Cover: Huilua Fishpond at Kahana Bay State Park on the windward coast of O'ahu. After years of alteration by tsunami and winter storms, the fishpond is currently being reconstructed by volunteers. Pohaku is the Hawaiian word for stone. Deriving from lava, and the coral reef, the types of stone locally available in Hawai'i are somewhat limited. Lava rock, the Islands' most abundant geomorphic material, assumes a variety of forms. It may have a rough or smooth texture; often times it has been rounded by running streams or pulverized into 'ili'ili by the incessant surf. Weathered, highly porous, basalt rocks contrast markedly with the much heavier, solid basaltic bluestone, which was formed when lava ponded, or ran in dense flows which usually were at least twenty feet in depth.
In stark juxtaposition to the dark lava rocks, coralline materials is a dull white color. It derives from a conglomeration of remains from a multitude of living organisms including such animals as coral, mollusks, foraminifera, and bryozoans, all of which secrete limy shells, and calcareous algae, which deposits calcium carbonates. The latter is often the most predominant material composing the reef.
Hawaiians from ancient times utilized both lava rock and coral as tools and in the construction of a variety of structures, while the sandstone formed along the shorelines of Wai'anae, Mana, and Moloka'i would not be exploited in a substantial way until historic times.
Constructing with stone, especially on a large scale, was a monumental task for the Hawaiians of old. Unaided by the wheel, the pulley, or such powerful animals as the horse or oxen, Hawaiians built heiau, fishponds, trails, and holua, some of which are among the largest structures of their kind in the Pacific. At times lines of people (up to 20,000) stretched for miles, to move each stone to a building site. And not all the stones were small, as four men are needed to lift a single pohaku into place at the breaker wall at windward O'ahu's Kahana fishpond.
With the advent of foreign explorers, traders, and missionaries the architectural traditions of the Western world were brought to bear on the Hawaiian landscape. Hawaiians strove to match their talents with the designs that came from the dreams of missionaries, such as Hiram Bingham's drawings for Kawaiaha'o Church, built of coral blocks sawn from the reef off Honolulu Harbor. Mortar, made from coral that was burned in kilns over many nights to make lime, opened the possibility of erecting freestanding, two story walls that could bear the load of a shingle roof. Churches built by the lay people, often without pay, were great community endeavors that took five or more years to complete.
As quarrying technologies improved, a number of Hawai'i's most substantial late nineteenth, early twentieth century buildings were built of bluestone. The Main Building at Bishop Museum was the first cut bluestone building in the Islands, completed in 1889. The quarry which supplied its stone was right on its doorstep. Other buildings utilized stone from the quarry on Magellan Avenue, now the site of Dole Community Park. Bluestone, from Mo`ili`ili Quarry, now the University of Hawai'i's lower campus, can be seen in the street curbs around Honolulu, where thousands of men, some of them prisoners, were employed over decades cracking the stones and working them into shape.
The distinct layers of bluestone can be seen in the grain and miniscule bubbles in the pohaku as the blue color turns gray with exposure. Architects, such as Clinton Briggs Ripley, Charles W. Dickey, H.L. Kerr, and others strove to show off the pohaku and bring a superior shape and depth to an entire building, in such Honolulu commercial structures as the Bishop Estate Building on Merchant Street, the Nippu Jiji Building on Nu'uanu Avenue and the McCandless Building at King and Bethel streets.
Pohaku are the stones of Hawai'i, their journey through fire and water solidified, a knowledge that waits calmly behind the surface, reflective to our touch.
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