 Hello everybody and welcome to Human Humane Architecture here on Think Tech Hawaii. I am this show's host for today at least. I'm DeSoto Brown. I'm the Bishop Museum Historian here in Honolulu. And today we're doing something a little different. This is a Dokomomo Hawaii show in that I'm talking about the mid-century architecture of the 20th century. Let me specify that Dokomomo is an international organization that works to preserve that architectural heritage from the mid-20th century. And we're going to talk today about low-income housing. Government subsidized low-income housing and its early history here in the city of Honolulu. So let's go to the first slide. And here we see the dedication of one of those early programs or projects let's say mayor right housing which is in the downtown of Honolulu area. And here is a plaque which was dedicated on January 16th 1953 naming this mayor right housing who was mayor right. He had been the mayor of Honolulu in the 1930s and had been a big advocate for government supported low-income housing and that is his widow who is standing on the right side to be present at the culmination of something that he had worked towards before his untimely death. Next slide. So why low-income housing? What was the need for it? How did the whole idea become something that came into existence? Well, Honolulu for many years and of course as with every other city everywhere had a lot of extremely substandard dangerous and unhealthy housing like you see in these two photographs here which were taken in 1912 in downtown Honolulu. What is the problem? Well, the problem is that first of all all of these structures are wood which means they're flammable. Second, there are a great many people crammed into these structures without a lot of space. Third, there are inadequate facilities for these people to cook and there are no sanitation facilities pretty much because they are probably still using outhouses and not only is that unhealthy for them, it's unhealthy for the groundwater and everything else. So there were people who were very reform minded even in those early years starting in the 1890s and this was something that spread throughout the United States at that time particularly wealthy people were looking around saying if we're lucky enough to have wealth we need to do something to assist others who don't have it and so there were magnanimous and more generous well-to-do people who started the first efforts towards this and while they did not provide substantial amounts of new housing they did create something here in Honolulu which is called Palama Settlement which is a social organization that worked to provide better living conditions and a lot of different assistance for people who were poor. Next slide. So here's the result of that type of substandard housing and what might happen. This is a photograph taken from Punchbowl in January of 1900 of what was called the Great Chinatown Fire and a lot of those substandard wooden buildings which were all close together were burning and you can see this is a huge fire. This was not an accidental fire this was a fire that had been started intentionally by the local government to attempt to wipe out Bubonic Plague which was then happening in this part of town and the way that they did it in those days was to just burn buildings down but in what were intended to be controlled burns that were kept under control that obviously didn't work here this got out of control. Next slide. And here's the result hundreds of displaced people who suddenly lost everything including their homes and in the picture on the left you can see those displaced people shuffling along King Street to get away from the fire but standing in front of them closer to us where the camera is are men who are guarding them or keeping them under control and you'll see that the man standing on the left is leaning on a bat and that was because there were fears that these people might get out of control so that they were to physically be restrained if necessary but also they were suspicious because they might be carrying Bubonic Plague. Well all of those people ended up in a variety of places but one of them was what we would now call a homeless encampment on the grounds of Kauaiahao church and that's what you see in the picture on the right because there was no government assistance at that time for people to be housed in any large numbers. Next slide. Pardon me. Now today we are accustomed to the idea of homeless encampments but for much of the 20th century there were no such things and that's another whole subject because of different attitudes and different legal requirements of those times but there was for many years in Honolulu what was called Squattersville and these are photographs of that area called Squattersville which was primarily where Alamoana Park is now located. Now Squattersville had been was also the main city dump so that's the picture that you see on the right that's junk that's been dumped there that's being burned to try to get rid of it and in the upper picture there is one of what was called the Squatter Shack because again there was no government assistance at that time for people to be housed it was just either they did it on their own or there might be some kind of charitable organization that would help but the government didn't do it well that was about to change. Next photograph. This all changed in the 1930s with the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and that is President Roosevelt giving a speech in July of 1934 on the second floor of Yolani Palace in Honolulu when he visited and President Roosevelt because of the severe effects of the Great Depression kicked the United States government into a totally different mode in which he provided and worked to provide a great deal of government assistance in a number of different ways and one of those was something called the Federal Housing Authority which is called the FHA and the 1940 license plate that you see from Hawaii is a plate that was issued to one of the members of the Federal Housing Administration who was stationed here. Well even before the FHA came into existence in 1937 to assist in constructing government supported housing there was the Hawaii Housing Authority which was begun in 1935 and the HHA primarily worked with government funding that came through branches like the FHA to build housing here and now let's get started on looking at what some of that housing was. Next slide. So here is the first of the initial government housing projects here in Honolulu this is Kamehameha Homes it was purchased the property was acquired by the government in 1938 construction began in 1939 and it was completed and people moved in in 1940. This is located on the Makai side of King Street in Kalihi across the street from Farrington High School and that's where this photograph was taken and Farrington High School was newly built at that time as well and as you can see it is a bunch of low rise buildings there are two stories they're one and two stories and they all have a distinctive look to them. This was possible it was possible to achieve this project quickly because there had been just a single landowner which had been the Bishop of State Kamehameha Schools as it's called today this having been the grounds initially of the Kamehameha School for Girls which by that time had moved to the present Kamehameha Schools campus and Kamehameha or our Bishop of State I should say didn't want to voluntarily sell the land so it went through a process called eminent domain or condemnation in which the territorial government of the territory of Hawaii we not being a state yet said you are going to sell this property to us and the only option you have is to negotiate what the price is going to be well the price ended up being about three hundred thousand dollars next photograph and here's what those units look like the ground floors were made of reinforced concrete and the second stories were wood and these are really attractive buildings they're not massive but as we're going to see as we continue the accommodations were really quite nice even by standards today in terms of roominess and what the buildings look like all of these buildings have been replaced but there still is low income housing on this same site and while the buildings are completely different they do retain a similar look to this in that they have the same in that they have the same pardon me um red tile roofs as they had at that time let's go to the next picture and here's a photograph taken in June of 1940 of the delivery of 222 Coleman brand gas water heaters to the Kamehameha housing or Kamehameha homes and this is important because many of the people who are going to move into these homes had not had hot water they had had just cold water in the very substandard living arrangements that they had so this was a big step up for them to have a level of convenience and comfort as would be provided by water heaters which is something we consider to be absolutely essential today but which at the time for many of these people was going to be a luxury next image so here's our second completed housing development or low-income housing development here in Honolulu this is the these are the Kalakawa homes and like the previous development it was easier to get this one started because there was only one landowner and so there was the condemnation process went a lot quicker these this was located on Kalakawa Avenue just below King Street so the site doesn't exist doesn't go all the way up to the corner of King Street in Kalakawa but it is further down on Kalakawa heading towards Waikiki and as you can see there are multiple individual buildings as you saw before this was completed this got started in 1940 through 41 but it wasn't completed until March of 1942 after World War II had started so even though it was supposed to be for low-income residents it actually housed a group of people initially who had been displaced by the effects of the war which began on December 7th 1941 and people had had to be evacuated from certain areas and they were placed here as an emergency measure now just as with the previous site the Kamehameha homes Kalakawa homes have all been demolished this is no longer standing it is however still a low-income area but I believe it's mostly for low-income seniors specifically and it now consists of a group of disparate or different high rises so all of these low-rise buildings are gone even though the site is still for low-income people today next photograph now what was supposed to have been the second completed project but which actually did not become did become the third completed project was located at this site and this is Mayor Wright housing these two photographs were taken in 1940 and they show King Street at the corner of Liliha Street so the lower picture shows King Street on the left and Liliha Street on the right and as you can see again as I mentioned earlier lots of poor condition wooden buildings very close together there are commercial buildings as well as residential buildings behind the ones that are facing onto the street they are not sanitary and they are not desirable the intention was for this to get started and be constructed before Kalakawa homes and they got started in 1940 but there were so many small individual landowners that the land acquisition process through condemnation took a lot longer than was expected and then World War two began at the end of 1941 and that meant that all building materials were now very difficult or almost impossible to get so this process this entire process came to a halt and even though the condemnation of the property did continue and demolition continued nothing happened again until finally in 1950 so that was quite a few years later next photograph so here is the type of housing that was located on that Mayor Wright housing site which was being demolished again as I emphasize two-story wooden buildings very small quarters into which lots of people had to be forced so families of maybe five or six people were living in just maybe two rooms there's not enough sanitation there's not and also in many of these places the cooking facilities and the bathroom facilities were shared by multiple tenants so that is also something that's undesirable next photograph and finally in 1952 the construction started on the site and that's what we see here this is Liliha Street in the foreground looking down towards King Street in the distance and interestingly the wooden building that you can see on King Street on this side of the street is still standing today which is amazing because almost all the rest of those are gone but in any case here's the start of Mayor Wright housing and next photograph is what we ended up with so there was multiple buildings I think there are about 40 buildings here they're all two stories they are all made of reinforced concrete so they are not flammable the interiors of course have flammable materials so there can be fires but the buildings in their entirety cannot burn down there's all new infrastructure here so there's all new electricity all new sanitation all new water all of the utilities are underground there are new streets there is all of the buildings are widely separated there is landscaping there was a really strong effort to make this a very desirable place to live it's certainly better than what had been there before next slide and here's what those buildings look like and as you can see I just said there were two stories that some of them actually are three stories many of these apartment units had anywhere from one to five bedrooms so a five bedroom unit is pretty darn big you'll see that this is very typical architecture of the time period of the 1950s there are these projecting sort of eyebrows or structures that stick out which are there for shading as well as protection from rainfall but they're also partly decorative you'll notice that the railings of the exterior stairways are very simply constructed they're just steel pipes with chain link fence attached to them next photograph and this extended even into the insides of the units which I think is interesting and this is probably something which would be considered dangerous today so probably would not be included inside you can see that while the exterior walls were poured in place reinforced concrete the interior walls were cement block or hollow tile at is as it is sometimes still called this does look quite institutional you can see the poured in place steps look like for example the school building or an office building like a government office building but it's actually intended to be long term long lasting and robust so that it will stand up for a goodly amount of time next slide here's a living room in mayor right housing and what I find interesting is that it is quite lit it's quite large it's comfortably large by our standards today it has linoleum tile on the floor you can see that the walls again are the hollow tile or concrete block but what I find particularly interesting is that the furniture in this living room the dinette set which is the chrome metal the chrome plated metal and the retan or in this case retan yeah this is retan furniture this is the type of furniture everybody had this is not cheap furniture only poor people had everybody had this furniture at the time so this is actually very comfortable and very much like what everybody else had in their homes even wealthy people at the time next photograph here's the kitchen in mayor right housing and again it is very ample size by our standards today it has a new refrigerator it has a new stove it has a new water heater and it has a very ample counter space for the two sink fixture for washing dishes so again by our standards today this is pretty darn nice now this photograph was taken obviously right at when the when the whole place opened 1953-54 all of this nice material is not going to have lasted long with ample use by a lot of different people and of course people would be moving in and out so what you would encounter there today would certainly not be as sparkling and as attractive as this nonetheless again if you had moved out of a very ramshackle wooden structure into this in 1953 you would have considered yourself very lucky and very comfortable next image now we're going to go to another development which followed mayor right housing and this is Kalihi valley homes now Kalihi valley in the early 1950s when this was constructed was very different from today in that there was no leaky leaky highway and there was no wilson tunnels therefore you only drove into the valley if you lived there and the valley was still in large part agricultural so you see this photograph which is taken on the site of what was going to become the Kalihi valley homes there's a cow on the right a white cow with black spots so it's still agricultural undeveloped and while there are a lot of residents there and residential houses there are farm buildings as well well all of that was going to be replaced in this particular area next photograph and here are the Kalihi valley homes under construction in 1953 or 54 they are again reinforced concrete poured in place structures that means that they are very robust and very strong they will not burn down completely etc and they were built this way again to make them long lasting and stable and something that would put up with a lot of wear and tear and would be in place for a long time and we're looking in this photograph towards the back of Kalihi valley next photograph so here's the completed structure these are the completed structures there were I believe 40 to 50 of these types of buildings which we'll see more of later again these are very typical in their appearance to 1950s style architecture but they don't look institutional particularly they actually look quite attractive everybody has a front door everybody has a recessed facade so there's a little bit of protected space at the front where you could probably put a chair if you wanted to just sit outside and let's go to the next slide to see what it looked like from the back now there is again that projecting little sort of skinny roof that's sticking out which is there for protection of the lower parts of the structure unfortunately people can get on to it and walk around on it and fall off of it so probably today something like that would not be included but you know the main thing I want to point out here on the backs of these units is that every one of them is equipped with a two section laundry sink as well as clothes lines and that's because washing machines were not included with these units now most people in the early 1950s did have washing machines in their home but if you didn't have one you had to wash clothes by hand and that's what those sinks are for so for women which because it would have been the women in the family would have been able to wash clothes there if they didn't have their own washing machine also clothes lines most people use clothes lines then clothes dryers were very rare even rich people didn't have clothes dryers then so everybody put their laundry out to dry on clothes lines and that's what's part of provided for the residents of Cali Valley Homes next image so here again interior shot here's the kitchen it's a lot smaller than the other one that we just saw at Mayor Wright but again it's got a new wash it's got a new not a washing machine it's got a new refrigerator it's got a new stove it's got ample space for you to put stuff on shelves even though those are not built in shelves as we would normally expect to see it's just a freestanding wooden structure but again it's got linoleum on the floor it's quite comfortable and it does not have you'll notice it's just got a plain uncovered light bulb as the sole source of illumination because they're saving money and not putting a glass cover over that light bulb next picture and here are two shots of the same living room in Cali Valley Homes in 1954 and again this is comfortable furniture that everybody had at that time not just it's not inexpensive for just poor people everybody's furniture looked like this and there is a baby on a rocking horse and I can point out that this baby is just about the same age as I am maybe a few months older so if he or she is still alive hello there we're both in our late 60s now next photograph so here's an overall aerial view of the Cali Valley Homes again there are 40 to 50 individual buildings they have units that range from 1 2 3 4 or 5 bedrooms what's missing here well first of all what's missing is Lique Lique Highway which today goes along in front of this entire development to the right of it and so there's a great deal more traffic and a lot of people moving around there secondly there's not a lot of parking you can see there aren't a lot of paved areas for cars probably each unit only had one parking space at the time well that was probably adequate then in the 1950s it is not adequate now when everybody's got more cars so parking is a problem here these structures are still in place today but they have been altered changed some of the facades have been changed etc and I have to say even though I'm showing you these nice clean pictures and everybody's happy to move in after multiple decades of use there are a lot of problems with maintenance hot water etc in these housing developments today next image so we're going to end with a high rise low income development when I say low income what I mean is people still pay rent but they pay a subsidized rent the government is partly covering so they don't pay market rent and in order to get into these places you have to pass certain requirements in terms of what your income is and how many people there are in your family and initially to move in here they also assessed what your current living situation was well these two buildings there are two of these buildings this is Cuyo Park Terrace also constructed in Kalihi 1963 to 1965 two 16 story buildings these were the first high rise low income structures in the Hawaiian Islands and they too today are renowned for having a great many problems with maintenance in terms of having the elevators continue to run in terms of having hot water be usable and as with many other locations there is high crime so this is not the solution that everybody hoped it was going to be but at the time this was promoted as being not only comfortable but being kind of luxurious in a sense that people who were living in similar buildings in Waikiki were paying a lot of money for views and yet you could move into Cuyo Park Terrace and have a view without paying a great deal of money next image now this is not a low income housing development but there have been people who have mistakenly thought that it was this is Queen Emma Gardens and this was also constructed in the early 1960s it did replace a large area of very poor substandard structures which would not only included housing but also commercial structures churches other types of buildings as well organizations and so forth and this was part of urban renewal which was something that happened in the 1960s all over the United States in which large tracts of downtown areas were entirely condemned from all of their private owners everything was bulldozed streets were realigned all of the as I said earlier again all the infrastructure was put underground in terms of wiring new pipes for sewage and water supply etc well that's what this was but Queen Emma Gardens was not a low income housing development it was not subsidized it was not luxury it was not high end specifically but it didn't accommodate the people who had been displaced by its construction and at the time in the 1960s it was in fact criticized for that because hundreds of people were displaced but they were not given preference to move back in so therefore the people who did move in were entirely new residents and it did not serve a low income function even though it was built in an area that would suggest and the circumstances would suggest that it possibly was and to our next photograph and our last picture this is again a view of Queen Emma Gardens with central intermediate school visible on the right side of the street but its notoriety is not so much for what it looks like and it is a very nice development and I have to say it's very expansive it includes a lot of open space so it's actually a very desirable place for our standards today because we have so little space for around condos today but it's more notorious or best known I might say for the architect who designed it whose name was Minoru Yamasaki and despite his fully Japanese name he was not from Japan he was from the continental United States and at the same time he was designing Queen Emma Gardens he was also working on his major project which was the World Trade Center in New York City because he was the architect for the World Trade Center and the World Trade Center of course is known very tragically for having been entirely destroyed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 well Queen Emma Gardens is still standing today and that's a far more pleasant and a far more upscale uplifting type of legacy for Minoru Yamasaki to have rather than the tragedy of the World Trade Center which of course was a much much bigger constructor and far more significant overall than Queen Emma Gardens and that brings us to the end of this episode of Human Humane Architecture or the Dokomomo Hawaii branch of Human Humane Architecture thank you very much for joining me I am Desoto Brown and when I return next week I will be with my regular host Martin Despang and we'll be back to Human Humane Architecture so thanks for joining me and I'll see you again on Human Humane Architecture on Think Tech Hawaii Aloha everyone thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if 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