Holiday showcase home benefits Hawai'i Theatre
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
Bobby Carpenter, a professional "renovation facilitator," obviously knows a thing or two about fixing up homes. That's why he agreed to open his home as a Christmas fund-raiser for the historic Hawai'i Theatre.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser . . . First Noela • 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday
His remodeled, graceful kama'aina residence on Noela Place, on the slopes of Diamond Head, will be open to the public Friday through Sunday as part of "First Noela," which includes the sale of decorator Christmas trees and wreaths, ornaments and gift items.
This mannequin is part of the setting for the Hawai'i Theatre gift shop's Christmas display.
• 3929 Noela Place, on the slopes of Diamond Head
• Tickets: $20 each; a benefit for the Hawai'i Theatre Center
• Decorated Christmas trees and wreathes, ornaments and unique gifts from Hawai'i artists
• Charge by phone: 528-0506
• Also: Opening-night gala Friday, including pupus, live entertainment, silent auction of trees and first-chance shopping, $125
Emmy-award winning designer Wally White has been hired to coordinate the Christmas decorations in the home. In addition to bringing in other designers from Neiman Marcus, C.S. Wo and elsewhere to decorate trees, White is displaying his $40,000 collection of antique ornaments and historic miniature trains to give the home a festive look.
"Everything is going to be planned, but only more or less," said White, who finds things for his collection everywhere from designer stores to wholesale floral marts to Kmart. "Designing a place for Christmas is just something that happens when you have the spirit," he said.
Even without the decorations, though, the house would be worth a visit. "In my native Charleston (S.C.), many homes are open to the public," Carpenter said. "This just isn't the case in Honolulu, so we hope people will appreciate what a fabulous offering this is."
Designed by famed local architect Bert Ives in the 1950s, the home has aged distinctively as it passed through several owners. Carpenter, a Hawai'i Theatre board member, said he's had his eye on the home for years and finally was able to buy it when it came on the market earlier this year.
The home is a series of rooms built around landscaped courtyards and pools in the Chinese style. Inside, the touches, like the extensive use of wooden panels and shoji doors, feel more Japanese. And the open floor plan leading out to a pool, more gardens and separate guest pavilion are definitely the work of a Hawai'i architect.
House Beautiful magazine, which profiled the home in 1958, said it was "evidence that the Hawaiian capacity for assimilation and tolerance is creating an indigenous Hawaiian style as surely as it has created Hawai'i's incomparably successful sociological melting pot."
It's the little touches that Carpenter likes to show off to visitors — the hand-made door pulls, the garden river rocks flown in by the original owner from Japan, the hanging iron lamps around the courtyards and pools. "I'm still discovering more things as we remodel and trim back the garden," he said.
