When most people think of The Outdoor Circle, they probably think of trees or the nonprofit group’s efforts keep Hawaii free of billboards.
But few may know that the organization, founded 100 years ago in Honolulu by Cherilla Lowrey, was an early launching pad for women’s involvement in modern political and community issues. While women would not be allowed to vote until nearly a decade later, Lowrey proved herself an influential leader in civic affairs.
The Outdoor Circle, made up mostly of women at its founding in 1912, was a force to be reckoned with back then as much as it is today in 2012. Its first campaigns, in the 1920s, advocated for underground wiring, landscaping on military bases and removal of billboards on Oahu.
A half-century later the group helped protect Diamond Head from development and pushed for the landmark’s designation as a state monument in 1978.
It also helped restore the natural beauty of Kauai after Hurricane Iniki in 1992 by spearheading more than two dozen planting projects and, working with other groups, prevented Hawaiian Electric Co. from putting up power lines at Waahila Ridge in 2002.
Today The Outdoor Circle has about 3,500 members who continue to save trees and fight for the preservation of open space and view planes in an increasingly jumbled urban panorama.
The group has even waded into the controversy over Oahu’s rail transit project and is a party in a lawsuit seeking to stop construction of the system, which it sees as a threat to views and more than 900 trees.
The Outdoor Circle maintains that its mission since its founding has remained constant: to keep Hawaii "clean, green and beautiful."
"Our mission is to protect the most unique and beautiful place on earth," said Bob Loy, director of environmental programs. "There’s no end. The need to protect it is never going to end, and our resolve to protect it is never going to end."
As The Outdoor Circle celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, here are three tangible impacts the group has had on the islands’ landscape.
Legacy remains ‘A Story of Women’
While standing in the gardens of Versailles during a visit to France in 1911, Outdoor Circle founder Cherilla Lowrey and two friends from Honolulu were so inspired by its beauty that they decided to start a beautification group at home.
Lowrey, a second-grade teacher and assistant principal at Punahou Preparatory School, founded The Outdoor Circle a year later with seven female members and became its first president.
She envisioned Honolulu as a city of beautiful trees and flowering gardens. Under her leadership, membership grew to 500 by 1918, the year she died.
Dressed in long skirts, high heels and hats, members planted mahogany and coconut trees on Kalakaua Avenue, shower trees on Pensacola Avenue and a Japanese garden at Nuuanu Stream.
"Often perceived as the ‘old, rich haole ladies,’ The Outdoor Circle was above all a story of women, nearly a decade before suffrage, shucking their 19th-century shackles and forging a base of power that exists to this day," Loy said.
Today, women and their families are the majority membership, although the current president, Joel Kurokawa, is a man. Longtime environmental advocate and community organizer Marti Townsend was recently appointed the club’s executive director, replacing Mary Steiner.
Planting, protecting trees
The earliest members of The Outdoor Circle are responsible for planting many of the mahogany trees along the median strip of Kalakaua Avenue, plus the banyans at Ala Moana Beach Park and other landmark trees at the state Capitol and Washington Place.
The list goes on, including rainbow shower trees on Vineyard Boulevard, royal poinciana trees on Piikoi Street and the trees at Tantalus and Round Top Drive.
This was no easy feat — women carried water barrels up to Round Top by horse and buggy in 1917 to care for wiliwili trees and bougainvillea planted there.
In 1975 The Outdoor Circle pushed for the Exceptional Tree Act, which identifies and protects hundreds of Hawaii’s most important trees on both public and private property. Under the act, exceptional trees can be removed or pruned only with county permits.
Some exceptional trees include the baobab tree at the Queen’s Medical Center, the banyan tree at International Marketplace and royal palms at Palm Circle at Fort Shafter.
The planting of trees continues, with 50 trees added at Magic Island in 2000 as one example. The Outdoor Circle also educates Hawaii’s youth about the value of trees in our lives and the environment.
Banning billboards and aerial ads
One of the first actions the ladies of The Outdoor Circle took up after founding the club was a campaign against billboards.
Lowrey and fellow members believed that billboards were a visual blight, obstructing mountain and coastal views. They didn’t want them on Honolulu highways, nor on Diamond Head or Punchbowl.
They organized letter-writing campaigns and boycotts of the brands that were advertised on them.
Eventually the group purchased Honolulu Poster Service, the last billboard company in Hawaii, and shut it down in 1926. A year later the group helped push for a law banning billboards, which remains in effect today.
If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve never seen an ad banner trailing from an airplane or the Goodyear blimp over Honolulu, it’s because of a ban on aerial ads the club supported and the city put in place in 1978.
That ban was challenged in 2003 by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an anti-abortion group that said it had the right to fly 100-foot-long banners displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses. The Outdoor Circle defended the law with a "Save Our Skies" campaign in 2005. A federal appeals court upheld the ban in 2006.
In 2008 the group persuaded the Legislature to extend the ban to include billboard trucks.
