Merchant Street Historic District | |
 Judd Building, built 1898 (photo taken 2009) | |
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| Location | Roughly along Merchant St. from Nuuanu Ave. to Fort St., Honolulu, Hawaii |
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| Coordinates | 21°18′33″N157°51′47″W / 21.30917°N 157.86306°W |
| Area | 7 acres (2.8 ha) |
| Built | 1850s to 1930s |
| Architect | Various |
| Architectural style | Varied |
| NRHP reference No. | 73000661 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | June 19, 1973 |
The Merchant Street Historic District in Honolulu, Hawaii, was the city's earliest commercial center.
Bounded roughly by Fort Street at the southeast end and Nuʻuanu Avenue at the northwest, its older, low-rise, brick and stone buildings, surrounded by contemporary, concrete high rises, serves as an open-air, human-scale architectural museum of the city's commercial development between the 1850s and the 1930s. Its architectural styles range from nondescript 19th-century commercial through Richardsonian Romanesque, Italianate, and Mission Revival. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. [1] Directly to the north is Chinatown, another historic district.
The earliest structure is Melchers Building at 51 Merchant Street, built in 1854 for the retail firm of Melchers and Reiner. Its original coral stone walls are no longer visible under its layers of stucco and paint, and it now houses city government offices, not private businesses. [2]
The Kamehameha V Post Office at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets was the first building in Hawaiʻi to be constructed entirely of precast concrete blocks reinforced with iron bars. It was built by J.G. Osborne in 1871 and the success of this new method was replicated on a much grander scale the next year in the royal palace, Aliʻiōlani Hale. The old post office building was separately added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Bishop Bank Building at 63 Merchant Street was the earliest of the Italianate (or Renaissance Revival) structures on the street, built in 1878 and designed by Thomas J. Baker (one of the architects of ʻIolani Palace). Its distinctive features include a corner entrance, arched windows and doors, fine masonry work, and brick pilasters below an ornamental cornice and parapet along the roofline, all of which are obscured to some extent by its current exterior of monotone white stucco. In 1925, Bishop Bank moved to much larger quarters along "Bankers Row" on Bishop Street, and later changed its name to First Hawaiian Bank, now one of the largest in the state. [3]
The T.R. Foster Building at 902 Nuʻuanu Avenue was built by Thomas R. Foster, one of the founders (in 1882) of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company. In 1880, Foster had purchased the estate of the renowned botanist William Hillebrand (1821–1886), which was bequeathed to the city as Foster Botanical Garden at the death of his wife, Mary E. Foster (née Robinson), in 1930. [4]
The architectural style of the two-story T.R. Foster Building resembles that of the one-story Royal Saloon Building across the street, which was built in 1890 on the site of a former corner bar. Both are modestly Italianate brick buildings, with pilasters, cornices, and balustrades along the streetside rooflines. The Royal Saloon ceased to be a bar during Prohibition, but both buildings were renovated during the 1970s and now house O'Toole's Irish Pub and Murphy's Bar & Grill. [5]
The bare stone face of the tiny Bishop Estate Building at 71 Merchant Street is a fine example of the stolid Richardsonian Romanesque style that was popular when it was built in 1896. Its architects were Clinton Briggs Ripley and his junior partner, C.W. Dickey, a well-connected local boy with a fresh degree in architecture from M.I.T., and it initially housed the executive offices of not only the Bishop Estate, but also the Charles Reed Bishop Trust and the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Constructed of dark lava from the Estate's own quarries, its notable features include arches above the lower door and window frames, four rough stone pilasters on the upper level, and a corniced parapet along the roofline. [6]
The Judd Building at the corner of Merchant and Fort Streets combines elegant features of Italianate architecture with businesslike functionalism. Designed by Oliver G. Traphagen, newly arrived from Duluth, Minnesota, it boasted Hawaii's first passenger elevator when it opened in 1898. A fifth floor was added on top in the 1920s, the interior was remodeled in 1979, and the ground floor has also been reconfigured. However, the exterior of the middle three floors reflects Traphagen's original design, with arched windows, simulated keystones, and decorative wreaths and floral designs. Built on land that used to house the medical offices of Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, [7] the new building served as the first headquarters of Alexander & Baldwin, and also of the Bank of Hawaii until 1927. The bank bought the building in 1998, and A&B repurchased it in 2000. [8]
Overseas branches of the Yokohama Specie Bank (横浜正金銀行 Yokohama Shōkin Ginkō, est. 1880) were chartered to act as agents of Imperial Japan. The Honolulu branch was the first successful Japanese bank in Hawaiʻi. The building at 36 Merchant Street dates from 1909 and was designed by one of Honolulu's most prolific architects, Henry Livingston Kerr, who considered it not just his own finest work, but the finest in the city at the time. The brick and steel structure is L-shaped, with a corner entrance and a courtyard in back. Its Italianate design includes a triumphal arch over the main door, copper window casings, glass wainscoting, marble trim, and paintings inside by a local artist. Bank personnel received Japanese-speaking, Chinese-speaking, and English-speaking customers in separate areas. [9]
On the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed, the building was taken over by the Alien Property Custodian, the first floor became a warehouse for confiscated possessions, and extra showers, toilets, and holding cells were installed in the basement to accommodate up to 250 drunken military personnel. The bank's former customers spent years trying to get their money back, and never managed to collect interest on their old deposits until the 1960s. [9]
The building was renovated in the 1980s by local restoration architect Spencer Leineweber and became home to Honolulu Magazine from 1982 to 2001. It currently serves as a preschool and childcare center. [10]
The last significant old structure in the district was the old Honolulu Police Station at 842 Bethel Street, which occupies the whole block of Merchant Street between Bethel Street and Nuuanu Avenue. Built in 1931 at a cost of $235,000, it replaced an earlier brick building on the same site that dated from 1885, during the era of the notorious Walter Murray Gibson, so the new structure is also known as the Walter Murray Gibson Building. Architect Louis Davis designed it in a Spanish Mission Revival style that matches very well that of the newly built city hall, Honolulu Hale (1929). [11] (Davis had designed the ornately Chinese New Palama Theatre two years earlier. It was leased in the 1970s to show Filipino films and renamed Zamboanga Theatre. [12] ) Building materials include 11 tons of marble from France, mahogany from the Philippines, and sandstone from Waianae. It served as the headquarters of the Honolulu Police Department until the latter moved to the old Sears building in Pawaʻa in 1967. It was renovated in the 1980s and now houses other city offices. [11]
The ʻIolani Palace was the royal residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi beginning with Kamehameha III under the Kamehameha Dynasty (1845) and ending with Queen Liliʻuokalani (1893) under the Kalākaua Dynasty, founded by her brother, King David Kalākaua. It is located in the capitol district of downtown Honolulu in the U.S. state of Hawaiʻi. It is now a National Historic Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After the monarchy was overthrown in 1893, the building was used as the capitol building for the Provisional Government, Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaiʻi until 1969. The palace was restored and opened to the public as a museum in 1978. ʻIolani Palace is the only royal palace on US soil.
Charles Reed Bishop was an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist in Hawaii. Born in Glens Falls, New York, he sailed to Hawaii in 1846 at the age of 24, and made his home there, marrying into the royal family of the kingdom. He served several monarchs in appointed positions in the kingdom, before its overthrow in 1893 by Americans from the United States and organization as the Territory of Hawaii.
Downtown Honolulu is the current historic, economic, and governmental center of Honolulu, the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is bounded by Nuʻuanu Stream to the west, Ward Avenue to the east, Vineyard Boulevard to the north, and Honolulu Harbor to the south. Both modern and historic buildings and complexes are located in the area, with many of the latter declared National Historic Landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hawaiian architecture is a distinctive architectural style developed and employed primarily in the Hawaiian Islands, buildings and various other structures indicative of the people of Hawaiʻi and the environment and culture in which they live. Though based on imported Western styles, unique Hawaiian traits make Hawaiian architecture stand alone against other styles. Hawaiian architecture reflects the history of the islands from antiquity through the kingdom era, from its territorial years to statehood and beyond.
The Melchers Building is a historic commercial building in Downtown Honolulu, Hawaii. Located at 51 Merchant Street, it is the oldest commercial building in Honolulu. Designed in the Classical Revival style by an unknown architect, it was constructed in 1854 of white coral blocks. The original structure's qualities are no longer visible beneath outer layers of stucco and paint.
The Stangenwald Building at 119 Merchant Street, in downtown Honolulu, Hawaii was the city's first high-rise office building, with its own law library, and one of the earliest electric elevators in the (then) Territory when it was built in 1901. It was also advertised as "fireproof" because it was built of concrete, stone, brick, and steel, with no wood except in the windows, doors, and furniture, and because it had fireproof vaults and firehoses on every floor. Fireproofing was an important selling point because of the fire that had devastated nearby Chinatown the previous year.) Apart from a few exceptional structures like Aloha Tower (1926) and Honolulu Hale (1929), it remained the tallest building in Honolulu for half a century, until the building boom of the 1950s.
The Battle of Nuʻuanu, fought in May 1795 on the southern part of the island of Oʻahu, was a key battle in the final days of King Kamehameha I's wars to conquer the Hawaiian Islands. It is known in the Hawaiian language as Kalelekaʻanae, which means "the leaping mullet", and refers to a number of Oʻahu warriors driven off the cliff in the final phase of the battle. There are "varied and sometimes conflicting histories of the Battle of Nuʻuanu."
Laura Kanaholo Kōnia was a high chiefess of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was the mother of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the founder of Kamehameha Schools.
Theodore C. Heuck (1830–1877) was an architect, a merchant, and a painter. He designed The Queen's Medical Center, the Royal Mausoleum of Hawaii in 1865, and ʻIolani Barracks in 1871.
Oliver Green Traphagen was an American architect who designed many notable buildings in Duluth, Minnesota, during the late 19th century and in the Territory of Hawaii during the early 20th century. Among his most famous landmarks are the Oliver G. Traphagen House in Duluth, called the Redstone, and the Moana Hotel in Honolulu, both of which are on the National Register of Historic Places, as are several other buildings he designed.
Charles William “C.W.” Dickey was an American architect famous for developing a distinctive style of Hawaiian architecture. He was known not only for designing some of the most famous buildings in Hawaiʻi—such as the Alexander & Baldwin Building, Halekulani Hotel, Kamehameha Schools campus buildings—but also for influencing a cadre of notable successors, including Hart Wood, Cyril Lemmon, Douglas Freeth, Roy Kelley, and Vladimir Ossipoff.
Louis E. Davis was an American architect who designed homes and public buildings in Honolulu, Hawaii. During the 1920s, he was involved in laying out the new King Street campus of President William McKinley High School and designing its buildings in a Spanish Colonial Revival style. He employed a similar style in designing the 1931 Honolulu Police Station on Merchant Street, which harmonized well with that of the new city hall, Honolulu Hale. Both the old McKinley campus quadrangle and the Merchant Street Historic District are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Joseph W. Podmore Building on the corner of Merchant and Alakea streets in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi was built in 1902 by Joseph W. Podmore, an English sailor who did business in Honolulu during the early 1900s. He built it to rent out for retail and office use, initially to a tailor and a decorator on the ground floor and to the Mercantile Printing Company upstairs. At the time it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 24 March 1983, the Bon-Bon Cafe was its principal tenant and the name by which the building was once better known.
Clinton Briggs Ripley was an American architect active in Honolulu, Hawaii, from the 1890s until the 1920s.
Yokohama Specie Bank was a Japanese bank founded in Yokohama, Japan in the year 1880. Its assets were transferred to The Bank of Tokyo in 1946. The bank played a significant role in Japanese overseas trade, especially with China. The original bank building is now the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History.
The Oʻahu Cemetery is the resting place of many notable early residents of the Honolulu area. They range from missionaries and politicians to sports pioneers and philosophers. Over time it was expanded to become an area known as the Nuʻuanu Cemetery.
The Clarence H. Cooke House, later known as the Marks Estate, at 3860 Old Pali Road, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, was built for Clarence Hyde Cooke, the second son of Charles Montague Cooke and Anna Rice Cooke, heirs of the Castle & Cooke fortune. It was designed by the architect Hardie Phillip, built in 1929–32, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 as a fine example of the upper-class, Hawaiian-style, great mansion of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The Chinatown Historic District is a neighborhood of Honolulu, Hawaii, known for its Chinese American community. It is one of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States.
Edgar Allen Poe Newcomb was an architect, also known as E. A. P. Newcomb and Edgar A. P. Newcomb. The majority of his accomplishments were in Boston and Honolulu. Newcomb was also a bass vocalist who composed dozens of songs and at least one opera.
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