Most of us think of College Hill as the stately and historic mansion usually occupied by University of Hawaii presidents. Actually, the whole area behind Punahou School was at one time called College Hill. The name came from the fact that in its early days Punahou School was named Oahu College, according to the book “Place Names of Hawaii.”

Typical of Hawaii, it was a land deal that got things started in the College Hill neighborhood. In 1901 the Castle family invested in a trolley that ran up into Manoa to “help sell a very new hilltop subdivision called College Hill.” The Hawaii Journal of History goes on to say, “The Castles were good at making a trolley line work while stimulating real estate movement.”

Apparently the kamaaina Atherton family bit because, in 1902, they bought 2.7 acres atop a hill within College Hill and built a 4,500-square-foot home on the property. The 14-room Victorian mansion was designed by architect Walter E. Pinkham. Several generations of the Atherton family lived comfortably in the house until the early 1960s.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin carried a front-page article Oct. 22, 1963, telling of the generous gift the Atherton heirs had made of their home, which by now was called College Hill, to the University of Hawaii for a president’s home. The appraised value was $182,563.

Before that event, there had been much discussion over time about the university building a president’s home on campus.

The following October, the

UH regents approved spending $99,800 for remodeling, which

included rewiring, re-plumbing, re-roofing, termite repairs and painting. That sum is quite modest for that much work as will be shown later in this article with other modifications to College Hill.

In accepting the gift from the Athertons and commenting on the remodeling, then-UH President Tom Hamilton said: “I’m in favor of preserving old things if they are functional. The Atherton residence is a kamaaina house and we should preserve it as the permanent home for University of Hawaii presidents.”

Hamilton went on to say, “The university is very pleased with this gift in terms of the confidence expressed in the importance of the university to the future of our community.”

In a visit to College Hill in 1965,

a Star-Bulletin reporter said, “The conversion from a family home to a public property has been done with taste, and it was a good decision to make as few changes structurally as possible.”

This same reporter, commenting on the interior said, the house “has a relaxed elegance,” adding, “The whole house reflects a careful blending of touches of the traditional and the exotic.”

Those were the days. Nowadays, College Hill seems to stir controversy continually. There was a major dust-up in 2001 when hard-charging Evan Dobelle came to town and spent a reported

$1.3 million on modifications he and his wife wanted for the home. The community seemed to gulp and accept this extravagance.

Lately, M.R.C. Greenwood’s refusal to live in the house despite hundreds of thousands expended just to maintain it has been, it seems, reluctantly accepted by the community. Keoki Kerr of Hawaii News Now reported that UH has spent $680,000 since August and that the change orders brought the total to $906,478. College Hill has remained empty for four years while all this was going on.

Now comes Chancellor Tom Apple, who wants to turn College Hill into an Alumni Center. This idea has some of the neighbors very upset — about night-and-day noise and parking. One neighbor, an architect, says it would cost millions to convert the old house once again for offices, including re-wiring for computers.

Maybe the university should convene a meeting of interested parties and in the “relaxed elegance” of College Hill come to some understanding of where to go next with this historic property.

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Keep Hawaii Hawaii is a monthly column on island architecture and urban planning. Robert M. Fox, president of Fox Hawaii Inc., studied architecture in California and Japan. He was one of the founders of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation in 1974. David Cheever, owner of David Cheever Marketing, has served on the boards of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and the Hawaii Architectural Foundation. Comments can be sent to keephawaiihawaii@staradvertiser.com.