is also from the Tennessee company, correct? Correct. And what we were talking about is that this, at the time period for middle class people, this was a way to add elegance to your home. But the basic thing here, and not only are these railings, but they're also room dividers. Room dividers were a big thing at that time because there were open plan designs, but there also was a way to differentiate the dining room from the living room, for example, particularly if everybody was living in a suburb where all the homes were standardized. So this is a way to make your home different, to have the other housewives envious of you because of how space age you were. And these were actually used in the pace setter homes. A lot of the custom railings were marketed for their charm, their durability, and their beauty. So it really speaks to this idea of gracious hosting and gracious living. It was very sophisticated. Oh, utterly. I mean, just take a look. As you can see. As you can see, as is clearly evident. But what we're talking about is not standardized factory produced railings. Pardon me, my phone is making a squary noise. What we're talking about is in the next pictures. And what we had here was, here in the Hawaiian Islands, we had a number of welding companies. And these pictures, the picture of the welding, I was welding is from the late 1930s. And the ad from the Yellow Pages is from 1953. And the industrial welding company ad specifies that among the things that they do are cottage railing. So what we see here is railings being made for specific customers for specific uses that aren't from a factory that are unique. And we think that this is probably something that was pretty much just confined in the Hawaiian Islands and not seen in other parts of the United States. So next picture. Here is the start of sort of a chronological look at railings. And we start with railings at Iolani Palace. We think that there may be some Hawaiian symbolism incorporated in them, which is something that people would have done at that time. And you were saying that these might have been manufactured by the Honolulu Ironworks. Correct. Yes, they've been made somewhere that the Honolulu Ironworks did. Which was a substantial size factory at the time and produced a lot of big iron machinery in addition to more artistic stuff like this. Next picture. We come up in time to 1927 and this is the YWCA, the facade of the YWCA on Richard Street in downtown Honolulu. And this is a building designed by Julia Morgan and she's outstanding for being an early female architect. But the building is very much like it's Italy and or the Mediterranean. This is very European. The use of the wrought iron on the railing on the third floor is very much in keeping with what was already standardized in Europe and had been in place probably for a century. So although this is a building here in Honolulu, there's not very much that's Hawaiian about it. And it's not as unique as some of what we're going to be seeing as we go along. Next picture. So we have here an interior use. This is perhaps not as elegant as the Tennessee fabricating company once, but this is a home that was built in New Anu in the early 1900s, but this part of it is from probably the teens of the 20s and it happens to have been my great-grandparent's house and my great-grandfather was named Frederick Laurie. And here we see interior use of the wrought iron as a railing for the lower section and then up in the upper corner. You can see it's for a second level mezzanine. And you were pointing out that it's unusual because it's on top of a wooden balustrade base. Not something you'd normally would have seen. Yeah, why the mixture of materials is very unique here. Right, right. Normally you'd think of the metal would be at the bottom and the wood on the top because it's less strong metal, but less strong material. In any case, going on. Next picture. We come up to 1927. Again, we were previously in 1927. And this is what used to be called the Honolulu Academy of Arts. And I like the logo that you see in the center that says AHA because it reads the same for both sides. It's symmetrical. So if you're on the inside of the outside, you can still read it. The wrought iron railings and custom work at the front of this building is really noticeable. It's a really important part of it as you walk up to it. And below you can see a window that's got a metal grating over it. And we're going to see those motifs again as we go further. Next picture. Here are the gates as they appear. And there are three panels that you can see on the right. Two of which use this very popular 1920s and 30s motif of a rising sun with sun rays coming out of it. So that's a modern part of a more traditional, as you see, in some cases this is a, again, emulating European styles of wrought iron used as protection and or for security. Next picture. So coming up in time, we come to 1947, the King Kalakawa building, which is a small commercial structure. It looks much bigger than it actually is. And interestingly, now it's incorporating some of the ancient Oriental artwork that we were seeing about earlier. And the metal work that's on the facade in the center of the building, which is clearly, again, not Western style, but Asian. And it's a little bit of customization on what's otherwise pretty much a concrete one. It's a very distinct signage of that signage. And wonderful signage that, again, is something that people wouldn't do today either, unfortunately. Next picture. Now, again, continuing in the commercial vein, the Hilo Hotel. And these sort of squished rectangles that have been pushed in on the sides are cut out of sheet metal. Similar to the antherium reeling that we saw earlier. Right. And the Hilo Hotel is not a hotel at the moment, but you said it's possibly going to be returned to being. We're hoping so. We're hoping so. And I love how simple, but graphic this design element is. Exactly. And unique. Again, this is unique. You're not going to find it in any place else. Next picture. These are two different railings from two different bowling alley. And very clearly in the upper left of the stadium bowling drum, you can see that that's a bowling ball with two bowling pins next to it. You said that this is in the cocktail lounge of the stadium bowling drum, which unfortunately is not functioning anymore. The building is still standing. The lower picture is from Polly Lane's. And I think that those sort of little graduated circles are bowling balls that are you looking at at an angle. And they're sort of receding from you and getting smaller in there. And how clever for a commercial building to do something as cool as that. Next picture. This is the Kenrock building. And the Kenrock building on Copilani Boulevard actually consists of three separate buildings that are one complex that were built over about a 10 or 12 year period. And they have these very simple railings. But the railings, there's a little more going on there than at first appearance. First of all, as you pointed out, the upright is a round bar. It's not rectangular. Whereas the horizontal sections are flat pieces of metal. They also emphasize very much the horizontal nature of those buildings. So this very simple railing really carries on that theme. And very elegantly and attractively too, I think. And I like how you caught these shadows that really extend into the distance. Well, and also the shadows are a part of these. And we'll see that in some of our other pictures. Next picture. This is a small commercial building on University Avenue. This is just Makai of what used to be University Square. And none of us remember the name of the building. It has this wonderful exterior stairway that's kind of floating in the air and kind of skeletal. But instead of just plain upright bars for the railing, they've got this sort of rhombus shape. Which again, shows that this is a custom touch that somebody went ahead and did for not very expensive building. It actually makes you really want to see the rest of the building. Because a lot of these railings, I think as we've been seeing, mimic some of the design elements between just this very simple decorative component and the rest of the architecture. Right, exactly. So there's a repetition of themes. Next picture. Now, we're, again, the aged wisdom of the ancient orientals shows up again. But hey, it was good enough for the Tennessee fabricating company. We've got, in the lower left, we've got the Kwanian Temple, which is on Vineyard Boulevard. Which was constructed about 1960. And in the upper right, a building, the identity of which none of us is sure, we think we're not sure if it's a private home or if it's some sort of a Chinese organization or perhaps a religious structure. But in both cases, we've got custom railings that incorporate Chinese characters. And I wasn't sure if the same character was showing up in both locations. And you, your parents, can find it. That the abstraction of this symbol is actually the Chinese character for longevity. Right. And that's a popular one. That's a very popular one. And we're going to continue to see it. So again, we see it here in a religious structure. Next picture. This is a commercial use of wrought iron that is really clever. It's LH for Liberty House, the Liberty House Department Store, which was very prominent here up until about 2000. And this was the Kailua branch of the Liberty House. And it uses the LH abbreviation, which at the time all of us were very familiar with. So we could identify LH as Liberty House. And you said that this has been saved. Yes. So this picture was taken before they did the renovation. And then they salvaged them and they have placed them on the interior of the building now. Bravo. I'm glad they did. Next picture. And this is the Queen Lydia O'Halani Gardens condo complex in Waikiki on Alawai Boulevard built in 1984. 1984. And explain what's going on with this arch gate. This one, well, the architecture itself has always caught my eye. And when I went to look at it, this gate structure is very distinct. And it was actually galvanized steel. I know we're talking about wrought iron railings, but some of the paint has actually chipped away. And they had painted it black to look like a more stately and older piece of iron work. Yes. Which has successfully done. Which was very successfully done. Yes. Next picture. And here's another commercial application. This is the Hawaii National Bank, which is on King Street in downtown Honolulu. I'm guessing it's from about 1980, just based on my memory. And this decorative metal bar, these bars, which are in the parking building, obviously, in the parking section, which is probably in the bottom. This was a Chinese bank. This was a Chinese company when it was started. And so again, it uses longevity. And the interesting thing is that this is cross-cultural across the board in Chinese culture to use longevity as a symbol for both a commercial structure, a bank, as well as even a religious structure. And I was going to make the joke, but we won't make that joke. OK, next picture. So this is, again, a Chinese structure. This is the Waikiki Circle Hotel. You pointed out it was designed to look like a lantern. A Chinese lantern, yes. A Chinese lantern built by a Chinese family. The matriarch of the family purchased the land. And if you look carefully, it's difficult to see in this picture, but the railings just under the arm of the woman who is standing in on the left, the circular motifs actually do look Chinese. They actually look like Chinese characters and or coins. I don't know if this was custom designed or whether they got this as a standard design from one of the factories we talked about earlier. But regardless, it does carry on a Chinese theme. And unfortunately, it's not there anymore. No, those are not. Those railings are gone. They've been replaced with those vertical, standard vertical railings. Standard vertical ones that fulfill the legal requirements or zoning requirements now or architectural requirements. Next picture. So now I'm going to shift into looking specifically at homes. And originally, when you look at these private homes in these pictures, the plantation homes in the upper right just have wooden railings at their front steps. And in the lower left, we see a prosperous Chinese family in their home in central Honolulu, which has got basalt or lava rock walls built as the base. A shift away from that is to what we're going to be talking about. Next picture. And this is an advertisement from 1941 for a home that was located on Kapilani Boulevard. And it's still there. You can see in the picture on the right, although it's been changed. It's been altered. And it's got one of those metal railings. So I'm going to say that those probably came into use in the late 1930s. And that would be keeping in terms of what was popular at that time, too, in terms of streamlining. So next picture. Now we're going to get into some of the railings themselves. And a lot of the houses from this time period, from the late 30s into maybe the early 60s, for the most part are pretty austere. They don't have a lot of decoration on them. And the metal railings of the front steps are an artistic touch of decoration that otherwise is absent. Next picture. So here's the home. And what we like about this, or what's noteworthy, is the railing in the front and the railing in the back don't match. But the railing in the back, which is in the upper right corner, has this wonderful little freestanding thing that you can walk on either side of, which is particularly graceful. Very graceful. Next picture. And all of these railings are different. We don't see railings that are repeating patterns exactly. So we think that they were all custom made specifically for each one of these homes. These railings all use circles, as you can see. And there are some similarities, but they're not exactly the same. Next picture. And more commonly, as you would think with straight pieces of metal, you see angular patterns. And notice the way the steps are made. Those are poured in place concrete steps that required plywood forms to make them. That's expensive, and that's not something you'd be likely to do today for a private home. And the railings, we think, would have been fabricated earlier and then cast in place, placed with the concrete to be cast around them. And again, that's a difficult amount of work that most people wouldn't do today. Next picture. So we see a variety of patterns. The one on the left, I initially thought looked like sailboats. You then said that it maybe looks like umbrellas. Umbrellas, and then I saw that. I thought it looked like spades. Right, so it's very whimsical. It's very whimsical, and it's also you perceive what you want to perceive. Right. And on the right, we've got a circle, but we've got this other thing that you thought looked like a gecko. I thought it looked like a gecko. Very stylized, rather than the ones sticking out. That's right. Next picture. This whole experiment has been a Rorschach test. And he said totally, what do you see in this pattern? This is another one. This is another one. And this is really good because the boy saw it differently than the girls. Because I looked at that and thought, oh, it looks like a propeller. We both thought it looked like a boat. But what's cool is that the pattern on the railing is repeated in the wood that's cut out on the railing of the front porch there. And I mean, again, for a small job like this, how many people would do this today? Very few. Well, and the other interesting element of these very small plantation, or not plantation, but plantation-derived homes is that some of the carports, which were also mimicking these designs, you'll see them if you notice the little details. And I'm not sure that this one had the same repetitive bow or propeller design. But once you start looking at those little details throughout Honolulu's neighborhoods, you'll really start to notice them. And you'll also find, which I don't have any of these pictures, are wooden screenings sometimes that mimics the same pattern as the railing, which is wonderful. Next picture. So here we are back to our Chinese motifs, the ancient wisdom of the orientals. The building in the upper left corner again uses longevity in its railing, but it's also got upturned eaves to emphasize the chineseness. Upper right corner, that character is for the family name Wong. And it's written in a more normal caligraphic style. And then in the lower center, we're not sure exactly what that is stylized. Your parents said longevity again. Maybe they know better than we do. They said that for all of them. I know. That's just like, if you. I'm willing to go with it. I'm me too. They know more than I do. One of the things I love about this is that all of these railings are painted red. And they're red. And that's, again, the Chinese color. You've got to have it red. Agreed. Next picture. So this one is kind of the mishmash of everything that we could possibly jam together into one metal piece. And it looks kind of, again, like it's got longevity characters on the right side. It has, interestingly enough, swastikas in each corner that are facing inwards. We've got the symbol, that round symbol that we saw in the Academy of Arts. Which is actually similar to the design for the Chinese coin. Absolutely. And it's hard to tell because there's all this other stuff on it. And we wish we could go take all that off. So we could see it. The swastika is a very ancient symbol used in a number of different cultures. It got ruined by the Nazis using it during World War II. I suspect this is probably pre-war because, during and after World War II, swastikas were so tainted by their association with Nazism, it's probable that people wouldn't have used them after that, I'm going to guess. And you mentioned that not just with this particular residence, but several other buildings built during the 1930s kind of had an unfortunate coincidence in timing being built right before World War II. Right, right. Because up until then, the swastika had no evil associations. And after that, it did. Next picture. So now we're going to shift finally into looking at just a handful of commercial buildings, small apartment buildings. So these are two-story walk-up buildings. And again, lots of these in Honolulu. And from this time period, again, the late 30s, early 60s, you see a lot of the railings that we're talking about. So these are just clean, angular. But again, they're not the same. They're not standard. They're not coming out of a factory. Next picture. Yet another example. And as we mentioned earlier, one of the things that these railings do visually is to cast shadows. And that's another part of their decorative abilities or their decorative qualities that is potentially possibly unintentional, but it's there nonetheless. One of the things that Aless and I both love about these small little buildings, too, is that because they all have such distinct custom railing styles, they make the building themselves look very recognizable, and they give each building a different character. That is exactly the case, too. And they're not cookie cutter. Next picture. And this one in particular is kind of complicated, but quite wonderful. But to my eye, looks dangerous, because there are these unadorned, unprotected, loose, just plain ends metal sticking out. And a child could get injured on those. And that's one of the major things that's a consideration now, that the railings half cannot allow a child's head to go through, which this probably would. And an adult who slipped and fell could be injured as well. And we're sort of chuckling about it, but it's a real possibility, which is why, again, we're actually lucky that these have not been required to be removed and replaced by other railings, because we would have lost a lot of them. Well, and then going off of Allison's note earlier, how the railings provide some kind of decorative element, I feel like this one, especially because it's a kind of a plain brick building, provides so much more decoration to the building. Oh, I agree completely. And as we said earlier, these buildings tend to be very austere. They're very sleek. They're very smooth. They're not decorated a great deal. And this is the decorative element that you can put on there. It's also in keeping with this kind of industrial, popular industrial, modern appearance, face age. Next picture. And this is part of the trade winds complex, which is located next to the Alawai Canal. And it was built in the late 1940s. They've been painted distinctively today so that they are different colors. So they really stand out more than they did for most of their life when they were all the same color. But look again at that concrete structure that is not only the base of the stairs, but the second floor lanai or exterior hallway. And that curve, again, that's custom made plywood that you've got to build it and pour it in place and have the stairway railings ready to go to. A lot of work, particularly for something this size, that is not likely to be repeated today. True. It's a very elegant railing. What I also like is on the upper left, image that you have to Soto, the railing almost disappears. So when you look at the walkways, it looks like they're floating as part of the building. Right. Right. If you look closely, you can see them. But otherwise, they're going to go away. Next picture. And this, I think, is right at the end of our period. And that zigzaggy up and down line, to me, suggests the diamond pattern, which is very popular in the 1950s. So I'm going to guess this is late 50s, early 60s, right when we're transitioning out of the use of custom railings. Probably it's too expensive. But in our last two pictures, next, we're going to see what happened. And we see that in the 1950s, we shifted to private homes being built in suburbs that were all standardized. And there was a lot of grading of the lots. So the lots, the ground was made very smooth. The houses were, when you went to a subdivision, you maybe had a choice of four or five different standardized houses that you could choose from if it wasn't already there. They weren't custom made. And they were all built flat on a cement slab. So there are no more steps. And you don't need railings anymore. Well, the interesting thing, too, when we talked about earlier is that it's amazing that all these railings that we have seen are in such good condition. But the properties of the material itself, and corrosion resistant, especially in Hawaii with the salt air, I mean, they still look pretty good for how old they are. They do. And they look elegant and swell, too. And I admitted to you when I was a kid, in the 60s, I used to like to look at these railings and think of who they were and wish that we had one in my house. Well, I think they're coming back into style. But they're not going to be. I hope so, too. But you know, again, we've got legal requirements now that won't make them as free form and cookie as they were. And we've also got they're expensive. And I think they shifted. When we were seeing these, these are houses that were not expensive houses. And yet they had this custom work. And today, if it's going to be done, it's going to be a more expensive. It's not going to be at the level that it would have been at the time. Thank you both very much for being here today. And this was a wonderful subject. We had a lot of fun doing this. Thank you. Thank you so much. And tell us about what's happening with Doko Momo in the near future. So we are hosting, as you know, the Doko Momo Hawaii Symposium. And we are partnering with the national organization coming from New York. And that will be in September, the end of September. Alyssa, do you have the exact dates? And can you tell us a little bit more about it? We're all looking at you. Exactly. It's the last week of September from the Wednesday to the Saturday. And we will be hosting at three different locations, the Outrigger, the East-West Center UH, and at the state capitol. Well, all of us will be there. I'll be presenting. They're still presenting, yes. OK, thank you for being here. Thank you for coming with us. And thank you, everybody, who joined us today on ThinkTech for this program. We will be seeing you in the near future with other Doko Momo Hawaii programs, as well as human-humane architecture. You'll be seeing me on those as well. Again, thank you for joining us. And until next time, aloha.