Every year for more than a dozen years, I’ve been making photo calendars to give to friends as holiday/New Year gifts. I have usually made three. One with sunrise photos, another featuring our cats, and a third the dogs we meet on our morning walks.
The last five years of sunrise calendars have photos taken along Kahala Beach. For next year, I’ve decided to add some dates marking significant events in the history of the area, and would like to invite suggestions of things you would like to see included.
Here’s a list that I brainstormed yesterday. I’ve been able to attach dates to a few at the top of the list. The rest I’ll have to go searching.
December 1937. K Odada Store hearing for retail liquor sales license license. Repeat april 29, 1938
October 18,1941 grand openign sale for new Okada Store
July 31, 1958. K Okada store in kahala closes. parking for new waialae-kahala shopping center
Nov 4, 1954: Waialae Shopping Center opens
Oct 31, 1968: waialae Shopping Center becomes Kahala Mall
Dec 19, 1986 Kahala Theatres grand opening
May 26, 1968 First episode of Hawaii 5-0 in production
chicken farm at Farmers Road
Kahala Hotel opens/zoning approved/?
Village Inn opens/closes in Kahala
Zippy’s kahala opens
Bishop Estate begins selling fee interest in leaseholds
Michener denied purchase in Kahala
Waialae Drive-in opens/closes
Woolworth’s Kahala store closes
Waialae Bowl opened/closed
Kahala Community Park opens
Waialae Beach Park dedicated
Film studio at diamond head
Famous person buried at Diamond Head Memorial
Diamond Head Memoria Park opens
Spindrifter
J.C. Penney closes
Liberty House
Dairy next to Waialae Country Club closes
Bishop estate announces golf course subdivision
Lots for veterans in Waialae Nui
Kahala Nui opens
Kahala Beach lease expires
Kapiolani Community College opens
First Diamond Head crater festival
Interior Kahala subdivision approved
If you have additional suggestions, please post a description and approximate time period. That will make my online research a bit easier (I hope).
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Ian: I first wrote this years ago when Kahala Nui was named.
Kahala is an ‘ili. Its Hawaiian stewards thought it to extend roughly from the Koko Head side of Black Point to modern Hunakai Street, and from the sea beach to an area just mauka of modern Aukai Avenue. It was bounded by Wai‘alae Nui. Wai‘alae refers to the water of the mudhen and has been deemed to lack the cachet of Kahala, which refers to a species of fish (the amberjack). Personally, I rather like the mudhen.
I think the Pietsch family may be responsible for the first expansion of Kahala: they created the hyphenated subdivision of Wai‘alae-Kahala, which was a lot more Wai‘alae than it ever was Kahala. Maybe whoever extended Kahala Avenue from Hunakai Street past the Wai‘alae Beach Lots to the Isenberg Ranch Road (modern Keala‘olu Avenue) is to blame. Maybe Matson Navigation, when it developed the golf course, considered the image of mudhens congregating on the access road and opted for the honored fish instead.
Placement of Kahala Elementary in the very core of the old Wai‘alae Nui pig and flower farms was a masterstroke. It effected a remarkable expansion of the boundaries of Kahala and gained a form of governmental sanction for the enterprise.
Then, there was the development (in Wai‘alae Iki) of the upscale Kahala Hilton (later known as the Kahala Mandarin Oriental, which was a longer name and therefore pricier still, and later the very ritzy The Kahala Hotel & Resort). With it, Kahala Avenue was duly extended ever deeper into Wai‘alae Iki. Contemporaneously, the Kahala Beach Apartments were opened to house the better classes. (‘60s broker to newly-arrived prospect: “Portlock, Kahala, Black Point and Diamond Head are the established neighborhoods. Wai‘alae Iki is so nouveau. And, there are tract houses in Wai‘alae Nui.”).
The transformation of the Waialae-Kahala Shopping Center into the much tonier Kahala Mall was inevitable. The stores were the same but with carpet covering the cement between them, a better name was needed. And, with that change made, residents of the neighboring Regency At Kahala (in Wai‘alae Nui) could hold their heads up at cocktail parties. Even residents in the Kahala Towers overlooking the shopping center from across the freeway felt better about themselves.
Kahala jumped the golf course when brokers selling waterfront lots in Kai Nani decided that Kahala Beach had come their way. Sand drifts, you know. And, it sounded better than Wai‘alae Beach. That mudhen thing, again.
Truly determined brokers even have promoted some of the Kalaniana‘ole Highway properties formerly owned by the Pfleuger-Cassidays as “Kahala beachfront homes” notwithstanding their unfortunate location in the even more remote ‘Ili of Niu.
Additionally, there is Nohona Kahala (translated as “Kahala Dwelling”, I guess ), most of which is in Kapahulu, on the site of the old Wai‘alae Drive-In. And, more recently, Kahala Kua opened up on the hills of Wai‘alae Iki, with portions sprawling into the Ili of Wailupe. The name is unclear to me but has been explained as “in back of Kahala” or “the spine of Kahala.” I guess you can see Kahala from up there.
And now, in the heart of Wai‘alae, at the very boundary of Wai‘alae Nui and Wai‘alae Iki, on the channelized banks of Wai‘alae Nui Stream, we have Kahala Nui. At least the residents will be close to Kahala Natural Health Center, Kahala Barber & Beauty Salon, and Kahala Shell Auto Care, all on Wai‘alae Avenue, in Wai‘alae Nui. And, the name should eliminate the riffraff.
Queen Liliuokalani would have been pleased. Bernice Pauahi left her a life estate in Kahala. The poor Queen never realized that the devise could be construed to include most of Wai‘alae Nui and chunks of Wai‘alae Iki, Wailupe and Kapahulu! But then, the Queen probably never met a licensed real estate broker.
Bruce Graham
Maybe you want to touch on some of the early deed restrictions that Bishop Estate had in effect.
I have been searching for documentation of discriminatory deed covenants. So far, I haven’t found any clear news reporting, lawsuits, or other documentation. I would obviously welcome anything to get pointed in the right direction.
I thoroughly enjoyed Grahams account of “ progress”, names and places.
Jolly Roger? Drive Inn? I think Spindrifter was originally called Reuben’s – Richard Park played role. He was involved in Snack Shop on Kal?kaua.
What was the objection to James Michener? His book “Hawaii”? I was at Punahou at about the time it came out and remember someone winning the annual speech contest with a presentation trashing him as “dead in Hawaii”. Touchy, some folks.
He stated that it was because his wife was Japanese, and Kahala was, well, white. But I have not found documentation of restricted covenants in the Bishop Estate leases of the period.