Is there anyone who has traveled up and down the Pali Highway at the intersection with Kamehameha Highway who hasn’t noticed the smallish, attractive building set among lush foliage on the Olomana side of the road?
What’s interesting is this historic building is both highly visible and at the same time mostly hidden. On the one hand it sits up on a knoll with no other structures to distract from it, yet it seems hidden because of its small scale set among neatly tended landscaping.
It is certain numerous travelers have asked over the years, "What is that neat little building along the Pali?"
The answer is that for nearly 75 years it has served Kaneohe Ranch as its office building. And even though most of Kaneohe Ranch was sold to Alexander & Baldwin in 2013, a number of properties were retained and so it remains as the offices for the ranch.
According to a 2007 Environmental Assessment prepared by Mason Architects in anticipation of adding a new wing, "the building has a number of distinctive character-defining features; a hand-stucco finish on the exterior walls, a high double-pitch roof covered with wood shakes, numerous windows for good ventilation, wide overhanging eaves (with exposed rafters) to protect those windows from sun and rain, covered lanai at the front entry and metal covered wood shutters."
It is said that during the first several decades of the 20th century in America, buildings were designed in styles that were determined by the location. Hawaii regionalism is nicely expressed in the Kaneohe Ranch Building with its covered lanais for outdoor spaces, wide eaves to shelter windows and landscaping to connect the building to the site. Some of those features can be seen in other buildings in Hawaii such as the Honolulu Museum of Art and the C. Brewer Building downtown, with some modifications, of course.
Again, the Mason report says, "The Kaneohe Ranch Building’s roof is a good example of the type used by architects to define a Hawaiian regional style of architecture. This type of roof, double-pitched with a high sloping main section, was modeled after the steeply shaped roofs of traditional Hawaiian hale pili, and became iconic of Hawaiian regional architecture."
The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. In making the case to place the building on the register, the application states, "The building is significant for its associations with Kaneohe Ranch, which encompassed the majority of lands in Kaneohe and Kailua Districts." Those lands, by the way, amounted to 12,000 acres.
Starting in 1800s, the ranch passed through several hands and a number of crops were tried, including cattle. Each eventually didn’t work out for one reason or another.
The National Register application says, "During the mid-1800s Queen Kalama, wife of Kamehameha III, and Judge C.C. Harris attempted to establish a sugar plantation on these lands." When that venture went bust in 1871, Judge Harris acquired the entire ranch and when he died, it was passed to his daughter Nannie R. Rice.
The ranch got its name when J.P. Mendonca leased the lands from Nannie in 1894 and incorporated the business as Kaneohe Ranch for the purpose of establishing a 3,000 head cattle ranch. The cattle operation lasted until World War II when the military took over so much of the land it was no longer feasible to feed them on the windward side and then drive them over the Pali to be butchered in Honolulu. Imagine that traffic jam.
Rice was another crop that was tried in the wetlands but didn’t succeed due to competition from rice farms in California.
In 1907 James B. Castle acquired the capital stock of Kaneohe Ranch, but it wasn’t until 1917 that his son Harold Castle eventually purchased the land from Nannie Rice. Harold attempted to grow pineapple, but the heavy rainfall on the Windward side made that crop uneconomical. The ranch’s last agricultural pursuit was dairy farming. But during the 1950s and 1960s Hawaii was growing fast and as the Windward side became more desirable as a place to live, these lands increasingly moved from agricultural to residential use. At one time, the previous ranch lands were sub-divided into about 5,000 residential units.
The Kaneohe Ranch Building was designed by Albert Ely Ives and built in 1940. It has been tastefully added to four times. Ives was primarily a residential architect and the commercial building he designed for Kaneohe Ranch could be considered to that reflect that specialty.
