The Royal Hawaiian Resort

When the Royal Hawaiian opened in 1927, its Spanish-Moorish architecture was inspired by Rudolph Valentino’s Arabian films, pink cupolas and all. The $4 million palace had a peculiar quirk: rooms faced the garden, not the Pacific. Guests arrived by luxury steamship after four days at sea, and the last thing they wanted was another ocean view.

The site belonged to descendants of Hawaiian royalty. King Kamehameha’s playground after he conquered Oahu, where Queen Kaahumanu’s Summer Palace once stood where the Coconut Grove garden now spreads. Ancient chieftain grounds, paved over for American vacationers hauling steamer trunks and Rolls Royces across the ocean.

Whitney Warren, a Vanderbilt cousin who spent a decade at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, partnered with Charles Wetmore, the New York firm behind Grand Central Terminal, to design it. Several hundred workers consumed sixty tons of stucco, thirty-seven thousand barrels of cement, one hundred miles of wire, and ten thousand gallons of pink paint on the exterior alone. Mid-construction, the building began sinking into former marshland, forcing an ingenious adjustable foundation that delayed the opening by six months.

Why pink? Friends of Matson executive William Roth visited Lisbon, came home, and repainted their house pink with blue-green shutters. Roth asked simply: “I love what you’ve done to your house. Can I paint my hotel the same color?”

At the black-tie grand opening gala, the Honolulu Symphony entertained 1,200 guests at $10 a plate. Duke Kahanamoku, Olympic swimmer and legendary surfer, frequented the beachfront, making it the stomping ground for his famed Waikiki Beach Boys.

Following the December 7th attack, Japanese planes flew alongside Waikiki Beach passing the Royal Hawaiian on their way to Pearl Harbor. The Navy leased it for $17,000 a month, converting it into an R&R center for submariners. The Coconut Grove cocktail bar became a soda fountain. A baseball diamond went in. Staff shrank from 300 to 12. Officers paid $1 a night; enlisted men, 25 cents. Over 200,000 men stayed there during the war.

It took 600 workers, $2 million, and just over a year to restore it, reopening February 1, 1947, exactly twenty years to the day from its grand opening. The Pink Palace has endured wars, economic crashes, and the death of steamship tourism to become Waikiki’s most recognizable landmark. Nearly a century of uninterrupted glamour at the edge of the Pacific.