A month ago I wrote about remnants of companies that are long gone.

Ross Inouye asked me about a concrete street marker on the corner of Olu Street and 6th Avenue in Kapahulu. Is it a remnant of the past? he wondered.

"I’ve had a question about an obelisk about 6 feet tall on the corner of 6th Avenue and Olu Street," Inouye said. "The sign actually has Alohea and Olu on it." Alohea Avenue is six blocks away.

"Did the streets get modified sometime in the past? Is this a street sign or another type of reference point from the past? I don’t recall seeing another obelisk like this anywhere else. I would enjoy finding out the history about this," he said.

I often drive up and down this street. It’s my "back way" to Waikiki and traffic is light. Yet I had never noticed it before. I stopped to investigate.

The obelisk is four-sided, about 6 feet tall, maybe a foot wide and pointed at the top. It is made out of concrete with street names and block address imprinted on the sides. It probably weighs 500 pounds and looks very old.

It’s on the makai, Ewa corner of the intersection. I knocked on the door of the house next to it. The two women at home – interestingly, both former Honolulu Star-Advertiser employees – didn’t know much about it.

I next went to the Hawaii Pacific Room at the main library to look at some of their old maps.

Sixth Street runs mauka/makai out of Kaimuki, past Harding. At Olu, it bends to the southeast. Six blocks farther, it bends east again and becomes Alohea Avenue. Alohea then runs past Diamond Head Theatre and into the Kapiolani Community College parking lot.

Alohea means to "dodge smoke" and was probably the site of an old rubbish dump, according to Clarice Taylor, who wrote a historical column in the paper from 1949-1962. Olu means "cool and breezy."

Why did the obelisk have the street names wrong? Had the names changed over time?

Reference librarian Colleen Kainuma provided me with some maps. Interestingly, in 1912 Olu street was called Hobron Avenue. Two brothers in Hawaii had that surname. Both were sea captains during the monarchy period.

The same map has a different name for Alohea – Diamond Head Road. In 1912, Diamond Head Road passed around Diamond Head on the mauka side, passed below or through Fort Ruger then ran Ewa until about 6th Avenue.

By 1923, the map I found names the streets on that corner as Olu and Alohea. It’s unclear at which point Alohea became 6th Avenue.

So that solves one mystery. That corner was, at one time, Olu and Alohea. But it left me with other questions.

Are there other concrete street markers? I didn’t see any while driving around the neighborhood.

I asked my readers if they knew of any of these obelisk street markers. Several were quick to respond.

Chet Wong told me there is one at the 3300 block of Pali Highway and Dowsett Avenue. Like the one in Kapahulu, it has the previous street name – Nuuanu Avenue – marked on it. "It’s starting to crack at the bottom, but I’m glad it’s still standing as a sign of times past, " he said.

Calvin Fujii told me there was another street marker in Manoa, on Sonoma and Ventura streets.

George Crowder pointed me to an obelisk located at Kamehameha Highway and Halekou Road in Kaneohe. It’s dated 1951 and is across the street from the Hawaiian Memorial Park Mortuary.

"I have often wondered what the purpose of this obelisk was since my early childhood in the 1950s," Crowder said.

Masa Akamatsu sent me a photo of one that is now gone, but was at Kapahulu Avenue and Cartwright Road. He told me he recalls "seeing these markers at all of the street corners where I grew up in that section of Waikiki near the zoo."

Calls to city officials yielded little insight about these street markers.

I asked DeSoto Brown, collections manager at the Bishop Museum, if he knew anything about them.

Speaking about the one in Kapahulu, Brown said, "I know this particular marker very well since I drive by it daily. I live on Alohea Avenue, some blocks away.

"These were installed throughout Honolulu in the 1920s. There was one at the corner of Paki Avenue and Noela Drive at Diamond Head, and the latter street was not created until 1929.

"Thus I assume they were being cast and set up for at least about five years. I have seen one in Manoa," Brown continued. "There are a number of photos from the 1920s showing them in Kaimuki, and I know of a 1940s photograph that shows one in downtown Honolulu."

The first cars in the islands arrived around 1900. "In the 1920s, automobiles were increasing everywhere in the USA," Brown points out, "but standardized traffic signage was still evolving. People in cars needed more signs to guide them.

"These particular concrete obelisks were criticized in later years as being difficult or impossible to read easily, especially in the rain, or at night. However, I think they probably were the very first widespread street signs used in Honolulu."

By the middle to late 1950s, Honolulu shifted to a standardized format of embossed black lettering on a white background, made of a porcelain enamel finish. There was a mass placement of these signs in the 1950s, but some of the concrete obelisks are still found in Oahu neighborhoods.

"In the 1960s, reflectorized adhesive material made by the 3M Company, called Scotchlite, came into widespread use," Brown said. "It’s what is still used on traffic signs today, as well as our license plates. Scotchlite could be adhered to a flat metal base and then lettering could be stuck to it, or silk-screened on it. That’s how our street signs are made today, and have been since the 1960s.

"I don’t imagine these concrete markers were all pulled out in a systematic manner as new signs were installed," he continued. "They probably were removed when streets were widened, sidewalks installed, or other activities like that. So a handful are still around today to intrigue us."

If any of my readers know of other stone street markers or the story behind them, I invite them to write in.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.