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Every now and then, I explore what occupies a particular Oahu location today and then go back in time to see what was there in the past.
One site I looked into recently was 1500 Kapiolani Blvd. Today it’s a six-story building on the mauka side of the street, between Keeaumoku and Kaheka streets.
‘The Plains’
Before 1900 the area from downtown Honolulu to Waikiki was a dry, dusty area called “the Plains.” It was filled with what was sometimes termed “Pahke patches” — with taro loi, duck ponds and rice fields.
By the 1920s, planners noted that King Street was getting congested, and proposed another crosstown street be built. Gov. Charles McCarthy suggested it be called Missionary Boulevard as the 100th anniversary of the missionaries’ arrival had just been celebrated.
The city, instead, called it Kapiolani Boulevard, for Queen Kapiolani (1834-1899), wife of King David Kalakaua. The first segment of it opened in 1928, extending from South Street toward Ward Avenue.
The second segment, from Ward Avenue to about McCully Street, had to await Hawaiian Dredging filling in several lowlands along the right of way. It got underway about 1929.
The plan was then for Kapiolani Boulevard to split, with one direction going toward Kaimuki and another lane going makai of the new Ala Wai Canal to Kapiolani Park. That became Ala Wai Boulevard.
Businesses began springing up along Kapiolani Boulevard in the early 1930s.
Hawaiian Town
Entertainer Charles Amalu built an island- themed restaurant at 1502 Kapiolani Blvd. called Hawaiian Town in 1936.
Amalu was the father of former Honolulu Advertiser columnist Sammy Crowningburg Amalu. He was a member of the Lunalilo family and had been a beachboy and musician.
Hawaiian Town was a reproduction of an ancient Hawaiian village, he said, with a music studio, dance hall, an imu for cooking pigs, and thatched native huts overlooking a man-made stream that ran through the property.
Its cocktail lounge was canoe-themed, with bamboo and rattan furniture.
Helen Gay managed it and entertained Hawaii tourists with the “real thing,” an article said at its opening. Aside from electric lights, the building was typically Hawaiian, with lau hala mats, calabashes and other native relics.
A gift shop sold muumuu, feather and shell lei, and lau hala work. Guitar and ukulele lessons were offered.
It kicked off on New Year’s Eve 1936, with Bina Mossman’s troupe, Iolani Luahine and her dancers, and Charles Amalu, the owner, entertaining.
In 1939 KGMB radio moved next door on the Ewa side of Hawaiian Town. It also relocated to 590 kilocycles on the AM dial from 1320 KC. The lower frequency allowed the 5,000-watt station to broadcast to a wider area.
Previous to that, KGMB had been four blocks Ewa, on the makai side of Kapiolani Boulevard, about where McKinley Car Wash is now.
KGMB called itself “the station with a conscience.” Does that mean that the other radio station at the time, KGU, had no conscience?
Charles Amalu sold Hawaiian Town in 1942 to Ruddy Tongg, publisher of the Pacific Herald Chinese- English newspaper, which later became Tongg Publishing. Tongg founded Aloha Airlines in 1949.
Alfred Apaka — “a native Hawaiian boy singing carefrelly (sic) in his enchanting Hawaiian Paradise” — and his Hawaiians performed there many times, their advertisements said.
In 1946, 442nd veterans brought Earl Finch — the patron saint of the AJA soldier — to Hawaii for five weeks of celebratory breakfasts, lunches and dinners on several islands. The final buffet supper was at Hawaiian Town. About 1,500 veterans and their families attended. Finch left Hawaii the next day.
Hawaiian Town closed in July 1946 and was razed. Francis I‘i Brown — Hawaii’s top golfer — constructed a new two-story building that opened as The Torch in 1947, serving American and Hawaiian food. It said it could seat up to 1,000 persons in “our cool tropical outdoor setting.”
C.S. Wo
In 1957, C.S. Wo & Sons bought the property and erected a two-story building there, using the address 1504 Kapiolani. The 24,000-square-foot building was designed to be its headquarters.
Ching Sing Wo had gone into business in 1909 at the age of 21. He needed $12,000 to purchase a store at 39 N. King St., downtown, but had only $1,000. C.K. Ai of City Mill arranged a loan with that as a down payment and the rest payable as a mortgage.
C.S. Wo later bought Van’s Furniture Mart at 702 S. Beretania St., where C.S. Wo is today. The Kapiolani store was its third and was designed to replace the original small general store on King Street. It would become the flagship store for C.S. Wo for the next 26 years.
“My dad, Bob Wo, could foresee that retail shopping was shifting towards the Kapiolani corridor,” company President Bub Wo told me.
This was just as Ala Moana Center, destined to become the state’s largest shopping center, was under construction right across the street.
Bob Wo built his two-story building with a foundation that would allow four more floors to be added later. When those extra floors were built in 1966, the Hawaii Medical Service Association, which had outgrown its 1154 Bishop St. headquarters, moved in.
The Hawaii Medical Service Association, commonly known as HMSA, was founded by Margaret Catton, the head nurse at Queen’s Hospital in 1935.
Catton’s health insurance program provided a maximum of $300 in medical coverage a year for $3 a month in dues.
“HMSA ended up purchasing the building from us,” Bub Wo said, “and we used the proceeds to double our footprint and showroom space at 702 Beretania St., which now includes the C.S. Wo Gallery, HomeWorld, Ashley Furniture, Red Knot and SlumberWorld.
“Furniture Square, as we called it, was meant to fend off the ‘big box’ category- killer national chains all coming to Hawaii,” Wo said.
HMSA was at 1500 Kapiolani Blvd. until 1983, when its huge building on Keeaumoku Street was ready.
Cannon’s Business College
Several new tenants moved into the 1500 Kapiolani building in 1984, including Cannon’s Business College, Nevada Bob’s and JVC.
Cannon’s Business College dates to 1917, when Honolulu Business College was founded. In 1973 it merged with Cannon’s Business School, founded by Carl and Bette Cannon in 1934 on Fort Street downtown. Carl’s father had founded a similar school in Lawrence, Kan., in 1880.
It offered classes in business administration, accounting, computer pro- gramming, tourism and hotel management.
Cannon’s became Heald Business College in 1993. It was started by 20-year-old Edward Payson Heald in 1863 in San Francisco. The schools closed in 2015.
Today the building is largely empty. A FedEx Office and senior day care center occupy some of the first floor. The rest of the building is vacant.
California-based Salem Partners owns 1500 Kapiolani and has plans to build a 400-foot tower with 444 hotel rooms, six residential penthouses and 79 senior affordable rental units.
It’s amazing to me that the story of this one site on Kapiolani Boulevard crosses the paths of so many notables: Alfred Apaka, Bina Mossman, Iolani Luahine, Ruddy Tongg, Francis I‘i Brown, Earl Finch, Sammy Amalu, HMSA, C.S. Wo, KGMB and Cannon’s Business College.
The Rearview Mirror Insider is Bob Sigall’s now twice-weekly free email newsletter that gives readers behind-the-scenes background, stories that wouldn’t fit in the column, and lots of interesting details. Join and be an Insider at RearviewMirror Insider.com. Mahalo!
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