No one is expected to spend an entire day on a walking tour of Lahaina’s 32 historic sites. Not that it’s really too difficult or strenuous. Most of the main historic sites are concentrated in the center of Lahaina. Others may or may not be of interest. Obviously seeing historic sights near Front Street will be mixed with shopping, browsing art galleries or taking ocean excursions and time spent at beaches near Lahaina.
“Browsing, Shopping & Eating – Lahaina” in Part II takes you through the galleries and shops on and off Front St. where you’ll find the Banyan Tree and Courthouse, Masters’ Reading Room and Baldwin House, Pioneer Inn, Carthaginian, and sites of the Brick Palace, Fort, Canal and Government Market and other historic sites. Various other historic buildings or reconstructions, churches and temples are located mainly on Wainee Street.
Following a summary of main historic sites in Lahaina, we provide a copy of the actual brochure published by The Lahaina Restoration Foundation (LRF) to guide walking tours (by the numbers) around Lahaina’s historic and cultural sites. Occasionally this brochure is not available at the Lahaina Visitors Center in the Court House or at the Masters’ Reading Room (LRF headquarters). If you’re especially interested in Lahaina’s historical sites, we suggest that you print out this LRF guide and take it with you to Maui. (Also be sure to look at and take a copy with you of the detailed map of Lahaina in the Maui Drive Guide at http://www.driveguidemagazines.com/maui_lahaina.html)
Masters' Reading Room. The Masters' Reading Room and the Baldwin House are the oldest standing buildings in Lahaina. This coral-and-stone building looks just as it did in 1834 when Rev. William Richards and Rev. E. Spaulding persuaded whaling-ship captains to provide a place for ships' masters and captains to stay with their families while they were ashore. (Headquarters for the Lahaina Restoration Foundation; pick up a free guide to historical sites)
Baldwin House. Rev. Dwight Baldwin, a physician, and his wife of only a few weeks sailed to Hawaii from New England in 1830. From his first assignment to a church in Waimea, on the Big Island, Baldwin was moved to Lahaina's Wainee Church in 1838. Baldwin and his family lived in this house for more than 30 years. On one side of Baldwin House is an empty site of the Richards House, former home of Lahaina's first Protestant missionary, Rev. William Richards. Rev. Richards became chaplain, teacher and translator for Kamehameha III and was a key figure in drafting Hawaii's constitution and advocating recognition for Hawaii as an independent nation.
Lahaina Public Library. Cross Front Street and walk toward the ocean. The Lahaina Public Library is on your right and the distinctive green and white lanai of the Pioneer Inn is on your left. The lawn in front of the Lahaina Library was once a taro patch stretching back to the Baldwin House. At the edge of the lawn, the Hauola Stone is one of the stones that Hawaiian Kahuna (priests) used to help cure illnesses.
Pioneer Inn. Lahaina’s first hotel, the Pioneer Inn was built in 1901 by George Freeland, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who tracked a notorious criminal to Lahaina and then wisely decided to stay for a lifetime. The Pioneer Inn remained the only hotel in West Maui until the 1950s.
Brick Palace. Walk over to the Pioneer Inn and look for a concrete depression in the ground that is the only remains of the Brick Palace. King Kamehameha I had this 20-by-40-foot, two-story brick structure built in 1798 for his wife, Queen Ka’ahumanu, who lived there from 1801 to 1802 while the King was planning his attack on Kauai.
Banyan Tree. Eight feet tall when it was planted in 1873 after arriving from India, the 12 major trunks of the banyan tree in Banyan Tree Square now stretch over a 200’ area in front of the Old Courthouse, now the Visitor’s Center.
Courthouse. A violent windstorm destroyed about 20 buildings in Lahaina early in 1858, including Hale Piula, the courthouse and palace of King Kamehameha III. Rebuilt using stones from Hale Piula, over time it served as courthouse, customhouse, post office, tax collector's office and government offices for Maui County. Continue down Wharf Street to Canal Street.
Fort. Rev. William Richards convinced Governor Hoapili to pass a law forbidding women of Lahaina from swimming out to greet whaling ships. Incensed whalers fired cannons at the missionary compound. In response a fort with 20-foot high walls was constructed in 1831-32 using coral blocks taken from the ocean. Cannons from a wrecked warship were placed along the waterfront where they remain today. Later used as a prison, the fort was torn down in the 1850s and its stones used to rebuild the Courthouse on Wharf Street and to construct a new prison, Hale Paahao.
Canal and Government Market. A canal was dug from one of the freshwater streams that ran through Lahaina to the waterfront in order to give whalers easier access to fresh water. After the canal was built, the government built a thatched marketplace with stalls for Hawaiians to sell goods to sailors. Merchants soon took over and built bars, grog shops and other places of “ill-repute”. Within a few years seafarers knew the area as "Rotten Row”. In 1913 the canal was filled in to construct Canal Street.
Old Lahaina Lighthouse. On the pier next to what was a replica of a 19th-century brig, the Carthaginian, which also served as a museum and audio-visual exhibit of 19th-century boating and whaling in Hawaii, the Old Lahaina Lighthouse was commissioned by Kamehameha III in 1840 to aid navigation for whalers.
Additional Historic Sites. The original Waihee Church (1832) destroyed in a windstorm has been rebuilt several times, most recently in 1953. Next door the first Christian cemetery in Hawaii, Waihee Cemetery, holds the graves of Hawaiian chiefs, missionaries and their families and many members of the royal family. At the corner of Waihee St. and Luakini St., the Hongwanji Mission is a reconstruction of the temple originally built in 1910 by members of Lahaina's Buddhist sect. At the corner of Prison and Waihee streets is the Old Prison called Hale Paahao ("stuck in irons house") by Hawaiians.
On Waihe’e Street just past Waianae Place the small Episcopal Cemetery contains the burial sites of many early Hawaiian Anglicans. Next door, Hale Aloha ("house of love") was built in 1858 by Hawaiians to commemorate God sparing Lahaina from a smallpox epidemic that swept Oahu a few years earlier. On Luakini Street the green wooden Shingon Buddhist Temple is typical of Buddhist churches that sprang up all over the island after Japanese laborers were brought to work in the island’s sugar cane fields.
A brochure published by The Lahaina Restoration Foundation (LRF) for the County of Maui Historic Commission called “Lahaina, A Walking Tour of Historic and Cultural Sights” provides a much more complete and detailed account. Since these brochures sometimes are unavailable, we provide a copy that you can print and take along:
1. THE MASTERS’ READING ROOM stands at the corner of Front and Dickerson and was restored by The LRF in 1970. Originally a storeroom for missionaries, whaling ship captains converted it to a downtown “officers’ club” in 1834. It now serves as the headquarters of the LRF. Its unique coral block and fieldstone construction has been preserved exactly as originally built.
2. The two-story BALDWIN HOME was the home of the Protestant medical missionary, Dwight Baldwin, and his family from the mid-1830s to 1868. The house served as a medical office and as a general center for missionary activity, with a seamen’s chapel and Christian reading rooms for ships’ masters and men nearby. The Baldwins had a fine garden of native and introduced plants: Kukui, kou, banana, guava, figs, and grape arbors. The LRF restored the home and grounds in the early 1960s, complete with many pieces of original furniture and other antiques of the period. (Museum open daily.)
3. (Site only - RICHARDS HOUSE) William Richards was the first Protestant missionary to Lahaina and the RICHARDS HOUSE was the first coral stone house in the islands, on the site of the present Campbell Park. Richards left the mission in the mid-1830s to work directly for the kingdom as chaplain, teacher, and translator to King Kamehameha III. He helped draw up the constitution, traveled to the United States and Europe as the king’s envoy, seeking recognition of the kingdom’s independence, and served as the Minister of Education.
4. (Site only - TARO PATCH) The remnants of a substantial taro patch, called Kapukaiao, were visible as late as the 1950s. Kamehameha III is said to have worked there to show his subjects the dignity of labor.
5. The HAUOLA STONE is popularly believed to have been used by the Hawaiians as a healing place.
6. (Site only - The BRICK PALACE), built around the year 1800 by two ex-convicts from the British penal colony at Botany Bay, Australia, was almost certainly the first western building in the islands. It was made of locally-produced brick. Constructed at the command of Kamehameha I, it was used intermittently as a storehouse and a residence until the 1850s. The cornerstones and foundation have been excavated and a display built by the LRF for the Maui County Historic Commission.
7. The CARTHAGINIAN is a replica of a 19th century brig, typical of the small, fast freighters that brought the first commerce to the Sandwich Isles. Authentically square-rigged, the ship features an exhibit on whales and whaling with colorful audio-visual displays and an original whaleboat discovered in Alaska and returned to Lahaina in 1973. (Museum open daily.)
8. The OLD LAHAINA LIGHTHOUSE fronting the Pioneer Inn in Lahaina was first commissioned by Kamehameha III in 1840 as an aid to navigation for whaleboats coming ashore for R&R. It began as a nine-foot wooden tower that was increased to 26 feet in 1866. The light was provided by a whale oil lamp, kept burning by a Hawaiian caretaker (who was paid $20 per year!). Rebuilt in 1905, the present concrete structure was dedicated by the US Coast Guard in 1916. Thus, this light was the first in the Hawaiian Islands and predates any lighthouse on the US Pacific Coast.
9. The PIONEER INN’S original section fronting the harbor dates from 1901. Additional rooms and shops were added in 1965, but this extension was carefully built to match the style of the original. It served as the only visitor accommodation in West Maui until the late 1950s. The stern old turn-of-the-century regulations for guests are still posted in the rooms.
10. The BANYAN TREE, more than sixty feet high and casting shade on two-thirds of an acre, was planted in April, 1873, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Protestant missionary work in Lahaina.
11. The COURTHOUSE was built with stones from the demolished Hale Piula. It served as a customhouse as well, and was the center of anti-smuggling activity during the whaling era. Here in August 1898, the Hawaiian flag was lowered and the American flag was raised, marking the formal annexation of the islands by the United States.
12. (Mainly site - FORT) The reconstructed remains of part of the waterfront FORT stands in the corner of Banyan Park. The fort was built in the early 1830s after some sailors lobbed cannonballs at the town during an argument with Protestant missionaries over the visits of native women to ships. Visitors thought the fort looked as of it were built more for show than force. It was used mostly as a prison, and was torn down in the 1850s to supply stones for the construction of Hale Pa’ahao.
13. (Site only – CANAL) Lahaina had no natural harbor like Honolulu’s, only an open roadstead, and the whaler’s small “chase boats” had to come in from the deep-water offshore anchorage to trade. When the surf was up, they often had trouble beaching. In the early 1840s, the United States consular representative dug a CANAL to a basin near the market, and charged a fee for its use. After a few years, the government took over the canal and built a thatched market house with stalls – which almost immediately burned down. The canal was filled up in 1913.
14. (Site only – GOVERNMENT MARKET) At the GOVERNMENT MARKET, all trade between natives and ships was carried on. “These are the things which I strictly forbid,” ran the edict of Princess Nahi’ena’ena in 1833, “overcharging, underselling…wrangling, breaking of bargains, enticing, pursuing, chasing a boat, greediness…I hereby forbid women from going to the market enclosure, for the purpose of sightseeing or to stand idly by . . .” Despite this, the area around the market was noted for its gamy activities, and was called Rotten Row.
15. The EPISCOPAL CHURCH in the islands was founded in 1862. The present building dated from 1927, and is notable for an alter painting depicting a Hawaiian Madonna and colorful endemic plants and birds.
16. (Site only - HALE PIULA) “Iron-roof house,” a large two-story stone building with a surrounding piazza, was built in the late 1830s as a palace for Kamehameha III. Hale Piula was not a success. In fact, it was never finished. The king preferred to sleep in a small thatch hut nearby. By the mid-1840s, the king and his advisors were spending more time at Honolulu than Lahaina, and Hale Piula fell into disrepair. It was used as a courthouse for some time, and after a gale damaged it badly in 1858, its stones were used to build the present courthouse.
17. (Site only - MALUULUOLELE PARK) This park hides one of the most interesting parts of old Lahaina. Once there was a pond here, called Mokuhinia, home of a powerful water spirit in the form of a lizard or dragon. A tiny island in the pond, MOKUULA, was for decades a home of Maui chiefs, and then a residence of three Kamehameha kings. Several important chiefs of the early 1800s were buried there. Kamehameha III used to receive visitors at the royal tomb in the late 1830s and early 1840s, showing them the large burial chamber, with its mirrors, velvet draperies, chairs and kahili (feathered staffs), and ornate coffins. Long after the chiefs’ remains were removed, the pond was filled, the island leveled, and a ballpark was created in 1918.
18. WAIOLA CHURCH was the first stone church in the islands, built between 1828 and 1832 by natives under the direction of their chiefs for the Protestant mission. It could seat 3000 Hawaiians packed together on the floor and had calabash spittoons for tobacco-chewing chiefs and ships’ masters. A whirlwind unroofed the church and blew down the belfry in 1858; the bell, once described as “non too sonorous,” fell a hundred feet undamaged. In 1894, native royalists protesting the annexation of Hawaii by the U.S. burned the church. Rebuilt, it burned down again in 1947, was rebuilt, and was demolished by another whirlwind in 1951. The new church, dedicated in 1953, was renamed Waiola, “Water of Life.”
19. WAIOLA CHURCHYARD – here lies history. Here are buried the great and obscure of early Lahaina – Hawaiian chiefs and commoners, seamen, missionaries. Here and there is a reminder of the old custom of marking the tomb with a glass-framed picture. Among the stones are those of Governor Hoapili and his wife Kalakua; Ke’opuolani, (first of the chiefs to be converted to Christianity, wife of Kamehameha I and mother of Kamehameha II, Kamehameha III, and Princess Nahi’ena’ena); and pioneer missionary, William Richards.
20. Members of the Buddhist HONGWANJI MISSION have been meeting here since 1910, when they put up a small temple and a language school. The present building dates from 1927.
21. (Site only - DAVID MALO’S HOUSE) Malo’s House was near the junction of Prison Road and Waine’e Street. Malo, educated at Lahainaluna Seminary as an adult, was the first renowned Hawaiian scholar and philosopher. He developed a keen sense of judgment and was a prime mover in framing the bill of rights and the constitution. His account of the ancient culture, Hawaiian Antiquities, has become a classic. Bitter about growing white control of Hawaii, he asked to be buried “above the tide of the foreign invasion” and his gravesite is on the top of Mt. Ball, above the school. David Malo Day is celebrated annually at the high school in late spring.
22. HALE PA’AHAO, “stuck-in-irons-house,” was Lahaina’s prison from the 1850s. Built at a leisurely pace by convict laborers, out of coral stone from the demolished waterfront Fort, it had the standard wall shackles and ball and chain restraints for difficult prisoners. Most of the inmates were there for desertion from ships, drunkenness, working on the Sabbath, or dangerous horse riding.
23. The EPISCOPAL CEMETARY on Waine’e Street contains burial sites of many early families on Maui who joined the Anglican Church after the Archbishop of Canterbury in England was specifically requested by Queen Emma to form a church in Hawaii.
24. HALE ALOHA can be seen from the cemetery. The “House of Love” was built by native Protestants in “commemoration of God causing Lahaina to escape the smallpox”, while it desolated Oahu in 1853, carrying off 5000-6000 of its population. Completed in 1858, it was used as a church and school for many years, but by the early 1900s it fell into ruins. The County of Maui restored the structure in 1974.
25. The BUDDHIST CHURCH OF THE SHINGON SECT, with its green paint and simple wooden architectural style, is typical of church buildings put up all over Maui in the plantation era, when Japanese laborers were imported to work in the sugar fields.
26. (Site only – LUAKINI STREET) Along LUAKINI STREET in 1837 passed the funeral procession of the tragic Princess Nahi’ena’ena. Caught between the ancient and the modern world, she alternatively worshipped the Protestant God, and yearned after the old traditions, in which a union with her brother Kamehameha III would have preserved the purity of the royal family. She had a son by the king in August 1836. The boy lived only a few hours, and Nahi’ena’ena herself died in December. She was 21. Along the way to her burial place, a path was made through stands of breadfruit and koa trees. It became known as Luakini Street, after the Hawaiian word for the sacrificial heiau, the state temples of the old religion.
27. MARIA LANAKILA CHURCH. The first Roman Catholic mass was celebrated on Maui in 1841, and there has been a Catholic church on this site since 1846. The present church, a concrete replica of an earlier wooden structure, dates from 1928.
28. The SEAMEN’S CEMETARY. Herman Melville’s cousin was buried here, and one of Melville’s shipmates as well, who died in the Seaman’s Hospital of a “disreputable disease.” Over the years, the marked graves of sailors gradually disappeared, until now only one or two are identifiable.
29. HALE PA’I, the printing house of Lahainaluna Seminary, founded by Protestant missionaries in 1831, turned out hundreds of thousands of pages of material in the Hawaiian language. The school is the oldest educational institution west of the Rockies and now serves as the public high school for the Lahaina area. The printing shop was restored in 1980-82 by the LRF under a grant from the State of Hawaii. An exhibit features a replica of the original Ramage press and facsimiles of early printing. (Museum open Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm.)
30. The WO HING MUSEUM on Front Street is affiliated with the Chee Kung Tong, a Chinese fraternal society with branches all over the world. This one dates from early in this century, when the local society had over a hundred members. The Chinese were among the earliest immigrants to Hawaii and became a powerful force in the commerce of Lahaina. (Museum open daily.)
31. The U.S. SEAMEN’S HOSPITAL on Front Street (1833) was once the hideaway of Kamehameha III. The building was leased to the U.S. State Department in 1844 to serve as a center for the treatment of sick and injured seamen, particularly whalers who flocked to these shores between 1820 and 1860. There was scandalous talk in those days that doctors at the hospital collected per diem fees from the government for patients long since buried in the Seamen’s Cemetery. An investigation into these charges was made in 1859, but no official action was ever taken. The site was purchased by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation in 1973 and completely reconstructed in 1982. Next door, the Foundation also maintains an early residence typical of the homes of the sugar plantation camps.