New York has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. For 60 years, Honolulu had the Dole Pineapple.

Lit at night and visible from as far away as Waikiki Beach and two miles out to sea, the Dole Pineapple water tower quickly became a Honolulu landmark.

Don Francisco de Paula Marin brought pineapple to Hawaii in 1815, but its history goes further back than that.

Christopher Columbus and his crew were offered pineapple in 1493 in the Caribbean. The fruit soon became a sensation in Europe and was the most highly prized exotic fruit for three centuries. However, pineapple needed a warm climate to grow, and slow shipping caused most of it to spoil.

Around 1800, Nicholas Appert developed food canning to supply Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Canning came to America in the 1820s and expanded greatly with the California gold rush of 1849. The Civil War in 1861 relied heavily on canned food, as have all wars since.

James Dole received a degree in agriculture from Harvard and came to Hawaii in 1899 — 112 years ago this week — to join relatives here. His great-uncle Daniel Dole had been the first teacher at Punahou, and Dole Street is named for him.

His second cousin Sanford Dole was territorial governor and had been part of the group that overthrew the monarchy in 1893. He recommended not using the family name because of the political baggage, so James Dole called his company the Hawaiian Pineapple Co. when it was founded in 1901.

Many thought Dole’s idea was crazy. The Honolulu Advertiser called it a "foolhardy venture" that was certain to fail.

However, Dole’s first crops were met with enthusiasm on the mainland, and soon he could sell as much as he could grow. By 1915 pineapple was Hawaii’s second-largest industry behind sugar cane, and James Dole was called the "Pineapple King."

Dole decided that growing in scattered patches of land was problematic and sought a large, contiguous area. The result was the purchase of the island of Lanai for $1.1 million in 1922. It was the largest plantation in the world at the time.

By 1927 the Dole cannery needed a larger water tank. Architect Charles Dickey suggested that it be made in the shape of a pineapple. The tank stood 80 feet above the cannery and held 100,000 gallons. It was 50 feet long with a 22-foot crown and weighed 30 tons. It cost $16,000 to build. To keep it looking sharp, Dole repainted it every four years and varnished it every two years.

During the Great Depression, sales fell, and James Dole lost control of the company to Castle & Cooke. He remained as a figurehead president with a token salary.

Dole died in 1957 and is buried in Makawao, Maui. A few years later, Hawaiian Pineapple was renamed Dole Food Co. It’s ironic that Dole was not the name of the company until after James Dole died.

Today, Dole Foods is the largest producer and marketer of fresh fruit and vegetables in the world, doing business in more than 90 countries and employing more than 40,000 people. Its annual sales are around $7 billion.

Working at the cannery in Iwilei was the summer job for several generations of Hawaii’s youth until its closure in 1992.

At its peak it could can more than 3 million pineapples a day!

The corroded Dole Pineapple was taken down a year later in 1993 and was, unfortunately, too far gone to be saved.

But if you look closely, you can see the shadow of the pineapple-shaped tank painted on the side of the Dole Cannery shopping complex.

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.