Hart Wood: Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii

7. The Depression Years and World War II

188 The crash of the stock market in October 1929 did not have an immediate effect upon Hawaii, but by 1931 the depression was being felt in the Islands. By mid-1932, Wood informed his friend Jesse Stanton of Gladding, McBean, “I have managed to keep my office open so far, but I don’t know how nor why,” and to J. S. Fairweather of Bliss and Fairweather, the successor firm of Bliss and Faville, he confided, “I haven’t done enough to pay for expenses for over a year. I thought for a while it was going to miss us, but it was only a little later in coming.”1 The depression struck Wood especially hard, and C. Q. Yee Hop, a local grocery, helped the Wood family get through the roughest trough of the depression, carrying a bill of approximately $1,800 at one point in 1932–1933. Hart Wood’s son, Kenneth Wood, recalled a rare moment of conversation at the usually silent evening meal, when the seriousness of the family ’s economic situation was discussed. His father asked if anyone had any ideas on how to improve their plight. The young Kenneth suggested that when his father learned that someone was considering erecting a building that perhaps he might go ask if he could design it. From the expression on his father’s face it was apparent this suggestion was an approach that had never crossed his mind. Patrons approached an artist, not vice versa. 7 The Depression Years and World War II 189 The Depression Years and World War II However, Hart Wood did try the new approach. He made several attempts to be associated with Herbert Cayton Cohen to do the U.S. Immigration Station, writing for support from both former San Francisco architect William A. Newman—who since 1928 had been with the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.—and Fred M. Kramer of York and Sawyer, who was then in Washington, D.C., supervising the $17.5 million Department of Commerce Building. Unfortunately for Wood, “the office in Washington dictated an association between Cayton and Dickey.”2 Wood also approached Consolidated Amusement for the commission for the Waikiki Theater, another project that eventually landed in the hands of C. W. Dickey.3 It is intriguing, if fruitless, to contemplate how either of these structures might have emerged if Wood had been involved in their design. Other than several residential commissions and the Henry Inn Apartments, the only major commission Wood landed in 1931–1932 was the Williams Mortuary on Beretania Street, a two-story masonry building that cost $50,000 (figs. 158–160). The simple but awkwardly handled asymmetrical massing of the building signaled the presence of an instiFIGURE 158. Williams Mortuary, Honolulu. (David Franzen, 1981.) No longer extant. 190 C H A P T E R S E V E N tution straddling the realms of the secular and spiritual. Architectural intimations carrying sacred allusions sprang from the mortuary’s design: A vertical element in the form of a flat-roofed, corner tower rose from the front office wing, and a masonry wall demarcated the bounds between the pedestrian ways of the street and the otherworldly realm of the chapel . However, the building was of this world—and more specifically, of Hawaii. Its subdued, solid countenance was enhanced by Chinese columns , coral-paved walkways, a tile, double-pitched hip roof, and masonry screens that perforated the walls. It was not Wood’s most inspiring building , but these were not the most inspiring of times. FIGURE 159. Williams Mortuary. Chapel. (David Franzen, 1981.) No longer extant. The Depression Years and World War II 191 The depression deepened in 1933. Marking the fifth consecutive year of declining building activity in Hawaii, 1933 saw annual building permit totals for Honolulu drop from $7 million in 1929 to $1.4 million.4 To help stay economically afloat, Wood relocated his office from downtown to the attic of his Manoa home in March 1933 (fig. 161). From here he would design a number of buildings that further refined his definition of “Hawaiian style” architecture. The thoughts that Wood and others had articulated throughout the 1920s on appropriate designs for Hawaii crystallized in the summer of 1932 with an exhibition on the topic at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Invited to give a lecture in conjunction with this exhibition, Wood expanded upon the thoughts he...