My editor and I were talking about the decision to close Macy’s downtown on Fort and King streets. Several articles have looked at the site, which, for more than 100 years, was a Liberty House, or H. Hackfeld & Co. as it was called before that. Instead, I thought I’d write about the site across the street from it this week.
The property across Fort Street, near the mauka corner of King Street, has a great deal of historical significance. King Street was a lot narrower 170 years ago, and Bishop Street did not exist until the Alexander Young Hotel was built around 1902.
"The estate was called Haleakala, or house of the sun, and the residence received the name of Aikupika," Queen Liliuokalani said of the home she was raised in. "Aikupika" is Hawaiian for Egyptian.
It was built by her hanai parents, Abner and Konia Paki. Abner Paki was the son of a Maui high chief. He stood 6-foot-4 and weighed 300 pounds. He served Kamehameha III as privy councillor in Lahaina. When the king moved his capital to Honolulu in 1845, the Pakis moved with him.
Paki owned the ahupuaa of Makaha at one time and sold it. With the proceeds he built the two-story, coral block home on King Street and surrounded it with beautiful gardens.
Abner and Konia had a daughter, Bernice Pauahi, and a foster daughter, Lydia Kamaka‘eha Paki, seven years younger, who would become Hawaii’s last queen.
The daughters attended Royal School on the Iolani Palace grounds, a few blocks away. Bernice met and fell in love with Charles Reed Bishop, the collector general of customs, but her parents wanted her to marry Prince Lot.
When Bernice and Charles married in 1850, only six people attended the ceremony at Royal School house. Abner and Konia were not among them. At the urging of Victoria Kamamalu, they reconciled with her a year later.
Abner Paki died in 1855, and Bernice and Charles moved into the house to take care of Konia, who died two years later. Sanford Dole later wrote that the Bishops became social leaders in Honolulu. "Together with Mr. Bishop’s geniality," Dole said, Bernice Pauahi "made the home in its hospitality, its simplicity, its accessibility, most attractive to all."
Haleakala was also the site of two important births. Duke Paoa Kahanamoku and his father were born there. The elder Kahanamoku was born in 1869, the same year that Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, visited Hawaii. Pauahi suggested he be named after the prince.
The younger Kahanamoku was born in 1890 and named after his father. Their middle names are different. This Duke would be a four-time Olympian and serve as Hawaii sheriff for many years. Many biographies mistakenly say he was born at Haleakala, Maui. When Pauahi was born in 1831, her father planted a tamarind tree in their yard. The year she died, in 1884, her husband cut it down. Part of the stump can be seen today in the Kamehameha Schools chapel. Bishop Square occupies some of her former property. Tamarind Park was named for that tree.
After Pauahi’s death her husband turned the home into the Arlington Hotel. Her sister, Queen Liliuokalani, was upset it wasn’t left to her.
"I must own to one great disappointment," the queen later wrote. "The estate which had been so dear to us both in my childhood, the house built by my father, Paki, where I had lived as a girl, which was connected with many happy memories of my early life, from whence I had been married to Governor Dominis, when he took me to Washington Place, I could not help feeling ought to have been left to me."
"This wish of my heart was not gratified, and at the present day strangers stroll through the grounds or lounge on the piazzas of that home once so dear to me."
In an ironic twist of fate, the U.S. Marines from the USS Boston were quartered at the Arlington Hotel. The Marines called it "Camp Boston." From there they aided the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani on Jan. 17, 1893.
There’s one more chapter in the Haleakala story. Before Bishop Museum was built, Haleakala was considered as a possible site for its establishment.
That’s a lot of history in that one location.
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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.
