 Hello everybody, welcome to Human-Humane Architecture here on Think Tech Hawaii. I am the co-host of this program, DeSoto Brown, and the regular host of this program, Martin Despang, is in Germany for the summer on a working vacation. And so since some of the fill-in people for this summer are from the Doko Momo Group, which if you're not familiar with it, is essentially the mid-century architecture fan club, we might say. I thought today that I would be focusing on Hawaii during the mid-century of the middle part of the 20th century. And for our purposes, we're saying the mid-century period is the 1950s and the 1960s. And what's so important about that time period? What happened during that time period that we see the legacy of today that affects us even today? And also, what are some of the examples of architecture from that time since this is an architectural show? So we're going to start out with some of our slides, let's get started. And there were two major events that happened during that period that were very important. And as it happens, they both occurred in 1959. The first was Hawaii became the 50th state. And this made a big difference in not only the politics of what was going on here, but it publicized Hawaii to the rest of the United States and internationally. And it really started to improve business. Business was already doing well in the 50s. Business really began to skyrocket after 1959. And then the second thing in our next slide is that we had a technological change. And that is that jets began to fly to the Hawaiian Islands. And when jets began to come here, they carried a lot more people each time they came. They were able to make their prices much lower and they were much faster. So that meant that tourism increased a great deal. And in our next picture, there's an example of a very happy tourist from the middle part of the 20th century. And like this lady who is at a luau, we are also going to see a great many more tourists begin to come to Hawaii via jets. And in our next picture, that meant that what happened? Well, all of those new tourists who were coming in increasing numbers during the 1960s had to be housed someplace. And that meant that Waikiki began to grow tremendously. Now this picture is from about 1967. And at the time, this looked like Waikiki was filled with high rises. For those of us who were here at the time, it was an astonishing amount of growth that was going on centered in Waikiki. But of course, as time was going to pass, there was going to be a great deal more growth. But in the 60s, things were going upwards. And next, we will see, well, a lot of new architecture happened, of course, because there was this economic boom. Waikiki in particular was growing a lot. The rest of Honolulu to a lesser degree in different ways. And we saw a lot of some interesting architectural plans, some interesting architectural thoughts. This particular rendering is from the Hawaiian Village Hotel complex. It didn't actually come into existence. This building was never built like this. But there were some other very interesting buildings. And before we're finished today, I'll show you just a few examples of some of those mid-century buildings. Next. So as I said, even though some buildings were planned but not built, there were a number of other ones that were built. And the Ilikai Hotel, which you see in this picture here under construction, opened in 1964. And it was, for the time, a very large building. It still is a pretty big building. But at the time that Ilikai was built, it was much more impressive because there was nothing else around it. And the Ilikai was the direction that Waikiki was going in, in terms of its development. Next. What that meant was that when you as a tourist came to Hawaii, for the first time, you were going to be staying in potentially a high-rise hotel. Up until then, you'd be staying, you had been mostly staying in smaller hotels. Up until 19, let's see, 1955, the hotels were all less than 10 stories. The tallest hotel was five stories tall. And then we began to see 10-story hotels and then higher and higher hotels. So your exotic tropical Hawaiian vacation didn't necessarily occur in a tropical setting because you might have been put into, and you were likely to have been put into, a small room in a concrete high-rise. Now, in the early days, as you can see in this picture here, you did have some nice views around you when there weren't a lot of other buildings. But very soon those views got diminished because there were big buildings all over the place. Next. Well, it wasn't just hotels which were being constructed as high-rises in Waikiki and certainly not in other parts of Honolulu because business buildings began to be built as well. And this is the Bank of Hawaii Tower on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki, which was completed in 1965. And it has this very distinctive exterior sort of concrete framework on it. And there was a lot of discussion at the time, what is that supposed to represent? Is it supposed to be the top of a pineapple? Is it supposed to be something else? And the architect really didn't have any particular figural representation in mind. It was just something that he thought would be interesting and intriguing and different for a building in what was essentially a resort area that, even though it was a bunch of offices, didn't necessarily have to look like just your average rectangular high-rise. Next. Well, Waikiki was not the only place that began to grow as tourism increased in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1960s. And what's very important is that this was the beginning of resort hotels, large resort hotels being built outside of Waikiki. Because up until that point, Waikiki had pretty much been it for tourism. Hotels on other islands or in other places were very small. For the first time, we began to see other big hotels in other places. And the first of these that I'm showing you here is the Kahala Hilton, which opened in 1963-64, outside of Waikiki. And at the time, there was indecision as to whether people would really want to be located so far away from where all the important, interesting things were happening. And in fact, the hotel still has, but started back at that time, running a shuttle bus service for people who wanted to get into Waikiki, but stay outside of Waikiki. And again, this is a very typical, interesting, mid-century modern structure. We've discussed it previously on an earlier episode of human-humane architecture, so I won't get into the details of that. Next, we also saw hotels now being built on neighbor islands. And again, resort hotels, not small ones. So Kaua'i got the Kaua'i Surf in 1960, and the Anapali Resort area on Maui opened for the first time in about 1963. The development had started in 1959-1960, but it was pretty much ready to go when the first hotel opened, which you see here, which is the Sheraton Maui. And the Sheraton was built in kind of the optimum location there against this existing geological feature of what's called Black Rock. And the hotel was particularly noteworthy because you drove up to the top and then checked in there, and then to get to your hotel room, rather than going up, you went down along the face of the cliff. And not only was the Anapali Resort area getting started, but in our next picture, we see that we've got a new hotel built on the Big Island, Hawaii Island. And this is the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, which opened in 1965. And again, like the others, you've seen a very stark modernist structure in an otherwise rugged but pristine and undeveloped location. And this was a particularly desirable location because it has this beautiful white sand beach, Kauna Oa Beach. And the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel was the first of what was going to eventually turn into a coastline of very high-end resorts. The South Kohala North Kauna Coast in the 1960s got started on what it is today, these widely-spaced but very substantial, very high-end, for the most part, freestanding resorts, as well as very high-end subdivisions or private homes built around them as well. Well, this was the very beginning of it. Next. And something else that changed during that time, people began to live in high-rise apartments. Now, today in Honolulu, thousands and thousands of people live in high-rise apartments, but this is when it got started. The first high-rise apartment building was this one that you see on the screen right now. This is the Rosalé Apartments, 10 stories tall, opened in Waikiki in 1955. And in the foreground, you can see the Alawai Canal with some guys paddling a canoe, just the way people still do today. Well, this meant a big change for a lot of people from living in a private home to shifting into apartments. And in our next picture, one of the things that that meant was that there were a lot of smaller ones as well. It wasn't just the big ones, the way we have today. There were even more of the small two- and three-story walk-up apartments. And many of them are still with us today, very typical of this type of style, architectural style. This is the Kapiolaniyan, which opened in about 1960, perhaps, on Kapiolani Boulevard, thus its name. These are very familiar all throughout the city of Honolulu today. But more and more of them are being pushed aside because we're seeing more high-rise development. Next. What this meant for you if you were an individual homeowner or somebody who lived in your own apartment was that you shifted from living in probably what had been a wooden house, a freestanding separate wooden house, to living in a small concrete enclosure. And that may not be that big a deal. But it was a mental change for people to have to go through. And this particular photograph, which is from the 50s, has a very 50s modern interior of all of the furniture, and as well as the layout of the room, are very typical 50s, 1950s. This is from a small apartment building called the Alawai, which opened up in about 1955. And I particularly like this picture because of how typical it is of that decade. OK, next. Well, another thing that changed during the 1950s and made a big difference was increasing amounts of automobiles. And what that meant was we had to not only accommodate automobiles, but automobiles in turn changed not only the way we lived, but how the city developed. And so in this picture from 1954 of Kalakawa Avenue in Waikiki, you can see lots more cars are there. So we have to accommodate all of those new cars. And next, we're doing that by doing a whole bunch of things. And first of all, we are having to build more parking lots and parking buildings because cars take up space. As I mentioned in a show I did not so long ago, and they have to be stored someplace if they're not driving and they're mostly not driving. They're just sitting there. But in addition to widening and straightening existing streets, which in some cases meant that you had to demolish everything next to the street to make more room for cars, we also had to build all new roads from scratch. And the most significant of these, as I have also mentioned before, was the H1 Freeway. The H1 Freeway got started in 1952. And the last section opened to drivers in 1969 of the part just in urban Honolulu. Of course, it took many more years for the rest of H1 to be completed, as well as the H2 and H3 freeways. But this picture is the H1 in the early 1960s, having been bulldozed literally through what had been part of downtown Honolulu, we were making room for cars. Because cars were making a big deal in the 50s and 60s. Next. And we also saw the construction of some new freeways or new widened roads, highways, to areas which previously hadn't been that accessible. So for example, during this period, the mid-century period, we see both the Wilson Tunnel and the Polly Tunnels open with Liquevique Highway and the Polly Highway. Well, both of those opened at about the same time, about 1960, they both were completely opened. And what that meant was it was then much more easy to go from the windward side to the leeward side and back again. And for that ease of transportation, suddenly there was a lot more suburban development and a lot more residents living in areas where there hadn't been as many residents up until that point. Next. So with the increase in cars, with the increase in the amount of space to take care of cars, we saw a much larger increase in the number of suburban single family homes. And in the first place, we saw that happen with some of the areas that had already been developed like this picture of Wilhelmina Rise. That had been laid out in the 1920s, but there still had been a bunch of empty lots, which it took a while for people to purchase and build on. And again, in a situation like this, when you live at the top of a very steep hill, the only way you can do that is by having a car that can get you back and forth easily. You couldn't have really done it if you had been on foot and you couldn't have done it if you'd had a horse-drawn vehicle. This is an automobile-related type of development. And it wasn't just existing suburban neighborhoods that changed. Next picture. But we also saw a big explosion in suburban areas being opened up for development that hadn't been developed at all. And this picture, which is from the 1950s, shows a brand new subdivision just being laid out. And if you look in the distance there, you can see there's sugarcane. This is in the Pearl City, IEA area. And these are sugarcane fields that are being turned into a suburb. Well, when the suburban developments occurred, the laws had changed that then had now, at this point, required the developers to put in all the amenities. If you look at the very early subdivisions, for example, in Kaimukki and Kapahulu and other parts of Honolulu, there were no amenities installed because they weren't legally required. So there weren't sidewalks and there weren't underground utilities. Well, by the 1950s, those were required for developers to install. So what you see now is wide, smooth streets and nice sidewalks and utilities underground, et cetera. We've now shifted to a higher standard of living, which people will pay more for. Next. So what you now see, again, with the suburban growth in the 1950s and 60s, is lots of similar size and shape houses being built all at once. That had not been true up until that time because up until that time, there was a diversity of structures even within what was called a tract, for example, of a development. Now, all of a sudden, all the houses are built by the same developer all at the same time. There are small variations between them, but they really follow a very standard pattern. So as you see here in this picture of, I believe this is Kalani Ikki Street in Wailai Ikki, everybody looks pretty much the same and they're all facing outwards onto the street in similar fashion. So until vegetation starts to grow and people plant hedges and trees and so forth, everybody's house kind of looks the same. Next. This also meant all of this growth of the city spreading out and suburbanizing itself meant that there had to be a concurrent growth of the services to service all of those houses. So that meant that the Board of Water Supply, for example, had to install all the pipes and all the pumping stations and the reservoirs to adequately supply water to all these new houses. So for example, this is a picture in Aina Hina in the 1950s of a Board of Water Supply pumping station, which meant that particularly when houses were built up on ridges or on heights, you had to have either reservoirs for emergency use if necessary or just for everyday use, the water had to get pumped up into for people to be able to use it. And in addition to water supply and increasing the electric supply, installing new gas supplies and wiring and all of that stuff, next, something else we had to build more of were schools. And this is because the population was increasing but this is also the time of the baby boom. So lots of children were being born and lots of children had to go to schools and I am a product of the baby boom so there were a lot of us out there. So here's one of the new public schools that had to be built. This is on the Windward side. This is in Kaneohe, I believe. And so the government has to start doing more for all these new residents and all of the things that they are requiring. So taxes have to be increased in order to support all of this new structure which is very quickly coming into place and the population was growing very fast. There were new businesses and new cars were being brought in so all of these things had to be cared for during the 1950s and 60s. Next. So something else that is automobile related is people were shopping now in shopping centers. So shopping centers were being built specifically for people to get to in cars using a lot of space to park cars and then making sure that a shopping center had all of the things that everybody in that neighborhood might want because you want to attract people there. You don't want to have things that people don't want to come to. You want to have a variety of things that people will use. So there became a whole sort of science as to how to develop and then fill in a shopping center and this is the Kailua shopping center in about the, I think this is 1956 thereabouts. Next. So in addition to shopping centers we also saw the very beginning, now let's go back, in addition to shopping centers we also saw the very beginning of what today is a very familiar thing which is what we now call a big box store. Meaning a much larger store than it had ever been in place before. This is the first time we had stores like this here. This is the gem store which was a discount department store and those of us who are old enough will remember gem advertised a great deal initially when it got started it was a membership store and then it became open to the public. Well, this is the building which is still standing today on Ward Avenue but this exterior sort of facade thing over the canopy there is long gone. But this is when we saw the big box stores begin and big box stores are very dependent upon cars to not only get people to them but also for people to be able to take home all the stuff that they buy. Next. All right. To build all this stuff for all these changes that were going on we had to demolish a lot of things and that's something I'm going to mention in a little bit but when we get further along but so we saw a lot of demolition. We saw a lot of demolition right in central Honolulu a lot of other places as well and this was part of this huge growth spurt and initially people were pretty much okay with that unless you got evicted to be pushed out by something else. Next. And one thing that got built with the demolished areas that the government actually condemned property to build were low income housing. There had been low income housing developments built right before World War II but during the 50s and 60s we saw more of them and larger ones and so for example that's when Cuyo Park Terrace was built as a high rise not just as a cluster of low rises as you see in this picture here. Pardon me, this is Mayor Wright Housing which was opened in 1953 in downtown Honolulu. Next. So as all that demolition happened suddenly people began to say wait we are losing important buildings we can't just demolish everything old. So that's when the historic preservation movement began in a reaction to the demolition of important or interesting architectural buildings like the Alexander and Baldwin building excuse me this is the American Factors building on Bishop Street in downtown Honolulu being demolished of course for two high rises this took place in 1970. So the historic preservation movement is saying wait you can't just bulldoze everything we've got to be more careful about this and save part of our architectural heritage. That's again a reaction to a lot of destruction. Next. So now we've got these 1950s modern buildings mid-century modern and mid-century modern is a term which is in use today at the time people were not using it of course in the mid-century itself people weren't saying this is the mid-century modern time this was modern architecture just modern architecture. So here's a picture of the Waikiki medical building which stood on the corner of Kalakawa Avenue which is in the foreground and Royal Hawaiian Avenue on the left. One thing that's very typical of buildings at this time which is something that we talk about on human-humane architecture is the avoidance of or it was a time before air conditioning was really very prevalent. So there were air conditioned commercial buildings but very few people had a home air conditioner at home for example although those were available certainly in the 1960s they were. So without air conditioning people were relying more on the natural environment for cooling and for light which meant that we weren't using as much fossil fuel. That's always a good thing. So in the case of the medical building as we're looking at right now we see what's called a breeze solee that is a structure which shades the building from the sun and that means the more you shade the building the less hot it gets and the less cooling you need for the building which is a good thing. So we've talked about this before on human-humane architecture. Breeze solee structures are often found on these mid-century buildings but they are just as valid today as they were back then even more so because our costs for fossil fuels have even gone up even more. So here's something that we should be learning from the mid-century. Here's the breeze solee and let's look at now another building next which carried the breeze solee or the shading louver thing to an even greater extent and we did a whole show a while back on this particular building. This is the Alamoana building. This is built as part of the Alamoana shopping center that opened in 1959. This was the second part of what was built. This opened in 1961 and then the rest of Alamoana opened with phase two in 1966. But here in this picture which is a pretty cool photograph because the Alamoana building is on the right topped by the rotating La Ronde restaurant and on the left is this big kooky structure that used to stand in front of a bowling alley on Kei Almoku Street. So it's kind of a cool juxtaposition with this funny googie looking thing on the left but the important part here is that the Alamoana building had this unique system of moving vertical louvers and let's go to the next picture and here it is. This is looking up from the bottom of the building up the facade of the Alamoana building and you can see those vertical louvers. Those moved mechanically during the day. They could be tilted on their axis like this, their vertical axis, axis to shade the building and this was really a unique system. I don't know that many other buildings did things like this. Certainly not in the United States where it wasn't, most of the United States isn't as hot. It's not in the tropics. It's not as necessary to shield the interiors of buildings from the sun but this was a unique thing from 1961. Well, unfortunately it's no longer there. It was too difficult to maintain. The entire structure has been taken off. There is a structure on the exterior of the building still today but it is not these unique vertical louvers. Next. And let's look finally at some of the cool buildings that were built in the mid-century period. This is the Coco's 24 hour coffee shop that used to stand at the corner of Copilani Boulevard and Kalakawa Avenue and that was demolished in the 1980s to make way for the Hard Rock Cafe. We have lost this particular building. Next. And here's another very cool building which unfortunately is no longer with us. This is the lobby of the Waikikiyan Hotel which opened in 1956 and this form was referred to as a hyperbolic paraboloid and no, this is gone. It's been replaced by a high rise. Next. We do still have this cool building. This is the Bank of Oikahala branch but it's been altered quite a good deal. It no longer looks like this. It doesn't have that cool sort of starburst structure around the top that shades it and it's not gonna ever look like this again but finally we do have one last building which we can look at. That's the Waikiki Circle Hotel and this is a plea from me and some others who I think agree with me to be aware of the legacy of the mid-century period and to preserve some of those buildings not just demolish them in the continuous growth of Honolulu but be aware of them, watch out for them and take care of them. So that brings us to the end of this particular, oh look, it's a black and white world in which we live because it was all in the past in the mid-century and here I am in my wonderful hotel room and I don't know who she is. Who are you? No, you. No, no, I can't do it right. You, there she is. Thanks for watching. We hope you'll be continuing to watch human-humane architecture on Think Tech Hawaii for the rest of the summer as we do other things in this same vein. So till next time, I see you to everyone, aloha.