Washington Place: Harboring American Claims, Housing Hawaiian Culture

The house known as Washington Place was built in Honolulu between 1841 and 1847, and the dwelling is an eclectic mix of Greek Revival and indigenous tropical architectural components. It received its name, Washington Place, with ceremonial fanfare in February 1848. Since its construction, Washington Place has held a prominent position in Hawai‘i even as its occupants changed. First it was the home of an enterprising merchant trader, Captain John Dominis, and his family, then to Queen Lili‘uokalani, and finally to the territorial and state governors. It remained foremost a residence but was adapted for diplomatic functions (Figure 1). Its advantageous location in the midst of what became Honolulu’s civic center, and Lili‘uokalani’s presence in the 1890s and early 1900s, made this dwelling unlike any other. The self-conscious naming of the house in honor of the first President of the United States cloaked subversive plans and, ironically, this protective coloration extended to Lili‘uokalani after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 (Figure 2). The symbolic “piece of American soil” claimed through the naming of Washington Place was reshaped into a bastion of Hawaiian culture behind the building’s walls of coral stone and within its AngloAmerican floor plan. In January 1893, a haole (foreign)-led contingent of men with commercial interests in the Hawaiian Islands seized control of the government. They were bolstered by their positions of power within the judiciary and legislature as well as by the presence of the USS Boston in the Honolulu harbor. The coup marked a rupture with the past for the kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiians), despite their accommodation of haole cultural constructs over the course of the nineteenth century. The political subjugation of the islands was made complete when annexation to the United States occurred in 1898. The loss of sovereignty exacerbated the ongoing erosion of Hawaiian customs in the wake of sustained contact with the West. The assault on Hawaiian beliefs and traditional practices accelerated with the acceptance of Christianity by increasing numbers of the Hawaiian ali‘i nui (ruling chiefs) and by their increasing adherence to its teachers as well as its teachings. One powerful convert was a chiefess, Ka‘ahumanu, who also ended the custom of gender-segregated dining. Ka‘ahumanu’s actions virginia price