Hotel History - My Grandparents Build Their First Hotel, the Edgewater
A Saturday Briefing article written by my father, Richard Kelley
Dear readers of The Upgrade -
Hotel History is a way to share father’s newsletters, The Saturday Briefing, from the archives of 40 years of his weekly articles. Through these pieces, I hope to share the legacy that my family built through 4 generations of family hotel ownership of Outrigger Hotels, until our sale in 2016. My father has since passed away, so I want to give his writing new life by sharing it to other fellow hospitality enthusiasts.
-Anne Marie (Kelley) Brown
The Edgewater Grows Out of
Post-War Optimism and Hope
Excerpt from Paddling the Outrigger by Dr. Richard Kelley, pp. 28–30. Originally published in the Saturday Briefing newsletter, 1989–2005.
‘John Wayne was a frequent guest who enjoyed the mai tais, music and cool, late-afternoon breezes …’
In the early 1900s, Waikiki was a bedroom community for the downtown Honolulu commercial area. A trolley, first drawn by mules and later powered by electricity, carried young executives and office workers from Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki, past the duck ponds and taro patches now known as Ala Moana Center, to their Bishop Street offices in less than 30 minutes. They enjoyed the open-air ride, and after work they could take a swim in Waikiki’s gentle waters or visit the bars and restaurants that were scattered about, even in those days.
As demand for home sites grew, a gentleman by the name of Percy Pond subdivided the property makai of Kalakaua Avenue and between Lewers Street and Saratoga Road. Since there were very few automobiles in those days, and most of those were not very big, the streets that Pond laid out were narrow. He included small alleyways behind the houses, possibly for trash collection, and remnants of those paths can still be seen today.
Many small homes were built in the area, some of which were rented out as vacation cottages. The tenants, who generally arrived on a Matson steamer for long stays, had convenient access to Waikiki Beach via the pedestrian right-of-way that still exists on the Diamond Head side of the Outrigger Reef Hotel.
It all changed when World War II ended in 1945. As demand for hotels gradually increased, my parents, who had found success with their new five-story walk-up, the Islander Hotel on Seaside Avenue, turned to the Lewers Street area for their next project. They acquired from the Buscher family a small block of land with several cottages bounded by Beach Walk, Lewers Street and Kalia Road. The cottages facing Lewers Street were turned into shops, and the bungalows at the corner of Kalia and Beach Walk were torn down to make room for the Edgewater Hotel.
I recall the opening of the Edgewater as though it were yesterday. It was 1951. World War II had ended, and in spite of the new war in Korea, early peace talks were in progress. The mood in Hawaiʻi and throughout the nation was one of optimism and hope. A record 50,000 visitors would come to Waikiki, a dramatic increase from the 22,000 visitors in 1929, the year my father and mother came to Hawaiʻi. And the stunning six-story, 100-room Edgewater Hotel, the first modern building to go up in Waikiki after the war, was ready to serve them.
The Edgewater’s first guest was Michael Katona. While awaiting government orders for transfer to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, he paid $6.00 a day for a room at the still-unfinished hotel. They were just beginning to break ground for construction of the Edgewater pool and although my mother told him the hotel wasn’t quite ready for occupancy (there was still no furniture in the rooms), Mr. Katona asked for a room. Not knowing how much to charge, my mother asked him if $6.00 would be fair. He agreed, and the first booking was confirmed. (The Katonas now live in Seattle and have stayed at several of our properties during their many trips to Hawaiʻi.)
