Profiling a part of Hawai'i set in stone

POHAKU: The Art & Architecture of Stonework in Hawai'i by various authors; Editions Limited, oversize hardback, $39.95

By Wanda Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

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Book signings for 'Pohaku' 2 p.m. today, Borders, Ward Centre; 4 to 5 p.m. today, Borders, Waikele; noon to 1 p.m. today, Borders stores in Hilo, Lihue, Kahului and Kona. 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Nov. 19, Na Mea Hawai'i downtown Noon to 1 p.m. Nov. 20, Bestsellers downtown 11 a.m. to noon Nov. 22, BookEnds Kailua 2 to 4 p.m. Nov. 29, Native Books and Na Mea Hawai'i, Ward Warehouse 3 to 4 p.m. Dec. 6, Barnes & Noble Kahala Mall Noon to 1 p.m. Dec. 18, Bestsellers downtown

And that was where "Pohaku," a new book released Friday, was born. Cheever, a travel writer and marketing consultant who once headed the office of the American Institute of Architects here, saw a book in the many ways in which stones are important to Hawai'i's cultural life, art and architecture. His son, Scott Cheever, who has helped research a number of writing projects, worked with him to list stones and stone structures to profile.

The two approached architects, historians and writers throughout the community to write essays for the book, and persuaded architects Janine Shinoki Clifford and Frank S. Haines to act as editors and award-winning photographer Doug Peebles to shoot the art.

More than 50 writers were involved, including the late historian/curator Jim Bartels, who wrote the Washington Place essay before his death earlier this year, and reporter/historian Nancy Bannick, who contributed a dozen different pieces.

More than 100 stones or stone structures are covered, from heiau and named sacred stones to dry masonry walls and even stone pathways, such as the one down the pali to Kalaupapa on Moloka'i. Buildings in the book range from public edifices, including the Bishop Museum, Central Union Church and the Nippu Jiji Building, to private residences such as the "coral house" near Kualoa Ranch and the MacNaughton family home at Pu'upanini in Kahala.

Each spread includes photographs and a story spread over one or several pages — the history of the stone structure, the human story behind it, details of the design and architectural approach.

For anyone with a sense of history, the stories open imaginative doors.

Bannick tells the story of the Elma Schadt House, known to Kualoa-area residents as "the coral house." It turns out to have been the home of composer Charles King and his lover and financial savior, an heiress named Elma Schadt. King gave Schadt the land on which the cottage stands, and she supervised the building of a fanciful if architecturally confused beachside home made of blocks cut from the reef offshore. There, King wrote "Ke Kali Nei Au/The Hawaiian Wedding Song" and "Lei Aloha Lei Makamae." It had been Schadt's plan to create a restaurant as part of the home, but zoning laws prohibited that.

Restoration architect Uwe H.H. Schulz tells how, back in 1980, the construction of a neighboring condominium project on Lahaina's Front Street was the death of the coral and lava-walled Seamen's Hospital, which had served both as a health facility and a girls' school over the years. Vibrating rollers used to compact fill that would form the foundation of the condo had the effect on the then more than 150-year-old building of "a slow, continuous earthquake," Schulz explains picturesquely. The building was rubble before it was surveyed and then rebuilt reusing the coral and field stone in 1981.

Kimberly Tiger Mills, a master's degree candidate in urban and regional planning, and architect Lisa W. Reinke collaborated on a piece that offers romantic details about the 27 fish ponds that the lined the estuary of Pu'uloa, known today as Pearl Harbor. Tradition has it that certain of the ponds were built by means of long lines of workers who moved lava rock hand to hand from mountain to sea. Later, when the rare walled fishtraps of Pakule (said to have been built by menehune in a single night) were destroyed to build Pearl Harbor, it is said that a worker took the sacred rocks out to sea so that no one could "harm or defile them."

Cheever said that he's not shown the book to a single person who didn't return with the comment, "I didn't know that." And he expressed great admiration for the way people in Hawai'i have related to rock over the generations — from the ancient settlers who brought important rocks from their homes to the south, to the Portuguese stone masons who brought their cutting skills and their masonry bread ovens to the Islands.

"It's really a story of how wondrous this place is in which we live. People who love this place are going to discover more to love about it in this book," said Cheever.

Here's an irony: The stone wall that started it all is not in the book — except as a postscript photograph. Although the Cheevers have come to believe the wall was commissioned by the original developer of the Pacific Heights neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century, a man named Desky, they were never able to find out for sure. It remains one of the mysteries that might be explored in a sequel.