 Hawaii's human humane architecture series. And today's episode is part of the Dokomomo-Hawaii portion that we do every so often. Dokomomo is an international organization that is dedicated to the preservation and study of architecture of the middle 20th century predominantly in the 1950s through the 1970s. I am DeSoto Brown. I'm the host of this program. I'm the co-host, usually, of human humane architecture. I am the historian at Bishop Museum here in Honolulu in the curator for the archives. And what you're going to be seeing today consists of images not only from my personal collection, but also some from Bishop Museum as well. And if you're watching this on YouTube, look at the bottom of your screen and you will see on the left something that says subscribe. And if you would like to click on that, you can subscribe to Bishop Museum's work here and Dokomomo's work and human humane architecture's work. And also under your screen towards the right, you'll see an icon of a hand with its thumb raise. You want to click on that and give us a thumbs up. We will be happy. We'll like you and you will like us. All right, this is the second of two programs about Waikiki hotels of the 1950s. Why the 50s? Because the 50s was when Waikiki was really beginning to grow and be developed into the city that it is today, a densely urbanized city, I might add. And I've already done one program about the larger hotels within the 1950s. So now it's time to look at some of the smaller hotels and there were a number of them. So let us get started with our first slide. Here is something from an interesting business that developed at the end of the 1950s in Waikiki and it was called the Ebtide Hotel. And what you're seeing is the first of the Ebtide hotels. This is the Waikiki Ebtide. The Ebtide Corporation got started locally in 1958. And then in 1959 and 1960, they began to aggressively develop small hotels. Not only in Waikiki, they announced that they were gonna do them on neighbor islands as well. Well, the problem, well, not a problem, but in the first place, this is the first of hotels that they built in 1959 and it is still standing today amazingly enough on Opua Avenue. And this small structure that you see in the front is a later addition built in a few months after the initial buildings were constructed. The Ebtides had a very interesting business model and let's go to the next slide. This is the second of the Ebtide hotels, the Alamo on an Ebtide. This was an interesting, as I said, it's somewhat strange business model. These were run as co-ops. And that meant that each of the rooms, each of the units was sold to an individual owner. So the company ran the structures. They treated them like a hotel or an apartment. They did the maintenance, but the individual owners purportedly were supposed to get a cut of whatever each room money had brought in, either as a hotel room or as an apartment. And they promoted that you could earn as much as $150 a month, which was a lot of money back in 1959 and 1960. And a lot of people jumped on this, they sold out instantly to hundreds of buyers. Well, unfortunately, within a short time, the buyers began to realize they were paying for a unit and they weren't getting any money back or what they were getting back was very minimal. So the company got a lot of money right at the beginning and then things began to taper off in spite of a tremendous amount of PR and then a lot of excitement, all of which was going on because boy, he had just become a state in 1959. Jet airplanes had started coming here in 1959. So tourism was booming. Next slide. Well, here is the third of their buildings. This is the beach walk, the Ebtide Beach Walk. And the Ebtide company partnered with the Hortelulu Advertiser newspaper in 1959 and 1960 for which the newspaper gave them a tremendous amount of publicity. And at the same time, the newspaper ran a contest and the grand prize was an Ebtide hotel room to be owned by the winner. And that was in this building on the beach walk, the Ebtide Beach Walk. Well, unfortunately the winner in 1960 within a short time sued the Ebtide hotels and the advertiser, because the unit was not producing income the way it was claimed. And as you can see in these two pictures on the left, this building is called the Beach Walk Ebtide. And on the right, it's just the Beach Walk hotel. Well, the Ebtide Corporation, I believe shut down in about 1965 and that was the end of the entire concept. But some of its buildings are still standing even though it didn't end up building as many of its hotels. It was claimed it was going to. Next. All right, let's get into now some of the regular hotels didn't have any weird economic things going on. And here's the first of them. This is the Hawai'ian hotel. This is on Beach Walk. Beach Walk is a small and even today quiet street off Kalakawa Avenue going in the direction of the ocean. And the Hawai'ian hotel opened in 1954, 55. And this is a very typical type of architectural plan that we're going to be seeing a great deal more of as we go through this program. Next slide. Here is an architectural rendering of what the Hawai'ian hotel looked like and still to this day does look like. And you can see it is in a very 1950s angular abstract kind of style, the rendering it is that I'm talking about. But this is a type of small hotel or motel which was already being constructed in a lot of different parts of the United States then. Two or three small low rise to or maybe three story buildings facing into a central area in which there's a swimming pool. And this is what's going to be happening a great deal more. The first swimming pool by the way in Waikiki for a hotel was the Edgewater Hotel in 1951. And after that it became absolutely a requirement that every other hotel in Waikiki also have swimming pool. Next, this picture, an early publicity picture for the Hawai'ian hotel shows one thing that I particularly like and that is those abstract panels that are the railing of the second floor of the building that we're looking at. And while they look sort of random, actually each one of those panels is exactly the same. I don't know if those cut out shapes were done locally or whether they were ordered from some factory in the United States. But regardless, it's a particularly 1950s striking touch. Next image. Well, those buildings are still standing today. And here is that same building that you just looked at. But unfortunately those distinctive panels are long gone and today there's just regular railing with upright vertical members to that look like any other railing. But the hotel does still retain a number of touches. It's still basically the same structure and it still carries on some of the fifties aspect. And there are, for example, as you can see these carved teakies that are also on the property. And today it is no longer called the Hawai'ian. It's been through a number of different names. It's called the Waikiki Heritage Hotel. And in a way, yes, they are carrying on a heritage of the 1950s. Next image. So here's a picture, two pictures of the inside of the rooms of the Hawai'ian hotel. And two aspects which we are going to see a great deal more, well, more than two. First of all, in the image you can see that you're looking out into the central courtyard and you can see the swimming pool in the center. That's a common area used by all the guests. You'll also see that the wall consists of wooden jealousies or louvres. That's how you could get ventilation through your room. And as think techs, human-humane architecture, we like to say that that's easy breezy. There's no air conditioning. These rooms were low cost. They've been never conditioning. You just open the room up for the breezes to go through. Secondly, you'll see that the beds are used as furniture to lounge on during the day. And finally, you can also see that there's a kitchenette, meaning that even though this is a low cost room, you have the added benefit of being able to purchase and cook your own food. So that's even a bigger time saver, and I'm not a time saver, but it's a money saver. So that's something that appealed to a lot of lower budget travelers who hadn't been able to afford to come to the Hawaiian islands before these types of hotels were built. Next image. Today, the Hawai'iana, amazingly, is still in the same configuration. It still has the wooden louvers. It still faces onto the buildings are still the same, and they face onto the central swimming pool, as you can see in this picture. Next image. But there are, this is a very basic structure, and all of what we're gonna be talking about is very basic, but there still are architecture design aspects. And one of those, in this case, is the cement, not the cement. There's a cement wall that has a veneer or an exterior of real lava rocks. And that's something that was very common in the 1950s that today is no longer really done very much because it takes a lot more, takes a lot more expensive time for people to have to do that, for workers to have to build those walls. So there are some interesting aspects of the hotel. Next image. And here is that one of those walls that I'm talking about. This is the lava rock wall that faces beach walk, and it's right, it's just the right of the entrance of the hotel. And these two pictures were taken many years apart, the one on the left, the 1950s, and the one on the right is today. And remarkably, they're very similar. Wall is the same, even the light picture is the same. The railings and the stairways appear to be the same. Originally, as you can see, the Hawaiian name, which was done in metal letters, was there on the wall. It's no longer there today because of course it's no longer called the Hawaiian hotel. Next image. Now we're going to the white sands hotel. And the white sands, and pardon me while I look at my notes to get the date of this, the white sands was put under construction in 1958. And initially there were just two buildings. And again, they faced onto an open courtyard with a swimming pool. In 1960, the third building was added, and that's the building that you can see in the picture, the larger black and white picture. And at that point, they moved the entrance from Nahua Street to the other side of the property to Noho Nani Street, which is where it is today. Next photo. And here again, interior view shows a lot of similarities to what we just saw. There are open louvers on the wall that faces into the inner courtyard, but something else that's very typical of the 1950s. Japanese influence. Japanese architectural influences were very popular in the United States for modern architecture and modern buildings at the time. And what you see here that's particularly Japanese is the sliding door. That type of technology is basic in Japanese home structures. Actually, all traditional structures were like that. And it's called a shouji door. In Japan, traditionally, that was paper. It was a wooden frame with white paper. Obviously, here in Hawaii, we didn't use paper. We used white or translucent plastic. That's a plastic panel in the style of a traditional Japanese shouji door. And just as I said with a Waian hotel, the White Sands Hotel has these lava rock exterior walls as well, next image. What's remarkable is that the White Sands Hotel is still standing today in a very similar condition to what it was originally. And these two pictures show that very clearly. The picture on the left taken in the 1960s and the picture on the right taken just days ago. What's also happening to the, what has happened to the White Sands Hotel, which is also something happening to a bunch of older hotels, Waikiki right now is, and let's go to the next image, that they need to be refurbished. These older hotels no longer come up to the standards that a lot of people want today, meaning the rooms are small, they don't have a lot of amenities and they're not as comfortable or plush as what people expect. So because of those limitations by present day standards, it's necessary for these hotels to intentionally market themselves as being older. And they do that by playing up fact that they were built in the 1950s and 60s, that they're historic. They use decorations that are old fashioned. They keep their name or they create, sometimes they create a new catchy weird name. But even though they may redesign their logo and that's what you see here in these two images, the old logo, the script logo on the left and the modern logo on the right, they still play up the nostalgia part of it while keeping the hotel low cost. That's a way to keep yourself relevant rather than to have people say, oh, it's really old and it's worn out, we don't wanna go there. No, people say, hey, it's old, it's hit, let's go there. Now we're going to another small note I'll call the privateer and the privateer open. Let me check the date in 1955. And again, it's a typical layout for the time period. Two buildings facing each other or not the two buildings, I think in this case, facing each other with the swimming pool in between. The word privateer is a description of a type of pirate ship from centuries past. It's not really relevant for us because we didn't have European pirates coming to the Hawaiian islands. They were primarily in the Caribbean. However, it's all sort of tropical, so perhaps it's relevant. Well, next image. Here's what the privateer hotel looked like again in that open space with the central swimming pool. The two-story building. And then a picture of the interior. Now, as with these others, these hotel rooms were pretty austere. They had a plain, smooth, concrete floor, which in this case has got straw matting. Don't have a lot of plush or very comfortable furniture. They did have a lot of the basics. In some cases, there were refrigerators, sinks, and sometimes kitchenettes. But basically they were just there to house you in not a very expensive or not neither expensive in size, nor expensive in cost. Because these rooms cost $5, $6, $7, $8 a night, which is preposterously unbelievable for us today, but at the time was a budget hotel. So the rooms were kind of austere, but that was also what was popular in interior design at the time. So they looked modern and trendy. They didn't look as austere as you might think. They looked like modern hotel rooms. Next image. One nice thing that the privateer hotel did that I admire was it made sitting outside your unit kind of nice in that they delineated a small space that was kind of a little territory that was your own because there were partitions between the units. Then there's also a metal structure, a metal framework on which a vine is growing that dresses it up a little bit, greens it up a little bit, and this is a Stephanotus vine which during the summer months produces very, very fragrant flowers. So this little private section, if you will, even though it's open to everybody in the hotel, right around the pool, you still feel like you have your own little territory. As you can see in these two pictures from the 1950s with these people enjoying those spaces. Next image. Well, if you're thinking, hey, that sounds interesting. I wanna go check out the privateer hotel. What does it look like today? Forget it. Can't do that. Privateer hotel on Ohua Avenue. That site today is occupied by the Prince Cuyo Hotel, which as you can see is very large high rise, which opened in 1980. So no more privateer for you to go see. Next image. Now we're looking at probably the most famous of Waikiki's small hotels in the 1950s, the Waikikiyan. The Waikikiyan was located on a very skinny lot next to Hulamwon Boulevard and it consisted of four two story low rise structures along with a six story high rise structure or not high rise, but taller structure. Here's a architectural rendering of what it looked like. And now let's go to the next image. And the most notable part of the Waikikiyan hotel was its lobby. This was described as a hyperbolic paraboloid roof designed by architect Pete Wimberley. Normally, motels on in the United States did do something like this. In other words, they had a very striking structure right next to the highway or the freeway that would catch the attention of drivers and make them want to stop. And that's something that had been going on in the USA since the 1920s with quirky types of novelty architecture or buildings that were shaped like a giant coffee pot or shaped like a giant dog or shaped like a giant teepee. Well, in the Hawaiian islands, obviously tourists are not driving by on a day trip. And it wasn't necessary really for that to happen, but the architect design designed it because this was next to the much larger and much more heavily publicized Hawaiian village hotel which opened in 1955. It needed this eye-catching structure. The two points of the roof stood at a height of 42 feet. The lowest part of the roof was 22 feet and here is this cookie structure that not only attracted attention but was used a lot in promoting the hotel. Next image. Because a lot that the Waikiki was on was so skinny, it wasn't possible with the swimming pool between the buildings. So instead, there was what was called the Tiki gardens between the buildings, meaning it was a landscaped area with carved Tiki's by Edward Brownlee, who was a well-known local sculptor. The sculptor. The swimming pool was on the Makai side next to the ocean. And that's where also the dining room for the hotel was, which was actually a standalone restaurant called the Tahitian Lanai, part of the Spence Cliff Restaurant chain. Very popular among local residents for a long time. I went there many times myself and it was particularly popular for Sunday brunch. And then you had to wait in line to get a day brunch at the Tahitian Lanai. Next image. In 1959, the hotel constructed this six-story addition, which is called the Tiki Tower. And it had some exterior Tiki carvings on it. Unfortunately, despite a lot of affection that many people had for the Waikiki Hotel, it was in such a prominent and valuable piece of area that it wasn't possible to remain low-rise. And the maintenance on it was not very good. And so it closed and most of it was demolished in 1997, the low-rise parts. The Tiki Tower stood on the otherwise empty lot until 2008. And then finally, it was all demolished for today's 40-story high-rise building, which is part of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, called the Grand Waikiki and Tower, which is a timeshare. And that's the only part of the Waikiki and that still remains, just that next image. Finally, we're looking at the Breaker's Hotel. And the Breaker's Hotel on Beachwalk also opened in January 1959. And just a few weeks before, I was born in January 1954. Anyhow old I am. So the Waikiki, the Breaker's Hotel and DeSoto Brown are the same age. They've celebrated their 70th birthday. I'm about to celebrate my 70th birthday. Next image. And I am happy to say that the Breaker's Hotel, since I'm a historian and I like old things, Breaker's Hotel is still standing today. It looks very similar to the way it did back when it opened in 1954, as you can see by these two pictures. The one on the top left, being from when the hotel was new and the one on the bottom right, the way it looks today. Next image. Here is an architectural rendering of what the entire building looked like. And again, it follows the similar pattern. Two-storey wooden structures, wooden and concrete structures, swimming pool in the center, and again, the same type of ventilation and so forth. Let's go to the next image. And here's what it looked like in the 1950s in the middle part of the Breaker's Hotel with people lounging around in the landscaped area and enjoying themselves again in a communal setting, which a lot of people like to be friendly and to be in areas with other humans already are. It gives you a vitality, it gives you a sense of excitement and fun. That's what these types of hotels were able to create. Next image. So today, here's what it looks like still facing onto the pool. The louvered or jealousy covered walls, the second floor railings in this particular case, again, looking like traditional Japanese architecture. And there are a number of other Japanese elements here at the Breaker's Hotel. Those second-storey wooden planter boxes are notable because they are growing pineapples and they actually produce pineapples. And you can eat the pineapples grown right there on the grounds of the Breaker's Hotel. Next image. Something that's different about the Breaker's is it's never changed its name. Some of these other hotels went through a bunch of different name changes. The Breaker's still has its original name and it is still carrying on the tradition of the easy breezy type of living lifestyle, not providing, not requiring a lot of use of electricity and fossil fuel and the same comfortable, low-rise atmosphere. And the three brochures on the left show you those transitions from the 1950s and 1960s, which I think you can see on the right, the buildings are still carrying on. Again, as a historian, I like that and I admire that. Next image. Well, finally, here is picture of the interior of the Breaker's Hotel. And just like you've seen before, you look out through the open jealousies to the common area where there's the swimming pool, you have a sense of liveliness, you have a sense of recreation, and you also see again the Japanese elements, which I've also been saying, we're very common in this time period. Okay, that brings us to the end of this episode of Dokomomo Hawaii slash Human Humane Architecture, here on Think Tech Hawaii, I am your host, Soto Brown. And again, if you're watching this on YouTube, why not subscribe to us and why not? Give us a like, if that helps us out. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you will continue to be watching this here on Think Tech Hawaii, as we discuss all kinds of fascinating and interesting stuff. So until the next time, I'll be in front of all of you. Thanks for joining me and aloha.