From a strictly architectural perspective, there is no compelling reason to visit the island of Molokai. There are no forms, materials, building techniques, or styles on the island that cannot be observed in one variation or another on other islands in the Hawaiian chain. This does not mean,...
Maunaloa was established by 1923 by Libby, McNeill and Libby as a base of operations for their pineapple enterprise. It remained a plantation town with a small commercial core and worker housing until 1975 when Dole, which bought out Libby in 1972, shut down pineapple production...
Originally the headquarters for Molokai Ranch, this town became a center of pineapple production in the 1920s, when the ranch leased the property to California Packing Corporation, which later became Del Monte. Following the termination of Del Monte's operations in 1982, Molokai Ranch...
Formed by a single volcano (1.3 million years ago), this low-lying island is blocked from the rain-bearing trade winds by the west Maui mountains; it receives less than thirty-seven inches of rain per year. Lanai was largely un-inhabited until the sixteenth century, although it was visible from five...
The first planned community in Hawaii, Lanai City was laid out in a grid pattern by engineer D. E. Root for Dole Pineapple in 1923. The town centers on the commercial, governmental, and religious buildings that surround Dole Park, a 7.5-acre village green. The buildings, by and large, are...
The “Big Island,” the island of Hawaii, with its 4,028 square miles, comprises more area than all the other Hawaiian Islands combined. It is also the youngest of the Islands, with volcanic activity still increasing its land area. The product of five volcanoes, Hawaii's oldest peaks, the Kohala...
Situated on the west, leeward coast of the island of Hawaii, Kailua-Kona served as a royal center for Kamehameha I during his final years. Here the Protestant missionaries first landed and established a mission station. Royalty used Kailua-Kona as a retreat from the...
For much of the twentieth century, Hilo was the second-largest city in the island chain, and it was not until the early 1960s that Kailua on Oahu surpassed the “Crescent City” (so named because the city sits on a crescent-shaped bay) in population. Fueled by a keen spirit of boosterism, many of...
Sugar was the economic base for more than a century along the fifty-mile stretch of the Hawaii Belt Road (HI 19) on this northeast, windward side of the island. Until the last two sugar mills closed in 1994, the area was characterized by unending fields of cane, only interrupted by deep...
Honokaa is the most intact and impressive small town on the island of Hawaii. Its primary artery, Mamane Street, presents a coherent architectural tableau, the work of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and others who moved beyond plantation jobs to start their own enterprises. Almost all the...
Situated 2,670 feet above sea level in a high mountain pasture on the north slope of Mauna Kea, Waimea has been the home of Parker Ranch since 1847. Once encompassing over 500,000 acres, the ranch was for a number of years the largest privately owned ranch in the United States. Today the ranch...
Hawi and Kapaau are over the Kohala Mountains from Waimea by way of County Highway 250. Former sugar towns, they are characterized by the wood frame, false front, vernacular buildings that line the highway. Following Kohala Sugar Company's closure in the 1970s,...
Rose de Freycinet, who accompanied her husband, Louis, on a round the world scientific expedition, described this region in her journal in 1819, “Nobody can ever have seen a more arid and dreadful aspect than this part of the island of Owighee that we have before us;...
The region spreading westward some one hundred miles from the west bank of the Mississippi River was the first area settled in Iowa by Europeans and Anglo-Americans. The topography of this area is that of rolling hill country penetrated by a pattern of rivers and...
The community was laid out in the mid-1840s on rolling land north of the Wapsipinicon River. Its economic future was assured when the county seat and the state penitentiary were located there, and later when it became a junction point for the Iowa Midland Railroad and the...
The riverside community of Bellevue was laid out initially in 1835 and was resurveyed in the 1840s. Though it had a number of operating mills by mid-century, its economy was that of a shipping point, first as a Mississippi River port and then later as a railroad stop....
Bennett, in eastern Cedar County, possesses a fine example of a Prairie school brick bank building, now used as the community's town hall and public library. Constructed in 1919 on the corner of Main and Sixth streets, the structure has an entrance somewhat reminiscent of...
The city, named after Burlington, Vermont, since its earliest settlers came from there, was laid out along the Mississippi in 1834 5on a site selected by Zebulon Pike nearly thirty years earlier. Its grid, placed at...
In 1836 a town named New York was platted at the present site of Clinton, but the projected town did not develop. In response to the prospect of a railroad bridge being built across the Mississippi at this point, Clinton was platted in 1855, and its grid developed parallel...
The site of DeWitt on the high prairie was selected as the seat of Clinton County in 1840 because of its central location. Within the town's north-south, east-west grid, the public square was placed one block east of Church Street (the main street). By the 1870s DeWitt had...
In the 1850s, before the Civil War, Dubuque was described as “one of the largest and most densely populated [cities] in the state.” The city was “handsomely situated upon a natural terrace,” and it was noted that “this city is more compactly built, and contains a greater...
Within the small railroad town of Durant is Saint Paul's Episcopal Church (c. 1875), located on Sixth Street, south of Third Street. Its low-pitched roof, bracketed eaves, and general proportions are late Italianate, but the windows with pointed arches are obviously meant to...
Elkader perfectly fits one's image of a small, prosperous midwestern community. The name for the town was coined after the romantic nineteenth-century Algerian leader Abd-el-kader. The surrounding country is hilly and covered with trees; through this winds the Turkey River...
Sited on the banks of the Turkey River, Elkport houses a little gem of a building, the Elkport Savings Bank (c. 1895) on Main Street near the center of town. The building (now deserted) is tiny, but the architect made the most of its narrow street elevation. The front...
Three miles east of Fairport on Iowa 22, near Montpelier, is the 417-acre Wildcat Den State Park. This heavily wooded, hilly, and stream-cut terrain was acquired by Emma and Clark Brint in 1925. Their desire was to protect this wild, romantic place from any encroachment....
The town of Franklin, as well as much of the surrounding area, is one of the sections of the state that abounds with stone buildings—commercial blocks, houses, cottages, and barns. Most of these date from the 1860s and early 1870s. Two examples within Franklin include the...
Within Garnavillo's downtown, close to the junction of US 52 and route C17, is the Farmers State Bank Building (1915, now the Garnavillo Savings Bank). The small brick-clad elongated box reads as a Prairie-style bank building, primarily because of its...
The community's original name was Prairie La Porte, reflecting its early settlement by people of French extraction. Later (from 1845 onward) the town was colonized by Germans sponsored by the Western Settlement Society of Cincinnati, Ohio. The first platting of the town...
