Public gets a rare glimpse of Hawai’i family Robinson

KAPALAWAI — It’s easy to imagine, when you look at the sturdy but neglected

Robinson family mansion here, of a time when the predominant sound was rocking

chairs on expansive lanais made of imported wood.

Or how on the other side

of the house, facing (but invisible from) Kaumuali’i Highway, about 50 years

ago a party was going on, with the men playing pool and the women gathered

around the rectangular-shaped Steinway piano.

Of a time not so long ago

when Makaweli Ranch employees came to a smaller house near the mansion to

collect their pay envelopes. It was cash in those envelopes, and the ranch

personnel were on a different pay schedule from the sugar plantation workers,

recalls Joseph Manini, Sr., a 47-year ranch cowboy who is now retired.

Of

how the workers on payday would take the left fork where the road splits in

order to avoid the watchful eye of the Robinson luna (manager) — likely Selwyn

or Aubrey Robinson.

Of times not long ago when the family home was social

central for the whole west side, if not the entire island or a big chunk of the

central Pacific.

But one also must remember that this is the intensely

private Robinson family. So unless you lived, worked here or were invited here,

you didn’t come here.

Indeed, what drew many of the 50 people to a tour

yesterday of the 160-acres between Makaweli and Waimea—the proposed site of a

resort development—is the fact that the family was opening up its makai lands,

if only for a morning, to public inspection.

There were curious tourists

along with many curious residents who joined the state Land Use Commission for

the tour of the historic property.

The commission—which left the field

trip to begin a two-day public hearing that was scheduled to conclude today—is

considering a petition to change the state designation of the property from

agriculture to urban to allow a 250-cabin resort, with the mansion and an

equally historic fishpond as focal points.

And there’s about 4,000 feet of

pristine, white sand beach likely to be of interest to visitors and residents

alike. Many of the proposed cabins would be 50 feet or less from the

shoreline.

But the home is likely to continue being the showcase, with

7,000 square feet of interior space. In the middle of the last century, the

place was likely to have been bustling with activity as out-of-town

guests—farmers and others—found what must have been luxurious accommodations

and classic plantation hospitality.

It’s easy to see how the home in its

heyday was even the envy of the ruling Hawaiian chiefs of those days.

A

huge, nine-foot-wide lanai wraps the exterior of the home (it’s even wider at

the front and back of the estate), with an equally generous wraparound lanai

overlooking the enclosed courtyard area in the center of the

mansion.

Termite damage to the all-wood home is surprisingly minimal.

Planner Scott Ezer of Helber Hastert and Fee, a consulting firm hired by the

project developer, said that’s probably the result of the sea salt the imported

wood absorbed on its trans-Pacific trip to Kaua’i.

The mansion, built in

1897 by Aubrey Robinson, has 17,000 square feet of living space, including the

expansive lanais and interior courtyard.

Various generations of the

Robinson family lived in the home from the time it was built until the late

1980s, when Eleanor Robinson had the huge house largely to herself.

Her

will provides for an open-space view corridor from the front porch to the ocean

in perpetuity, something with which developer Lew Geyser of Destination

Villages Kaua’i says he will gladly comply.

After much debate, it was

decided to leave the mansion, a nearby guest house and about a dozen other

buildings in the compound intact, though the dilapidated former carriage house

and garage won’t be so lucky.

A building for cultivating ferns, built

partially below ground to escape the Westside heat, is to be spared, Ezer told

the crowd during the tour.

And nearly 10 employee homes on the property —

some still occupied — will remain inhabited by the workers and their families

for as long as they desire, he added.

In something that has grown to be

expected from the island’s largest private landowner (51,000 acres on Kaua’i

and all 46,000 acres of Ni’ihau), the resort proposal faced some near-fatal

family opposition simply because it meant breaking from the generations-old

tradition of Sunday as a no-work day.

There was a time when Robinson family

employees could not even wash their cars on a Sunday. Several of the family

members still religiously honor the Sabbath as a true time of rest — their

only day off, making it important as a day of relaxation.

At least at the

mansion and developed property, that would change. A bar, two restaurants,

three swimming pools, sports courts on the beach and near the home, a sewage

treatment plant and other amenities would comprise a seven-day-a-week

operation.

The bar — like the meeting rooms, administrative offices and

museum to be located in the mansion — still may close Sundays, in deference to

family tradition.

The estimated price tag for restoring the main home alone

is $1 million, a figure thought too low by some among those touring the

property.

The parcel is “blessed,” Ezer said, with much mature landscaping

in place, including fruit-bearing trees. A back-to-nature theme is planned, as

the resort would not have paved vehicular roads crisscrossing it, he

continued.

It will remain, as it has nearly always been, a place where

walking will be encouraged as the main mode of transportation, Ezer

said.

When the family lived at Kapalawai full-time, they were

self-sufficient, with horses, cows, goats, pigs, gardens, fruit trees and other

items of sustenance.

Still today, employee break time is often heralded by

the consumption of juicy mango from the property.

Beside the main house,

the physical feature drawing much discussion is a fishpond that, depending on

who’s talking, dates back to 200 B.C. or around 1000 A.D.

The 6.5-acre

pond, which hasn’t been maintained but at least through 1953 was still a

working fishpond fed by three springs responsible for bringing 2 million

gallons of water a day to the pond, will be restored to working condition,

according to developers.

Near the mauka point of the fishpond, the family

built a pumphouse to suck water from the pond to irrigate nearby

acreage.

Archaeological surveys and other investigations put the age of the

fishpond at about 1,000 years. But Manini contends that when his ancestors

first arrived here 200 years before the birth of Christ, they immediately began

cultivating fish from the 900-foot-long, 300-foot-wide pond.

Everyone

agrees, though, that the fishpond is a great resource. There are not many like

it in the state. It is also the home to at least two endangered species of

native birds.

The pond is thought to be a natural depression that Hawaiians

further defined into the teardrop fishpond shape with the construction of rock

walls.

Near the pumphouse and one end of the fishpond is a try-pot, a huge

iron receptacle once used aboard whaling ships to hold whale oil. On dry land,

the family filled the pot with molasses, which the cows loved. This move also

gave the cows a healthy thirst, which they quenched at nearby drinking water

sources.

A rock pile near the western border of the property is believed by

archaeologists to be just that — a pile of stones big and small brought to

this site from an adjacent field cleared for agricultural purposes.

It

measures 150 feet in length by 80 feet wide, and is eight feet tall, with

several layers of alterations. Oral histories seem to confirm that the site is

simply a clearing pile from that adjacent field.

But some Native Hawaiians

feel the rock pile is a heiau, something Manini said his cowboy co-workers a

generation older than him confirmed to him while he was still working

there.

Another Native Hawaiians couldn’t say for sure if the area is

suspected to be a heiau, but she felt the presence of Hawaiian spirits while

walking toward the rock pile.

The same person said she is sure an area of

the property from the highway to the ocean marked on the highway side by a

once-ornate iron gate is a pathway for Hawaiian spirits to journey to the ocean

and their jumping-off place for entering the eternal other world after their

human death.

The pathway, called “leina” in Hawaiian, means “place to leap

from.”

The developer and his representatives dug 23 exploratory subsurface

trenches around the property, looking for signs of former human occupation on

the property, and discovered one set of human remains and other signs of life

before the Robinsons.

Regardless of what the formation might be, the

developer plans to leave it in an undisturbed state, with no other new

construction around it.

Final decisions on the project are expected from

the Land Use Commission and the Kaua’i County Planning Commission by some time

in October.

Staff writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at 245-3681

(ext. 224) or pcurtis@pulitzer.net