Resort hotel · Honolulu (Waikiki), Hawaii · Built 1899–1901; concrete wings 1918
Moana Surfrider
Listed on the National Register as Moana Hotel
The first hotel on Waikiki Beach, a white four-story wooden building of 1901 by Oliver Traphagen with an Ionic-columned front and ocean lanais around a courtyard banyan; enlarged with concrete wings in 1918.
History
At the end of the nineteenth century Waikiki was a strip of beach houses and bungalows outside Honolulu. The landowner Walter Chamberlain Peacock incorporated the Moana Hotel Company in 1896 to build a resort there, hired the Honolulu architect Oliver G. Traphagen, and with $150,000 in capital had the Lucas Brothers build a four-story wooden hotel, then among the tallest buildings in the islands. It opened on March 11, 1901, with 75 rooms, some with telephones and private baths, a billiard room, saloon, parlor and library, and the first electric elevator in Hawaii; a group of Shriners were its first guests. The name means open sea. Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, died of strychnine poisoning in a room here in 1905, a death long believed to be murder.
Peacock sold the hotel that year to Alexander Young. In 1904 an Indian banyan was planted in the courtyard. Concrete wings in 1918 turned the plan into an H, and in 1925 bungalows went up across Kalakaua Avenue on the former estate of Princess Kaiulani. Matson took control in the 1930s, and from 1935 to 1975 the Hawaii Calls radio program broadcast from the Banyan Court. Sheraton bought the hotel in 1959, and in 1963 it passed to the Kyo-Ya Company, which built towers alongside. It was listed on the National Register in 1972, and a $50 million restoration in 1989 returned the original wing to its 1901 appearance as the heart of the Moana Surfrider.
“The original wooden center structure of the Moana Hotel, built in 1901, is the oldest existing hotel in Waikiki.”
Architecture
The original Banyan Wing is a four-story wooden building in what the nomination calls a mix of colonial clapboard and Victorian styling, with Ionic columns, a grand porte-cochere on the street and broad lanais on the ocean side. Its lobby opens through to the Banyan Court and the sea. Extra-wide hallways for steamer trunks, high ceilings and cross-ventilating windows survive from 1901, along with elaborate woodwork and plaster detail. The concrete wings of 1918, in an Italian Renaissance manner, enclose the courtyard on three sides; later Art Deco and modernist updates were stripped away in the 1989 restoration. The banyan in the court has grown to about 75 feet tall and 150 feet across.
What to look for
- Ionic columns on the Kalakaua Avenue front
- The great banyan tree in the courtyard
- Wide hallways built for steamer trunks
- Ocean lanais of the original wing
- The H-shaped plan formed by the 1918 wings
Setting
The hotel fronts Kalakaua Avenue in the middle of Waikiki, with its Banyan Court opening directly onto the beach. High-rise hotels crowd both sides, including the Moana's own 1969 tower, and Diamond Head rises at the east end of the beach. The Duke Kahanamoku statue and Kuhio Beach Park are a short walk east.
Timeline
- 1896Walter Peacock incorporates the Moana Hotel Company
- 1901Hotel opens on March 11
- 1904Banyan tree planted in the courtyard
- 1918Concrete wings create the H-shaped plan
- 1935–1975Hawaii Calls broadcast from the Banyan Court
- 1972Listed on the National Register
- 1989Original wing restored to its 1901 appearance
Where sources differ
- The nomination describes the 1918 additions as five-story concrete wings; Wikipedia says two floors were added and wings built that year.
- The construction start date is not given; the company formed in 1896 and the building was completed in 1901.
