Before and after: Many Lahaina landmarks, historic sites lost in Maui fire

It took less than a day for the Aug. 8 fire to gut more than a dozen cultural landmarks and historic structures that Lahaina Restoration Foundation officials had spent 60 years working tirelessly to restore and preserve for future generations.

The wind-whipped wildfire that swept through Lahaina razed an estimated 2,200 buildings, mostly residences, and killed at least 97 people with many still unaccounted for.

The nation’s deadliest wildfire in over a century left the historic seaside town in ruins and claimed more than just homes, businesses and precious human lives. Gone are many of the town’s landmarks and sites steeped in ancient Hawaiian history. Gone are most of the priceless artifacts and treasures of Lahaina’s colorful past — pre-contact, monarchy, missionary, whaling and plantation eras — to present-day tourism.

“History resides in people, so we haven’t lost our history,” said Theo Morrison, executive director of the nonprofit foundation. “What we’ve lost are the tangible items that help us remember that history and help us tell the story of that history.”

The Hale Pa‘i Printing Museum on the grounds of Lahainaluna High School perched on the hillside above the flames and the Plantation Museum enclosed within the metal building of Lahaina Cannery Mall were spared by the fire, according to Morrison. Many other sites were not so lucky.

Below are images taken before and after the wildfire that illustrate the widespread destruction of historic structures near and along Front Street. Drag the slider in the middle to compare the images.

OVERVIEW OF SOUTHERN LAHAINA

This combination of satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies shows an aerial view of southern Lahaina on June 25, left, and an aerial view of the same area on Aug. 9, a day after the firestorm devastated the historic Maui town.

OVERVIEW OF LAHAINA HARBOR AND LAHAINA BANYAN COURT

This combination of satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies shows an aerial view of Lahaina Harbor and Lahaina Banyan Court on June 25, left, and an aerial view of the same area on Aug. 9.

OLD LAHAINA COURTHOUSE

648 Wharf St.

Just a few steps away from Lahaina Harbor are the coral and stone wall remnants of the Old Lahaina Courthouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The courthouse opened in 1860 during the reign of King Kamehameha IV to serve as a customs house for whaling vessels and trade ships while also providing a place for government business and court affairs during the monarchy. The two-story wooden facade building housed a post office and collector’s office, a courtroom and offices of Maui’s governor, sheriff and district attorney.

A rebuilt courthouse in 1925 boasted the Greek Revival architecture style with a new gable roof, entrance and second-floor balcony. A courtroom, judge and tax collector’s office were upstairs. The post office and police station sat on the first floor, while the jail was tucked away in the basement.

In 1998, Maui County funded a major restoration of the courthouse. The building was home to the Lahaina Visitor Center, Lahaina Arts Society galleries and Lahaina Town Action Committee offices. Between 2011 and 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation worked with the foundation to renovate and reopen the Lahaina Heritage Museum upstairs with an “Always Lahaina” exhibit.

The fire likely demolished everything inside of the courthouse building including art galleries, offices and the museum along with the treasures within it. Framed historic photographs of Lahaina decorated the walls, and items from every era of the town’s past were put on display. Morrison has yet to return to survey the damage as the area has been off-limits while the Environmental Protection Agency removed hazardous materials.

>> RELATED: Surviving Lahaina artifacts remain at risk

“In general terms, our expectation would be that anything paper, fabric, kapa (bark cloth), feathers, those things probably would not have survived,” said Morrison, who shared fond memories of working inside the courthouse and on restoration efforts.

The Hawaiian flag, which was framed behind a plexiglass case inside the courthouse, was incinerated in the fire. The Hawaiian islands were annexed to the U.S. on July 7, 1898. Shortly after, Lahaina’s assistant postmaster oversaw the lowering of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s red, white and blue banner as the American flag took its place over the courthouse.

“We had that flag on the wall — that was taken down during the overthrow of the monarchy — we were able to display it,” Morrison said. “Of all the things, that was my most precious, to me, most important artifact.”

LAHAINA BANYAN TREE

Lahaina Banyan Court, 671 Front St.

Located along historic Front Street behind the Old Lahaina Courthouse, the famous 150-year-old majestic banyan tree’s limbs were scorched but it still stands tall surrounded by structures that have been reduced to rubble and ash.

“The tree survived for a reason,” said President Joe Biden during an Aug. 21 trip to Lahaina. “I believe it is a very powerful symbol of what we can and will do to get through this crisis.”

India gifted the banyan tree in 1873 when it was just an 8-foot sapling. It was planted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Protestant missionaries arriving in Lahaina, which started at the request of Queen Keopuolani. Today the tree is over 60 feet tall with 46 sprawling trunks and shades about two-thirds of an acre.

Shortly after the fire, volunteers arranged for water tankers to dump hundreds of gallons of water onto the tree every few hours. A group of Maui arborists, landscapers and volunteers has been giving the tree a little TLC since then.

More than a month later, the tree has shown signs of life. Clusters of new leaves sprouted from the tree’s branches and on the ground beneath it. The tree has become a symbol of hope for the fire-ravaged town.

KING KAMEHAMEHA III ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

611 Front St.

Established in 1913, the elementary school on Front Street honors Kauikeaouli, better known as King Kamehameha III, who became Hawaii’s longest-reigning monarch.

At the entrance, a bronze bust by sculptor Christine Turnbull paying tribute to the king still stands atop its stone pedestal after the fire. Behind it is the torched shell of the school’s jungle-green building.

The campus sits on 5.6 acres in the heart of Lahaina and serves families makai and mauka of Honoapiilani Highway from Lahaina to Honokahau Valley. The school marked its 100th anniversary in spring 2013 and was looking “forward, with anticipation, to the next 100,” according to its website.

The school’s future is uncertain. The campus was damaged beyond repair, according to Hawaii State Department of Education spokesperson Nanea Kalani. Staff and students have been temporarily moved to Princess Nahienaena Elementary when it can reopen safely, while school officials plan to explore temporary relocation within West Maui.

“Long-term planning for a new, permanent school will include seeking community input that honors the legacy of the historic campus, and coordinating with overall planning for the Lahaina community,” Kalani said in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

NA ‘AIKANE O MAUI CULTURAL AND RESEARCH CENTER

562 Front St.

Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural and Research Center was a gathering place for those who wanted to learn about kanaka maoli or Native Hawaiian history and culture before European contact and colonization.

The center boasted an extensive collection of hundreds of treasures and artifacts acquired over the years that are likely gone forever.

“Priceless, very priceless,” said Ke‘eaumoku Kapu, who is the cultural center’s coordinator. “I have a hard time putting a price on the Reciprocity Treaty.”

The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 allowed for duty-free import of Hawaiian agricultural products such as bananas, rice and sugar into the United States. The treaty foreshadowed the annexation of Hawaii.

Na ‘Aikane o Maui’s building has a storied history. During the 1950s the center served as a soup kitchen for plantation workers and their families during the International Longshore and Warehouse Union strike for higher wages against the Pioneer Mill Co. In 2011, Kapu took over the building to provide a community hub for conducting cultural workshops, teaching Hawaiian traditions and customs, researching aina and mookuauhau, or genealogy.

The center’s collection consisted mostly of precious heirlooms donated by families who held onto them for generations.

“We started a cultural research center and a lot of families liked what they saw so they donated a lot of things and I was kind of a steward to everybody’s artifacts,” Kapu said.

Poi pounders from Tahiti and New Zealand. Ahu ula, or feathered capes, worn by alii or high-ranking chiefs. A Masonic sword etched with the Hawaiian coat of arms during King David Kalakaua’s reign. An assortment of Hawaiian coins and stamps were passed down to Kapu after his father died. All of them were likely lost in the fire.

“A lot of original maps and books and a lot of literature that was actually signed by Kamehameha III, Kamehameha V, documents, titles, deeds,” Kapu said. “I had over 400 original maps. Old maps. Some of them were parchment paper, like cloth.”

The fire also consumed an extensive library of more than 1,000 books that filled three rooms, including rare and vintage books from British missionary William Ellis, 1800s law books and 1864 Hawaiian bibles.

“A lot of the attorneys used to come over to my building because I had a lot of the old law books,” Kapu said.

Kapu hopes to rebuild the center in the future since “hardly anything survived” in the fire.

Kapu and his wife, Uilani Kapu, have been staying busy to keep their minds off the loss. They set up one of Lahaina’s distribution centers at the Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa at Ka‘anapali, where they have been assisting displaced individuals who lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods in the fire.

WO HING MUSEUM AND COOKHOUSE

858 Front St.

Less than a mile away from Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural and Research Center was another notable building leveled by the fire.

The Wo Hing Temple once served as a gathering place for Chinese immigrants who arrived on Maui between 1852 and 1898 aboard trading or whaling ships to work in the sugar plantations and mills. They established the Wo Hing Society in the early 1900s to socialize and maintain ties to their homeland.

The society built a two-story wooden structure in 1912 on Front Street when membership numbered in the hundreds, according to a Dec. 15, 1983, story in The Honolulu Advertiser. A Taoist temple upstairs held religious ceremonies and the downstairs functioned as a social hall, and then as a museum and gift shop before the fire. Calligraphy signboards posted around the temple showcased Chinese characters of “wo” (peace and harmony) and “hing” (prosperity).

In December 1983, the foundation and the Wo Hing Society signed an agreement to restore the aging temple and turn it into a museum. In the backyard, a cookhouse or community kitchen — that once served as a gathering place for members to socialize over food — was converted into a small theater that played the documentary “Finding Sandlewood Mountain,” about the legacy, history and accomplishments of Chinese families in Hawaii.

In 2012, the Sun Yat-sen Foundation for Peace and Education donated a bronze bust of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, also known as the founding father of modern China. Yat-Sen made six trips to Maui from 1879 to 1910 to plan the 1911 Chinese revolution that led to the successful overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China in Taiwan. Sun’s brother, Sun Mei, owned a large cattle ranch in Upcountry Maui.

The bust atop its marble pedestal that once greeted temple visitors in the front yard is likely no more, along with the pair of foo dog statues at the entrance.

OLD LAHAINA PRISON

187 Prison St.

Hale Pa‘ahao Prison (“stuck-in-irons house”) was constructed in the 1850s during the reign of King Kamehameha III.

The chocolate-colored structure was reduced to ashes, but the surrounding thick coral wall at the corner of Prison and Wainee streets escaped the flames.

In 1851 the Legislature passed an act to authorize a new jail in Lahaina, which the king approved. Construction of the prison finished in 1853. During the whaling era, the prison housed rowdy sailors who did not return to their ships at sundown, along with unruly natives.

Drunkenness, “furious riding” (riding a horse too fast), disturbing the quiet of the night and aiding deserting seamen were among the criminal offenses that landed people in the prison.

The warden lived in a two-story wooden gatehouse between the walls. Two wooden jail cell buildings in the yard separated the men from the women. A row of cells each came with iron wall shackles and restraints to tie down disorderly prisoners.

In 1967 the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, through a public-private partnership, transformed the deteriorating prison into an outdoor museum and botanical garden.

In the yard sat an original harpoon whaling boat — which whalers once used to pull up to a spouting whale for an attack — that appears to have burned up in the fire, according to Morrison. “When [whalers] spotted a whale, they’d jump in these whaling boats and paddle, row out, to get close enough to the whale to throw or shoot the spears,” she said. “We had one of those boats.”

BALDWIN HOME MUSEUM

120 Dickenson St.

The Baldwin Home was known as the oldest home on Maui until the Aug. 8 firestorm.

The museum was furnished with original photographs, handwritten letters, delicate Blue Willow china, medical instruments and original 1850s furniture that unlikely weathered the blaze. Only the 24-inch thick walls constructed from coral, sand and volcanic rock with rough-hewn timber framing withstood the flames.

More than a century before visitors toured the public museum for a glimpse of missionary life in Hawaii, the Baldwin Home was a vibrant center of activity at the corner of Front Street with a panoramic view of the Lahaina landing and roadstead where whaling ships anchored.

The home was originally built in 1834 and 1835 by Rev. Ephraim Spaulding as a single-level structure with four rooms referred to as the “missionary compound.” Spaulding returned to Massachusetts due to ill health in 1836.

Medical missionary Rev. Dwight Baldwin and his wife Charlotte Fowler arrived on Maui in 1835 and moved into the home with their family. They welcomed weary travelers, ship captains, Hawaiian royalty and visiting consuls into their home. Later, the house expanded with the addition of a second story to make room for a spacious bedroom, a small storeroom and a quiet medical study away from busy Front Street.

In 1853, the smallpox epidemic spread to Hawaii. Baldwin was key to preventing the spread of the disease on Maui.

“It killed thousands of people on Oahu,” Morrison said. “But on Maui, it only killed hundreds or less than hundreds of people on Maui, because he went around vaccinating people. It’s a really great story.”

The Baldwins lived in Lahaina until 1868 then moved to Honolulu to retire near their daughter Abigail. Charlotte died in 1873 and Dwight in 1886. They were buried at the Kawaiaha‘o Church Cemetery.

In 1966 the foundation restored the building into a museum with a mid-19th-century design to accurately portray missionary life. The following year, the Baldwin heirs donated the property to the foundation with the condition that “it can never be sold and will remain in the public domain in perpetuity.”

The museum was recorded in the Historic American Buildings Survey of Library of Congress archives.

MASTERS’ READING ROOM

100-120 Dickenson St.

Next door from the ruins of the Baldwin Home Museum is just the shell of the Masters’ Reading Room. Walls made of lava rock, field stone and coral are still standing along with a plaque near the entrance detailing missionary influence in Lahaina.

Nearly two centuries ago, Lahaina town officials saw a need for a place to accommodate ship captains who arrived in town aboard whaling ships to reprovision. The answer: A reading room or gentlemen’s club retreat. In June 1833, Lahaina missionaries committed to building it.

The American Mission contributed $200 and sought additional financial contributions from the public. Revs. William Richards and Ephraim Spaulding co-signed a written request to visitors, appealing to their generosity to help build “suitable reading rooms for the accommodation of seamen who visit Lahaina, as well as a convenient place of retirement from the heat and unpleasant dust of the market,” according to the foundation.

Some whalers offered money. Others donated gifts such as chairs, spyglass, soap and planks. The most valuable gifts were western cloth used to pay for labor and barrels of whale oil sold to light Lahaina’s lamps. “These two commodities alone contributed $534.50 to the project with a length of fabric (30 yards) valued at $7.50 and a barrel of whale oil at $15,” according to the foundation.

The building was completed by May 27, 1834. Shipmasters used the top level exclusively, while the bottom floor provided room for storage. On one side, an observatory with a spyglass allowed officers to observe activities in the village and around the harbor. Rev. Dwight Baldwin purchased the building in 1846 after it went up for auction.

Over the past decades, the foundation restored and maintained the building, eventually transforming the ground floor into shops and the second floor into space to hold their board meetings.

The structure was recorded in the Historic American Buildings Survey of Library of Congress archives.

PIONEER MILL CO. SMOKESTACK AND LOCOMOTIVES EXHIBIT

275 Lahainaluna Road

It’s hard to miss Lahaina’s towering 225-foot smokestack, which appears to have outlasted the fire along with the circular walkway of engraved, commemorative bricks surrounding it.

“The smokestack is a little gray now,” Morrison said. “It used to be more white, but now it just needs a little rain.”

Pioneer Mill Co. built the smokestack from brick and concrete in 1928. At the time, it was deemed the tallest smokestack in Hawaii. Drivers on the road and mariners out at sea relied on the landmark as a navigational guide.

Pioneer Mill Co. was established in 1860 as the first plantation to commercially grow sugar in Lahaina. The company built one of Hawaii’s first successful sugar mills. In 1910, Pioneer Mill employed about 1,600 laborers, half of them immigrant contract laborers, according to a Sept. 3, 1999, story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The mill was a mainstay of West Maui’s economy for 139 years, cultivating more than 10,000 acres of sugar cane by 1935 and processing 60,000 tons of sugar annually at its peak in the 1960s.

“Almost every resident of Lahaina had some connection to the mill, and if you mention it to this day, it will spark fond memories for many,” according to the foundation.

Pioneer Mill closed in 1999. Eventually, the mill was left to crumble and the last building was demolished in 2006. Mill owners discussed dismantling the iconic smokestack, but the community pulled together to save it. The foundation assumed responsibility for a four-month, $600,000 restoration project with the majority of funds donated by Maui residents and former mill employees. Restoration to the smokestack included 17 carbon steel tension bands, waterproof coating to its exterior and a 14-foot “crown” constructed from carbon steel at the top.

On site are the two original black locomotive engines named “Lahaina” and “Launiupoko” that once hauled sugar cane. Both locomotives appeared to have survived the fire but sustained some damage to their wooden parts, Morrison said.

HOW TO HELP

For more than a month, Lahaina residents and property owners have anxiously awaited to return to their properties so they can take stock of what’s left behind, if anything, from the inferno. Re-entry into Lahaina begins Monday. The EPA has worked to remove hazardous materials from affected Lahaina properties, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is tasked with disposing of debris.

Morrison said rebuilding the town’s cultural landmarks and historic structures is possible, but is estimated to cost in the millions of dollars and expected to take “a very long time.”

The Lahaina blaze surpassed the 2018 Camp Fire as the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history. Even with Camp Fire’s fifth anniversary fast approaching in November, the rebuilding process is still ongoing for the town of Paradise, Calif., where more than 18,000 structures burned and at least 85 people died.

“Lahaina is going to need help for a long time,” Morrison said. “It’s a major, major, unprecedented tragedy.”

• Lahaina Restoration Foundation: The nonprofit is accepting monetary donations to aid in future rebuilding efforts.

“We actually restored these buildings in the ’70s and ’80s already,” Morrison said. “There wasn’t a fire, but it had just kind of been abandoned. A former executive director (Jim Luckey) initiated all that and now we just have to do it again.”

Go to lahainarestoration.org and click on the donate button.

• Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural and Research Center: The nonprofit Na ‘Aikane o Maui Inc., is accepting monetary donations to aid in future rebuilding efforts and reassembling their archives.

Go to naaikane.org and click on the donate button.