Most companies are too busy telling you what’s on special this week to tell you about their history. I think that’s a big mistake. The companies that do a good job of sharing their stories connect better to their customers, I believe, and hold onto them.
That’s why I was so happy to see the new Ward Village information center on the first floor of the IBM Building. The high-tech display is open to the public daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
The information center features an interactive cultural exhibit that was created through a partnership between the Howard Hughes Corp. and the Bishop Museum.
"In addition to providing a wide selection of historical stories, photos and maps of the Ward estate, the center also offers information on the Ward Village Master Plan," says spokesman Nick Vanderboom, senior vice president of development for Howard Hughes, which took ownership of Ward Centers from General Growth Partners in 2012.
The project is "a 60-acre, integrated community that will transform the area into a vibrant, world-class neighborhood that honors the distinct history of the land."
Vanderboom sent me a lot of interesting materials, and I’ve been poring over them. Here are some of the things I’ve found.
Victoria Ward was born to English shipbuilder James Robinson and Kaikilani Rebecca Previer at their Nuuanu home on Robinson Lane in 1846. One of her sisters was Mary Foster, who left her garden to the city in 1930. The two were part Hawaiian.
Curtis Perry Ward was born in Kentucky in 1829 and came to Hawaii in 1853. He got into the cargo transportation business. In 1865 he married Victoria Robinson and by 1870 began building the estate they called "Old Plantation." It encompassed all the land makai of Thomas Square on King Street down to the ocean, and much of eastern Kakaako.
The Ward family raised chickens and collected eggs, bananas, firewood, taro, fish, hay, pigs, salt, hides, butter, squid, and horses on the property. Ward planted 7,000 coconut trees. Windmills were built to pump water from just below the surface.
An artesian spring formed a lagoon on the estate. I wrote about how the family would boat on it in my June 24, 2011, column.
When Curtis Ward died in 1882, he left a thriving estate to his wife and seven daughters. The family incorporated the estate as Victoria Ward Ltd. in 1930. After the last daughter died, the city bought some of the property for $2 million and built the Honolulu International Center on it in 1964. It was renamed for our former mayor and is called the Neal S. Blaisdell Center today.
One of the daughters, Lucy Ward, was an early officer of the Hawaiian Humane Society. The Ward family donated land for the first animal shelter in Hawaii on the corner of Pohukaina and Koula streets in 1925. It outgrew the space and moved to a larger site in Moiliili in 1938.
There was at one time a 200-yard rifle range in the Ward Centre area, from about where Office Depot is today, through the former Pier One site, to the current Bed, Bath & Beyond store.
The king’s guards used a 100-yard rifle range behind Iolani Barracks, but practice shooting disturbed citizens in the downtown area. A better location was needed, and the Wards leased the property to the government in 1893.
In the photos, maps and archeological data they gave me I found something I have been curious about for some time: the location of the Kakaako Branch Hospital, where leprosy was treated on Oahu.
St. Marianne Cope and six sisters of St. Francis came to Hawaii to work with the leprosy sufferers at the hospital in 1883. The location is the block where Ala Moana Boulevard and Keawe, Auahi and Coral streets are today, mauka of the Gold Bond Building. Hank’s Haute Dogs and the new Highway Inn are on that block.
There was a pond with a bicycle track around it in the area mauka of today’s Kapiolani Boulevard between Cooke Street and Ward Avenue around 1900. It was called the Cyclomere.
Kapiolani Boulevard was built in stages, starting downtown. It reached Ward Avenue around 1929, and the Wards sued to prevent it from crossing their property. They lost.
The street had just two lanes with no curbs at the time. By World War II it connected all the way to Waialae Avenue.
Today, Ward Avenue runs from Ala Moana Boulevard to Prospect Street, but 100 years ago there were two separate streets. Above King Street it was called Kapiolani Street. The two streets met at King Street, but not exactly. Ward Avenue looks to be about 40 feet Ewa of where it is today.
About 150 years ago the area Ewa of Ward Avenue and Ala Moana Boulevard was filled for more than 100 yards with salt evaporation ponds. Salt from seawater was used as a preservative and flavor enhancer.
Several times in the past, I came across a reference to a place called Squattersville in the Ala Moana area, but I didn’t know exactly where it was.
A 1927 map pinpointed its former location adjacent to Kewalo Basin in the area of Kakaako Park. Apparently, about 700 Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians lived illegally in two camps there in the mid-1920s before being evicted around 1926.
Ironically, that is the area where the Office of Hawaiian Affairs wanted to build residential condominiums until the Legislature nixed the idea.
There was once an airfield about where Ward Warehouse is today. It opened around 1929 and probably closed within a few years. The first test flight of Inter-Island Airways (now Hawaiian Airlines) was from Ward Field to John Rodgers Field (today’s Honolulu Airport) in 1929.
Ward Field was used mostly by pilots giving airplane rides to the general public. In 1944 an airport was planned for the area that Ala Moana Center occupies today, but it was never built.
Many documents show the Ward family contemplated the development of the estate into a mixed-use project including condo towers, large shopping areas and open space in the 1960s.
What the Howard Hughes Corp. is now doing with Ward Village has some interesting similarities to what the Ward family had planned decades ago.
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.
