It’s hard to imagine now, but quiet Mamane Street in Honokaa once was the center of the third-largest town in what was then the Territory of Hawaii.
It’s hard to imagine now, but quiet Mamane Street in Honokaa once was the center of the third-largest town in what was then the Territory of Hawaii.
For the past several years, a group of dedicated volunteers has worked to ensure Honokaa’s plantation heyday isn’t forgotten or its stories swept to the wayside.
“It’s a unique kind of setting when you look at the town,” said Gerald De Mello, a coordinator for the Historic Honokaa Town Project and retired administrator at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “Its architecture — it’s not anything you’d see in Europe. What you see is the setting for the plantation era, the paniolo, the territory architecture.
“A lot of people of all ethnicities came together and helped build the town, so it’s exciting.”
The effort is itself a revitalization of attempts in the 1970s to preserve and promote Honokaa’s history.
Signs on Highway 19 now remind drivers heading to Waimea or Hilo that “Historic Honokaa Town” is more than just a bypass and might be worth a stop on its own merit.
Honokaa’s bypass status is part of the reason it retains its historic buildings and downtown character, De Mello said, but it also led to economic difficulty for the town as it transitioned from its plantation roots.
The historic town project is a way to bolster Honokaa for visitors and island residents alike.
“The thought being is we try to generate civic pride; we try to accentuate the history of the area so people who live there, people from Hawaii Island, will appreciate the sense of history,” De Mello said.
The sense of history is rooted in the facades of Mamane Street’s commercial buildings. Few of the buildings still serve their original functions, but the distinct structures themselves remain in place.
Efforts are ongoing to list these buildings on the state and federal registers of historic places.
The listings are a key component of the overall preservation effort. The National Register of Historic Places is a division of the National Park Service, and listings are part of the NPS database. Commercial buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places are eligible for federal grants and tax breaks for repairs.
In 2015, the Honokaa People’s Theatre, the Hotel Honokaa Club and the Ferreira Building were added to the National Register, with the Hasegawa Building following on their heels.
New plaques outside each building detail their histories, which also are included in a Honokaa walking tour pamphlet created by Ross Stephenson, a project coordinator and former keeper of the Hawaii Register of Historic Places.
The historic preservation efforts already have had an impact in town.
“We’ve done a lot of repairs and paintings on a number of different buildings,” Stephenson said. “We’re moving along, and we’re also trying to get more things (in town) like parking and restrooms.”
There is just one small public parking lot in town, which De Mello said often can’t accommodate the town’s new visitors.
Nomination paperwork for four other buildings also has been sent off. The Methodist/Congregationalist Church, the Sakata Building, the Yamatsuka Store and the Kotake Store are all under consideration.
“We’re hoping to go before the (state) review board in June,” De Mello said. “If we can do it sooner, we’re fine with it because we’re ready to go.”
Three more applications are in the works, including one for the Bank of Hawaii building, which De Mello considers a “gem of architecture.”
Each listing application must address why a given building is historic and how it contributes to sense of place.
The walking tour pamphlet notes, for example, the front of the Sakata Building is one of the oldest commercial structures in town. The back of the property housed Dr. Koshiro Tofukuji’s hospital, which was seized by the U.S. government as war reparations after World War II because Tofukuji was a Japanese national.
But it is the combined sense of place created by Honokaa’s buildings that creates the real impact, De Mello said.
“Collectively, the place becomes significant,” he said.
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.