Travel - A Trio of Buildings in Downtown Honolulu
Our port day on O’ahu was devoted to visiting with family and friends on the island. No need to book tours or excursions. However, there was time for a little architecture photography in the short walk from where the cruise ship docked and where we got into our Uber ride a mere two blocks away!
Downtown Honolulu is architecture rich with a diversity of styles. We managed to capture a fine historic building and two Brutalist buildings.
Alexander & Baldwin, Architect: C.W. Dickey and Hart Wood, 1929
Beauty abounds at the Alexander & Baldwin building in downtown Honolulu. As we walked by, there were many lovely details to appreciate on the exterior- tile murals, stylized light fixtures, and bas relief designs. I can only imagine the interior!
From the Historic Hawaii Foundation website: Built in 1929, the Alexander and Baldwin Building is a four-story building constructed of steel with concrete casings. The most dominant feature is the high double pitch, with wide overhangs, tile roof which features exposed rafters. On the fourth floor there is a projecting balcony which continues around the entire building. The main entry is a two-story ground portico with six square columns. The large main room on the first floor has Travertine walls bracketed by tiled murals. The Alexander and Baldwin Building is significant for its associations with the Alexander and Baldwin corporation which has played an important role in the economic development of Hawaii. The building is also significant as an example of architecture that combines Oriental and Western designs adapted to the Hawaiian climate designed by C.W. Dickey and Hart Wood.
Prince Kuhio Federal Building, 300 Ala Moana Boulevard Architect: Architects Hawaii. 1977
The first time I saw this building complex was in 2024 as I explored on foot while my mom had a doctor appointment nearby. This last visit I got to glimpse it from port where our ship docked by Aloha Tower.
From Wikipedia:
The Prince Kūhiō Federal Building is the official seat of the United States federal government and its local branches of various agencies and departments in the state of Hawai’i.
Construction of the Prince Kūhiō Federal Building was not without controversy. The GSA wanted a simple tall office tower, while local architects argued for a building more appropriate to Hawaii. Statutes provided that all buildings between the shoreline and the foot of Punchbowl Crater could not be taller than the Hawai’i State Capitol. The federal government, not legally limited by local statutes, defied the statutes and constructed the building as the tallest structure in the path of the capitol building's view of the shoreline. The complex includes ten stories of offices (including a penthouse level), connected by an enclosed bridge to a six-story courthouse building (including basement).
The Prince Kūhiō Federal Building was designed by Joseph G.F. Farrell’s firm Architects Hawaii. Other government buildings designed by the firm include the capitol building of Palau, which opened in 2006.
Bank of Hawaii
This building has an exceptional top level design that you wouldn’t know from down below just walking along the street. We first saw it from the top level of the ship.
From an Nov. 2, 2018 article by Timothy Schuler “The Brutes on the Beach”
The Financial Plaza of the Pacific was a landmark project for Honolulu, one that its boosters hoped would solidify the city’s status as a hub for both commerce and culture. World War II had hurt the islands’ economy. In 1958, to help revitalize Oʻahu’s central business district, a group of business owners formed the Downtown Improvement Association, which had three objectives: Attract more tourists downtown, keep the state and county seat near ‘Iolani Palace, and give the business district a defining anchor, something akin to New York City’s Rockefeller Center. The Financial Plaza of the Pacific became this anchor. The consortium hired some of the period’s best-known architects to design it, including Victor Gruen, who helped invent the indoor shopping mall, and Lawrence Halprin, the now legendary landscape architect who had just designed San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. The lead architect, Leo S. Wou, had emigrated from China to study in the United States and worked for Louis Kahn (a soon-to-be master of the Brutalist style) before opening his own office in San Francisco.
The buildings housed three distinct and powerful entities: Bank of Hawaii, American Savings and Loan Association, and Castle and Cooke, all of whom had been convinced by Robert Midkiff, the vice president of the Downtown Improvement Association, to pool their land holdings and create a joint headquarters that would redefine downtown Honolulu.
From the photos below, the Bank of Hawaii building pleases from street level, too!
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