Hart Wood: Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii

9. The Crepuscular Years, the End of a Career

243 Following the completion of the Lihue United Church, age began to catch up to Hart Wood. By June 1952, when he was admitted to Maunalani Hospital, he “couldn’t hold a pencil,” nor could he take care of himself. Probably suffering from Parkinson’s disease,this talented architect would live out his days at Maunalani Hospital.1 His house was sold, and it was about this time that Wood’s firm moved to the Hawaiian Life Building. Although Wood stayed at Maunalani Hospital, it is likely that he continued some form of control over the design of projects in the office for a time. There is a set of drawings for a U.S. Navy mine storage building dated October 3, 1952, and initialed as checked by Hart Wood.2 Although Weed led the firm for several years after Wood retired, various documents and interviews show him to be dependent on others for design.3 According to his daughter-in-law, Patty Wood, the Board of Water Supply Kuliouou Booster Station (fig. 196) was the last job with which Hart Wood had a lot of involvement. Located at the corner of Elelupe Street and Kalanianaole Highway, it was completed in May 1956, but the date on the front proclaims 1954. Although hospitalized at Maunalani , Wood was able to visit this site during construction thanks to his family taking him on car rides. 9 THE CREPUSCULAR YEARS, THE END OF A CAREER FIGURE 196. Kuliouou Booster Station, Honolulu. 245 The Crepuscular Years, the End of a Career As with most of his Board of Water Supply buildings, the property is well landscaped, again the work of landscape architects Bob and Catherine Thompson. The building is set back fifty feet from the highway, with a planter raised above the natural terrain by about eighteen inches. The pumping station itself is a relatively simple, modern design. It relies on the use of grids for its surface articulation. The two forms of the building overlap, with the lower foremost block having a light grid pattern and supporting the sign of the station. The taller building volume set slightly farther back is framed with a raised edge, and the grid is very bold, emphasized by color and in relief. In many ways it reflects Wood’s 1938 description of modern architecture, with its large expanses of wall surface and its cubical or rectangular masses, which might be considered “curiously assembled.” This concluded Hart Wood’s career as an architect. The words of Hope Dennis, who interviewed Wood for a newspaper article in 1954, still ring true, if in hindsight understated. Her story’s concluding line noted, “This beloved grand old man of architecture can look back on a professional career spent in contributing to Hawaii’s fine architecture.”4 Conclusion The death of Hart Wood on October 6, 1957, put an exclamation point on the first and arguably the greatest era of Hawaiian Regionalism. The 1950s would see the emergence of other greats in Hawaii’s architectural design community who eschewed overt ornamentation completely, but who still used spatial relationships, rooflines, lanais, materials, and ventilation and who showed sensitivity to the importance of landscape design in ways that Hart Wood probably would have appreciated. None of these young masters, except perhaps Vladimir Ossipoff, would prove to be 246 C H A P T E R N I N E as capable as Wood in so comfortably synthesizing Asian and Western forms. The limited attempts at regionalism in the opening decades of the twentieth century, prior to Hart Wood’s arrival in Hawaii, largely involved using transplanted forms from the Mediterranean or Mission Revival styles, a practice that many architects continued through the 1930s. He pioneered a design language that was unique to Hawaii and did so by looking not only at its benign weather but by using local materials in innovative ways and incorporating the cultures of the various people of Hawaii. The latter alone is sufficient to elevate Wood above his contemporaries . In addition, he took the lanai, a popular residential form since the late 1870s, and expanded its use into the realm of ecclesiastical architecture and explored its suitability in public buildings such as the Waimea Community Center. Although Dickey, a powerful design talent himself, far outstripped Wood in the sheer number of commissions his office produced and ultimately had more influence on Hawaii’s architectural community, Wood’s unique...