Molokai Lodge

The island of Molokai's most recent bid to attract tourism was this serene, two-story, twenty-two-room, neo-Victorian lodge. Billing itself as Hawaii's only “adventure resort,” it offered a myriad of outdoor activities to explore Molokai Ranch's fifty-four-thousand acres. The lodge aptly reflects its place and function by blending an Arts and Crafts ambiance with hula motifs and Queen Anne Revival grandiosity. The modified pavilion-plan building ripples with rounded, balustraded balconies. Lanai on the makai (ocean-facing) elevation provide unobstructed ocean views from the hotel's 1,200-foot elevation, offering the graciousness associated with country houses and grand resorts of the late nineteenth century. On the interior, the great room's open-beam ceiling, lava-rock fireplace, and kiawe (a wood rarely used for construction) log structural members lend rusticity. The eclectic interior design by Mary Philpotts McGrath combines contemporary and retro Hawaiian appointments with Mission and Edwardian furnishings to further the rural retreat atmosphere. The spa and the serpentine black-tiled infinity pool add luxury. The lodge augmented the ranch's previously constructed Kaupoa Beach Village, with its forty “tentalows,” also designed by Philip K. White and Associates, by offering a more substantial base of operations and more refined accommodations. The lodge ceased operations in March 2008.