Hart Wood: Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii

4. Hawaii: The Stage is Set

58 The pairing of Hart Wood (fig. 31) with Charles William Dickey (fig. 32) was to prove fortuitous for Wood. Dickey was able to provide Wood with the clients he had been unable to attract during the hard times of World War I. In turn, Dickey found in Wood a man of compatible architectural philosophies. Dickey came from a family that had extensive connections in Hawaii’s business community. This tightly knit community was almost exclusively comprised of Caucasian families whose roots went deep into nineteenth-century Hawaii. This elite controlled the “Big Five” companies: C. Brewer, Theo E. Davies Ltd., Castle & Cooke, American Factors, and Alexander & Baldwin. In turn, these firms controlled the sugar industry, which through World War II was the lifeblood of Hawaii’s economy. Representing less than 20 percent of the population, this minority dominated the business, cultural, and political life of Hawaii. Born in Alameda, California, Dickey was raised on Maui and was related to the influential Alexander family. He attended high school in Oakland and, after his architectural training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had returned to Hawaii in 1896. Here he entered 4 HAWAII ; / ,  : ;( . ,  0 :  : , ; 59 Hawaii: The Stage Is Set into practice with architect Clinton Briggs Ripley from 1896 to 1900 and with Edgar Allen Poe Newcomb from 1901 through 1904. Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 was followed by a six-year wave of building activity unmatched by any period in Hawaii’s previous history.1 The youthful Dickey rode the crest of this building boom exceptionally well, but by 1905 building activity was waning and he returned to California. He established his practice in San Francisco in 1905 after winning a school building competition in Oakland. His arrival roughly coincided with Hart Wood’s appearance in San Francisco. During the next fourteen years, Dickey practiced in California but continued to do occasional work in Hawaii, most notably the Baldwin Memorial Church (1917) on Maui (fig. 33). The effect of Hawaii’s intense turn-of-the-century construction activity was substantial: Honolulu was virtually rebuilt following the lines of the Beaux Arts and Classical Revivals. Buildings, generally between two and four stories in height, frequently constructed of brick, dominated the streetscape (figs. 34 and 35). Local architects such as Oliver G. Traphagan, H. L. Kerr, Emory and Webb, and Ripley and Reynolds perpetuated these forms, whose appropriateness went virtually unquestioned until 1917 when Bertram Goodhue presented a series of drawings portraying Honolulu as a city of Mediterranean Revival style buildings (figs. 36 and 37). At the same time, Louis Mullgardt echoed similar thoughts in proposing a distinct Hawaiian Renaissance Revival form for downtown Honolulu, and Theo E. Davies & Company commissioned him to implement these ideas in their corporate headquarters (fig. 38). This interest in establishing an appropriate regional architecture in Hawaii would blossom in the 1920s, thanks in large part to the nurturing hand of Hart Wood. The Bay Area architectural community of which Dickey and Wood had been members for many years had a strong selfFIGURE 31. Hart Wood, ca. 1920. FIGURE 32. C. W. Dickey. FIGURE 33. Baldwin Memorial Church, Maui, Hawaii. (Rick Regan, 1984.) FIGURE 36. Sketch of Goodhue proposal for Honolulu. FIGURE 37. Sketch of Goodhue proposal for Honolulu. FIGURE 34. King and Fort Street intersection, ca. 1910. (Hawaii State Archives.) FIGURE 35. Fort Street, Honolulu, ca. 1915. (Hawaii State Archives.) Above, Top to Bottom Above, Top to Bottom conscious tradition of regionalism. Wood’s home in Piedmont testified to his adherence to the tenets of such thought. His encounter with the dramatically new and different environment of Hawaii surely must have stirred his mind to think even more along such lines. In turn, Hawaii of the 1920s was ready to support a self-defining architectural form that emphasized its climate and multiethnic heritage. The Pan-Pacific movement, started by Alexander Hume Ford immediately prior to World War I, encouraged people to view Hawaii as the “CrossRoads of the Pacific,” where East met West. Furthermore, the territory had reached a period of adolescence: When Queen Liliuokalani died in 1917, the most important symbol of the overthrown monarchy also disappeared. People in power could feel secure that Hawaii was indeed an American territory. No longer was it necessary to emphasize the American presence via architectural forms, leaving builders free to develop a more appropriate local...