Hau'oli la hanau: Historic birthday for Moana Hotel

Virginia Murison consulted the ghosts of the old Moana Hotel to bring the grand old lady of Waikiki back to life. Without their help, the hotel might not be celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend in such fine fashion.

The Moana Hotel, which opened in 1901, has been restored to a turn-of-the-century motif. The original one cost $150,000 to build. Advertiser library photo

When it opened March 11, 1901, the hotel was one of Oahu’s biggest, most elaborate buildings. A newspaper story the next day said the hotel was a "house of good cheer. . . . furnished throughout with rare taste and every comfort which can be found in the hotels of the mainland."

Today the hotel, known as the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, still stands out as an island of old-world graciousness amid Waikiki’s bustle and clutter.

In between, though, there were years of aging and neglect that brought the hotel into decay and disrepair.

That’s when Murison arrived on the scene in 1983. Murison, an architect, originally was called in to consult on plans for a new carpet. She ended up overseeing a six-year, $50 million, award-winning project that returned the Moana to its place among the best hotels on the beach when it reopened in 1989.

"One thing just led to another," she recalled. "First we talked about safety, new fireproof doors, then air-conditioning, a new roof."

Eventually, the talks with the hotel owners grew into a full-scale rehabilitation project. Using federal laws that provided tax breaks for historic preservation projects, Murison developed a master plan meant to fully restore the structural integrity and amiable atmosphere of the hotel, which over the years had played host to Robert Louis Stephenson; Edward, Prince of Wales; Amelia Earhart; 30 years of the "Hawai‘i Calls" radio shows; and countless movie stars, musicians and others seeking a few days stay in old Honolulu.

"Guests are always amazed at the sense of history here," said Tony Bissen, who leads twice-a-day tours of the hotel. "It’s a miracle that we’ve survived without hurricanes, tsunamis or termites. It goes to show you how well the original hotel was built."

100th anniversary events Anniversary Show: Cocktail and appetizer reception 5-7 p.m. tonight, Grand Salon, Grand Salon terrace, W.C. Peacock and lawn areas; 7 p.m., two-hour show featuring entertainers Jeffrey Apaka, Nina Kealiiwahamana and Bill Kaiwa, all former participants in the “Hawaii Calls” show. Also appearing: Halau Hula Olana. $100. Outdoor premiere screening of “Waikiki” by local filmmaker Edgy Lee, with shots of the original Moana Hotel, 7:15 p.m. tomorrow, Kuhio Beach, with closed-circuit TV hookup at Moana dining area. Free. Centennial anniversary brunch 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday on the Diamond Lawn and Banyan Veranda. $40. Other events planned throughout the year: Showings of classic films featuring Hawai‘i; Na Kupuna nights with Hawaiians passing along their knowledge of music, culture and history; evenings with Moana chef Daniel Delbrel; and Fabulous ’50s and big band theme parties. Information: 922-3111

The hotel was designed in the Colonial and Queen Anne styles adopted for Hawai‘i by Minnesota architect O.G. Traphagen and built for $150,000 by English businessman Walter Peacock, who lived in the 1890s on the Moana site. Outside, the hotel boasted elaborate features, including an elegant porte-cochere and a roof garden festooned on opening day with red, white and blue electrical lights.

Inside, each guest floor was outfitted in a different fine wood: oak, mahogany, maple, koa and cherry. Rooms were equipped with a telephone and private bath, and the common areas included a billiard room, saloon, parlor, library, office and O‘ahu’s first electric elevator. The first guests paid $1.50 per night. (Today, the rack rate for a room ranges from $240 to $3,000 a night.)

All that glory had pretty much faded, however, by the time Murison was hired to work on the renovation project. The original architectural drawings were long gone and numerous additions, and changes had covered up many of the best features.

The changes began as early as 1918 when two floors were added to the main wooden building along with concrete wings on each side designed in the Italian Renaissance style.

In the 1930s, well-known architect C.W. Dickey effectively demolished the hotel’s porte-cochere, replacing it with what Murison describes as "Hitleresque" columns.

A 1950s modernization campaign replaced all the arches, shaped columns and decorative railings with pipe columns, square openings and metal picket railings. The open-air first-floor porches were filled in with lattice work and through-the-wall air-conditioning systems.

"By 1986, only those with a good memory could see her beauty," Murison said. "To all the others, she was a dog."

Recreating the first version

Murison had to rely on the past to tell her how to bring the hotel back to its original brilliance.

She looked at old photographs, studied old fabric samples, and checked old paint samples to learn all she could.

And then there were the ghosts. Architectural ghosts.

"The ‘ghosts’ are little hints and shadows of the way things used to be," Murison said. "They were pleasant surprises that helped us to reconstruct the original design of things." The ghosts included:

A small piece of the original railings found in a back storage room on the sixth floor. That became the template for other railings throughout the hotel.

Delicate spindle designs found buried beneath a Masonite skin on the fourth floor and never seen in any of the hundreds of historic photos studied before the project began.

The markings of columns and fleur-de-lis found in the floor wax and paint, allowing the original size and shape to be determined by comparing them to examples in classic architectural textbooks and old catalogs.

Original plasterer’s templates and decorative plaster and concrete fragments found buried in the sand of a crawl space beneath the hotel.

"We were thankful that the ghosts of 1901 hung in there long enough for us to find them," Murison said.

So are the hotel’s guests and visitors, Bissen said.

Tours into the past

"A lot of the people who come on the daily tours are attracted by the beautiful structure they see," Bissen said. "They’re really eager to learn more about the history."

Bissen starts his hotel tour at a second-floor historical gallery filled with pictures, menus, postcards and artifacts of the hotel - and its famous guests - through the whole century. Then Bissen takes people upstairs through the extra-wide corridors (more room for steamer trunks) to see the high ceilings and the decorative windows, many of which still have the original 1901 glass. At the top of the hotel, there’s the old garden (now converted to a meeting room) and the famous slanted, kapakahi rooms caused by a construction error when the main building was joined to the wings in 1918.

"I can’t tell you how many of the guests recall staying here years before or hearing their parents tell about staying here," Bissen said. "They all say how nice it is that the hotel hasn’t changed."

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