 Good morning, or good afternoon, or good day to all of you who are watching. I'm DeSoto Brown, and you're watching an episode of the Dokomomo Hawaii Architectural Show, Architectural Historical Show, that say, I will be talking about the history of high-rise Honolulu, and telling you how Honolulu became a high-rise city. I'll be back in just one second. So everyone, how do you do? I'm DeSoto Brown. I'm usually the co-host of Human Humane Architecture here on Think Tech Hawaii. But today, I'm branching out a little bit to talk about the Dokomomo Hawaii Organization. And it is an organization devoted to the history of mid-century architecture of the 20th century. It's an international organization. And today, I am going to talk about something that's pertinent for that time period, meaning from around 1950 into the 1970s. And I'm going to talk about the history of high-rise Honolulu. Now, what's the validity of this? Why should we care? Well, the controversy or, let's say, the discussion goes on today about should Honolulu be a concentrated urbanized city or should Honolulu spread out? And it's really pretty much as it should be vertical or should it be horizontal. Many American cities are situated in areas where they can spread pretty much, in some cases, 360 degrees around the entire city. Most of those cities then are not that dense. Honolulu, however, is very different in that we are confined on one side by the mountains and on the other side by the ocean. We have no option to spread out very much. Therefore, because of this concentration of population, we have a high-rise city. And the picture that you see right now from the 1970s is a view of the high-rise city of Honolulu, looking towards the Kualaau Mountains. This is a view many of us are familiar with because great many people live in high-rises and also work in high-rises. So let's get started on our story of high-rise Honolulu. First slide or next slide, let's say. OK, these two buildings look pretty modest, but they are, in fact, very significant in the story of high-rise development. These two buildings are in downtown Honolulu. They are the Stangan Wall building on the left that is six stories and the Judd building, which is facing us. And they're located on the corner of, or should I say, at Merchant Street on the left and Fort Street on the right, right in the heart of downtown Honolulu. Now, why are these important? Well, for several reasons. First of all, the Stangan Wall building at six stories is really the precursor of the modern high-rise. And that is to say it has an interior steel girder skeleton that holds it up. And that's very important. That's a technique that was invented in the United States in the early 1900s. And that meant that the exterior walls of the building being masonry or brick did not have to hold it up entirely by themselves. So if you go way back in time, for example, the cathedrals of Europe, famous cathedrals from centuries ago, they only are supported by their exterior walls. Masonry piled up on top of brick on top of brick or block on top of block with mortar between them. And that's what holds them up. Well, when you broke away from that requirement, you could make buildings that were far taller because the steel interior skeleton supported them. So the Judd building and the Stangan Wall building, although they're short by comparison to today, are important because they're modern buildings and that they both had electric elevators. They are obviously multi-story. And one of them had a male chute, even that you could put male into and go all the way down to the basement falling down in a chute. So again, small by our standards today, but they're the wave of the future. And rather amazing, both of these buildings are still standing today, although the Judd building, which is the one closest to us, does have another story that's been added on top of it. From that, we're going to see what else to develop in the future. And it's going to change a lot. Next slide. Here's another of the early buildings at downtown Homo Liru. This is the Alexander Young Hotel, which opened in 1903. It faces onto Bishop Street. And in this 1940s view, we're looking up Bishop Street from the intersection with King Street. The Alexander Young Hotel does have an interior steel skeleton. It is five stories tall. It was five stories taller to ends that you can see here. It did open as a hotel originally, but it gradually was replaced all of the tenants. Or excuse me, it stopped being a hotel entirely by 1970. And gradually it had been taken over by various tenants, office tenants or commercial tenants. There were a great many doctor's offices in the Alexander Young building. And so in my youth, I went to the dentist there. I went to the orthodontist there. I went to the dermatologist there. It was demolished in 1981. And a lot of people at the time were sorry to see it go because it was so architecturally distinguished. And this is the type of building that could no longer be built today with the amount of exterior stonework that was all hand chiseled and handmade. Next slide. Now we're going to get into what really we could say is a tall building. This is Aloha Tower and it was completed in 1926. And it was the tallest building in the Hawaiian Islands from the time it was completed up until 1955. And that's an important thing that I want to mention. It may seem like as I'm going through this story, we're talking about really the distant past. But in fact, most of the story that I'm about to tell you or I'm in the process of telling you occurred during my lifetime. When I was born, this was the tallest building in the Hawaiian Islands. And so all of the taller buildings we're going to be seeing and talking about all of those were built in my life. So no, it's not super far in the past because I'm still alive. Even though my beard is gray, I'm still alive. Well, Aloha Tower was built for several reasons. First of all, obviously it's located at Honolulu Harbor. It did have a practical use of being able to kind of oversee the ship traffic in the harbor to give guidance to ships. It also did have various types of signals that could be displayed on it for ship captains to figure out where they were supposed to go. And this was the most busy part of Honolulu Harbor. It was at the junction of, well, it was in a complex of piers eight, nine, 10 and 11. And those were where the biggest passenger ships all tied up during this time period. But Aloha Tower had another function, which was to be a symbol of the Hawaiian Islands for ship passengers. And this was at a time before airplane travel. So pretty much every tourist who came here was on a ship that would have docked right at the base of Aloha Tower. And so it was, it was built as with the intention of being a symbol or an icon of the Hawaiian Islands. And that it succeeded. That's why it was made to be architecturally attractive rather than just a utilitarian in the way, for example, that a lighthouse is. And it has the word Aloha on it so that when you were arriving or when you were leaving, it was something you saw and you knew as a tourist that was something that you could associate with your trip to the Hawaiian Islands. Next slide. Now it may seem amazing and unbelievable, but in the time before Honolulu was a high rise city, Diamond Head and Punch Bowl were both very prominent landmarks. And this photograph taken from Aloha Boulevard in around 1930 shows you what I mean. Diamond Head is the biggest, tallest and most eye-catching thing in this view. Waikiki has no higher-ice buildings, which is an amazing concept today considering what it looks like. But Diamond Head and Punch Bowl not only were very prominent, but they looked a lot closer than they do now when you can only catch glimpses of them between tall buildings because without anything in the way, Honolulu seemed to be a lot smaller than it actually was because there were no structures in there to give you a sense of the full scope of the property that we were talking about. Well, that's gonna change. Next slide. In 1934, this was the entire skyline of the city of Honolulu, pretty much other than Aloha Tower. Here we are offshore of Waikiki in this aerial view and the only two big buildings are the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on the left and the Moana Hotel on the right. The Moana Hotel built in 1901 and the Royal Hawaiian completed in 1927. The Royal Hawaiian did rise to a height of five stories, although that's counting the ornamental structures that are on the top. And really it was four floors that contained the hotel rooms that people actually stayed in. It may be, again, amazing to think that this was the full extent of what you saw of Honolulu from offshore, but in fact, that's what it was. Next slide. 1955, that is the pivotal year for the story of high rises of Honolulu. And this aerial view of Waikiki shows you what was beginning to happen. Now, earlier when I showed you the pictures of the buildings in downtown, that's where the major development was. But starting with the construction of the Royal Hawaiian, more and more began to be built in Waikiki. And then in 1955 is when Waikiki really began to take off because tourism was becoming one of our major economic drivers today. Of course it is the foundation of our total economy, but in 1955 it was still sugar and pineapple, that were the biggest industries here, which today are either very minor or completely gone. But in this photograph, we've got a number of high rise buildings that are called out by numbers. So starting from the left, the number one building here on the left is the Waikiki Biltmore Hotel. That was the first of the 10 story buildings that opened in that year of 1955. The Biltmore was originally supposed to be built across the street right on the beach, but fortunately at that point, Hululu had adopted zoning regulations that prohibited it being built there. So it was built across the street on the mouth side of the Waikiki. Number two is the surf rider wing of the Moana Hotel. That opened in 1955. Number three is the Moana Hotel, which is, as I said, built in 1901. Number four is the Princess Kainulani Hotel. It opened two months after the Biltmore Hotel, which was number one. And again, it was also 10 stories. Moving over to the right is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, number five. Number six is the Hulikulani. Number seven is the Reef Hotel. That's the third of the three 10 story buildings, hotel buildings to open in 1955. And finally, number eight is the Edgewater Hotel that preceded the construction of the Reef Hotel by the seam owners across the street, across Kaliya Road. Many of these are still standing. Others are not. But again, I emphasize in 1955, not only three 10 story hotels, but another 10 story building in Waikiki, which we will come to in just a minute. Okay, next slide. So here is a close-up view of some of those newer buildings. And on the far left is the Princess Kainulani. And by the way, we're looking from Kalawa Avenue, probably in 1956. On the far left into the center kind of, is the Princess Kainulani. The first of the towers built in that property. The second right in the middle is the Biltmore Hotel. And then closest to us is a smaller commercial building, which is called the Waikiki Halle. The Waikiki Halle and the Biltmore Hotel no longer exist. They were both demolished in 1974 for the construction of the Hyatt Regency, the two towers, which is also called or was called the Hemeter Center after Chris Hemeter, who was the developer of that. This is the first time that Waikiki, specifically from Kalawa Avenue, had a skyline or any big buildings to look at. So at the time, this was quite a change to people marvel at suddenly all these new buildings existing in Waikiki. Next slide. So here's one of those buildings, the Princess Kainulani. The picture on the left is what it looked like when it opened in 1955. It opened on June 11th, 1955, a single 10-story building. In 1960, five years later, another 10-story building was constructed to be right of this first one. But then Waikiki grew so much that by 1970, on the same grounds, part of the same building, the same construction or the same site, was the building that you see on the right-hand side, the 27-story building of the Princess Kainulani that opened in 1970. Again, that's a really good indication of the growth of Waikiki and how quickly that developed. The Princess Kainulani site for years now has been publicized as potentially being extensively redeveloped. There have been statements that the entire complex will be raised and an entire new complex will be built. Still hasn't come to anything. Everything is still standing the way it was. We shall see if that effect occurs. But the demolition of a 27-story tower, if that was to occur right in the center of Waikiki, would certainly be something to pay attention to if, in fact, that ever does happen. Next slide. Well, the third of the three hotels that I've mentioned was this one. This is the Reef Hotel. The Reef is part of a group of hotels that were started by a man named Roy Kelly. He was an architect and he came here to the Hawaiian Islands with his wife Estelle in the late 1920s, and he began designing and developing buildings with his first building, which was built just, I think it was just a small apartment building, six apartments, I think it had. He designed that and developed that in 1932 in Waikiki. In 1947, he built the Islander Hotel, which I think was five stories. 1950, the Edgewater Hotel, again, five-story building. And then finally in 1955, this complex, a 10-story building on the left, a smaller diamond head tower, so called on the right in the center of this picture. And that was the start of a major hotel corporation, which eventually was called the Outrigger Hotels, which you may be familiar with. One point that the Outrigger Corporation owned something like 20 or 30 individual buildings in Waikiki, it no longer is owned by the family. And of course it's been broken up, it's no longer the company that used to be. Something else I can point out in this photograph, which is a postcard from the 1950s, there used to be a lot of beach in front of the reef hotel. And one of the things that's really significant that's changed since then is the loss of almost all of the sand that you see here through changing currents, ocean level rise, whatever it may be. And that is something that's very important to keep in mind as to what the future of Waikiki is going to be. And not so long ago, the ocean was really right up against the foundation of the 10-story building on the left. So that's perhaps a precursor of what Waikiki is gonna be facing as climate change continues. But that's not what we're gonna get into right this minute. Next slide. And finally in 1955 in Waikiki was the construction of this building. This, unlike the others, is not a hotel. It is an apartment building. It is called the Rosalee. And a lot of people who live there mistakenly call it the Rosalee. That's incorrect. The last three letters are L-E-I-L-A, not L-I-E, Lee. In any case, this is what was gonna be happening in the future with the development of the city of Pomolulu. In that, we were going to be seeing a lot more development in Waikiki, not only of hotels, but apartment buildings not only in Waikiki, but throughout Urban Pomolulu too. So this is really pointing the way as to what Pomolulu's development is gonna be. Next slide. This is an aerial view from probably 1961. And there are a lot of buildings to point out here. And as you can see, there already are more buildings. It's only been six years since those 1955 buildings, but now there are a bunch more. So in the distance, in the far distance, you can see the beginnings of, you can see the beginnings of, excuse me, I'm forgetting what I was about to say. You can see the beginnings of one of the bigger buildings that's gonna be taking over Waikiki. And I'm gonna get to that in just a minute. But you also see the steel skeleton on the right of the Waikiki Shore apartment building. And remember I was talking about that development as something that was so significant for the development of the high-rise building not only in the United States, but worldwide. Well, this is what it looks like when you first put it up. It's just a bunch of steel girders, but that's how high-rise buildings have been constructed ever since. And that's why there are some of the tall buildings in the world today because of this technology. But in the foreground is a complex of buildings that constitute the Hawaiian Village Hotel. And that's what we're gonna talk about right this second. The Hawaiian Village got started again in that pivotal year of 1955, but it didn't have any high-rise buildings yet. It was begun and developed by men in Henry J. Kaiser, a very wealthy, very influential, very powerful industrialist and entrepreneur who had come to Hawaii in 1954 and decided this is a booming economy, it's got a lot of promise, I'm gonna start developing things. He leased and purchased the property here that you see on the foreground. There had been a hotel on the property called the Miumalu, but he also took over a bunch of leasehold land that had private homes and rental homes on it. He was able to get permission to not only dredge all of that lagoon that you see on the foreground with a little island in it, he was able to create the beach in front of it, which was the Duke Khan of Opua Beach. And Henry J. Kaiser just demanded things get done constantly and super fast. So he just pretty much as soon as one building was built, he wanted to build another one and another one and another one. So the first five years, suddenly there are three or four high-rises on this property and it keeps getting bigger. Next slide. So here are two of those buildings on the grounds of the Hawaiian Village Hotel. And these are high-rises again that were put together very quickly, astonishingly quickly. He built some of these buildings in a matter of three months or four months, which is bizarre and crazy. The other thing that the Hawaiian Village did as it grew tremendously was to promote itself constantly. And so during that time period, there was a lot of publicity about this new growing complex which had multiple bars. It had multiple showrooms. It had hundreds of hotel rooms. It had multiple pools, multiple restaurants. This was the beginning of the type of huge resorts that we're familiar with today, which again, contain multiple high-rise buildings. Next picture. So here's one of those early high-rises from 1957. This was the village tower on the grounds of the Hawaiian Village. And in 1979, is that correct? Yeah, 1979, it was dynamite. It was destroyed to make way for more construction. This was the second of the high-rise buildings to be demolished this way in Honolulu. The first being the Biltmore Hotel that I mentioned earlier from 1955. It only lasted 19 years before it was dynamite. That was the first large-scale building implosion in Hawaiian Islands, which thousands of people watched, including me. This was the second one, the destruction of the village tower. And you can see it before and then during its collapse. Well, let's go to the next picture to see what happened. And this is what happened on the site of what had been the village tower. The much larger Tapa Tower was constructed. That's the biggest picture that you see. That's the biggest building that you see in this photograph. And you can see by the early 80s how much the Hawaiian Village complex has grown from the picture I showed you earlier. Some of those original 50s high-rises are still there, but now they're overshadowed and shadowed by much bigger buildings, plus the parking building, which takes up a huge amount of the property too. And in the foreground, you can see the circular dome of the Kaiser aluminum dome, which was a feature of this complex for a long time. That's another fascinating story, which I won't get into right now. Well, since this picture was taken probably about 40 years ago, of course, there are multiple more buildings on this site and the Hilton Hawaiian Village complex has now got thousands of hotel rooms and thousands of people are going in and out of it every single day because high-rise city that Honolulu is, there are more high-rises there. Next slide. Looking from the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which it became after 1961, here's a few looking towards other buildings in downtown Honolulu. In the far distance, you can see the first National Bank building on the far left in downtown Honolulu. You can see the Alamoana building. You can see the Kaiser Hospital and you can also see the Tradewinds apartment buildings and this is 1962. Next slide. We are going to go to one of the buildings built on that site that I just showed you. This is the Ilikai Hotel. 30 stories constructed in 1964. It went through different developers as it was built and it is a combination of a condo and a hotel and this was the first really big complex, really big building to be constructed in Waikiki and Honolulu. And of course, it is still there today, although surrounded by other buildings. Next slide. Here's the Alamoana build. When this was built, it too was very much an icon of Honolulu because it had nothing around it. It's got over 20 stories and it opened in 1961 part of the Alamoana shopping center, which started in 1959. This was quite an unusual thing in the United States for the time to have a shopping center with an attached high-rise building. The Alamoana building is very innovative in the way it was constructed and some of the features it had. And again, you can still see it, but it's very difficult to see now as many more buildings have been built around it. Next slide. Here is the building I just mentioned, the First National Bank Tower. It was 19 stories. It opened in 1962. This was the first high-rise in downtown Honolulu. Downtown, as I said, had kind of been left behind in the development of high-rises because Waikiki was the center of all of that growth. First National Bank, have you ever heard of that? Probably not. That is the former name of the First Hawaiian Bank. This building itself was also dynamited and destroyed in 1994 for the construction of the current First Hawaiian Bank Tower, which is on this site and incorporates the rest of the block that this was located on. Next picture. In downtown Honolulu, another thing that occurred in the 1960s, which is very important, the Financial Plaza of the Pacific. This opened in about 1968-69. It's a complex of three buildings in the brutalist style, architectural style. It's noteworthy because it was the largest commercial condominium constructed in the United States at the time. And really the most important thing was these three buildings, although being disparate in a number of ways, were all sort of coherent in their brutalist style. But also, instead of occupying the entire block, as all the previous buildings in this location had, they intentionally left open space, which was a big step forward in terms of accommodating members of the public. In public areas, the people could walk around and sit and enjoy open space rather than total density. Next picture. Here is the construction of a very large commercial condominium. This is the Marco Polo. This is probably 1971. It's an aerial picture. And we're looking at the Marco Polo in the foreground. The olawai canal behind it. And the rest of Waikiki, which as you can see by that time, already has a number of high-rises under construction. Let's go to the next photograph. The Marco Polo is noteworthy because instead of being just a rectangle, it's curved. But these pictures from 2017 show something very important, which is the danger of high-rise fires. Four people were killed in the fire that you see the results of here. Not enough of our commercial condominiums have high-rise sprinklers. They should. People will be killed in the future because of the lack of those. All of the commercial buildings in Honolulu either have had to have high-rise, have had sprinklers installed retroactively or when they were first constructed. So all the hotels have, but not all the condos do. Next picture. And here is again, what happened in Waikiki. And here is the Foster Tower Hotel that I talked to you about earlier. It was the first really tall building in Waikiki and it was the precursor to a number of the other ones, which were going to be coming along. And in the picture on the right, you can see Waikiki by about 1967 already has a number of high-rises. Next picture. Right at the base of Diamond Head in the late 1950s, a group of high-rises began to be developed in what we call the Cold Coast today. There was a lot of dispute about potentially blocking the view of Diamond Head. And fortunately, those condominiums were built and then no more were allowed to be built in the site. And the view of Diamond Head is protected by zoning permanent from now on so that it is no longer blocked. It cannot be blocked by high-rises buildings. Next photo. This did not happen, however, with Punchbowl Braider. And here's a picture from 1978 showing the H-1 freeway in the foreground and Punchbowl in the background, no longer visible because it is surrounded entirely by high-rise buildings. This is a lesson that we have learned that view planes are very important and we cannot allow the important things of our city to be completely obscured by uncontrolled development like what you see here. Next photograph. Well, high-rises are a fact of life here. They are not gonna go away and unfortunately they have replaced a number of important historic buildings. I mentioned the Alexander Young Hotel being demolished and here is the American Factors building being demolished for the construction of a high-rise in downtown Aldo Lulu in the early 1970s. And again, that's something that we have to learn our lesson of to preserve buildings rather than simply wipe them out for taller next photograph. Finally, here's a view of Waikiki as a high-rise city. Now, as I mentioned earlier, that may seem like, well, when did all this happen? And this picture may look fairly recent. It may look like it was taken just this week or last week or last month or whatever. Well, in fact, this building, this photograph was taken more than 40 years ago. So that's how long Honolulu has been a high-rise city and it's never gonna go back to being a sleepy Polynesian fishing village if that's what you were hoping for. Well, everyone, thank you so much for watching. This brings us to the end of our program. And this was High-Rise Honolulu, the story of this Honolulu for Dokomomo Boy. I am DeSoto Brown. I will be seeing you again in your future on Think Tech Hawaii. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching and see you again. Aloha. ["Think Tech Hawaii"] Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.