A native of Hungary, Charles W. Spitz (1854-1942) immigrated to Hawai‘i in 1880, following a long voyage around Cape Horn, and soon found employment at Kilauea Sugar Plantation on Kaua‘i.
Three years later, after working out his passage money at Kilauea, he moved on to Maui to become a clerk in the general plantation store at Hana.
Then in 1885, with storekeeper experience under his belt and with additional cash he’d saved, he returned to Kaua‘i to open his own general store in Nawiliwili.
Spitz also opened Kaua‘i’s first hotel, the house-sized Fairview, in 1890 on Rice Street (then called Government Road) about where the banyan trees now stand at Kalapaki Villas.
And, sometime during the first decade of the 1900s, he opened the Hotel Waimea, renamed the Bay View Hotel in 1913.
By the way, Spitz sold his Fairview Hotel in 1894 to Sheriff William Henry Rice, who renamed it Lihu‘e Hotel, and in 1946, Rice’s estate sold Lihu‘e Hotel to Inter-Island Resorts, which modernized it as the Kaua‘i Inn.
The Kaua‘i Inn remained open until 1963.
Returning to Spitz, we see that in 1912 he became proprietor of Coney Garage Co., an automobile repair shop, thereafter called Nawiliwili Garage.
A year later, Spitz entered the fledgling automobile business when his Nawiliwili Garage became Kaua‘i’s original Ford dealership.
Spitz’s Nawiliwili Garage was also the agent for Studebaker automobiles, as well as the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co.
In 1920, Spitz disposed of his interest in Nawiliwili Garage.
And, in 1923, Nawiliwili Garage was renamed the Garden Island Motors, the year it was relocated into the building of the same name still standing on Kuhio Highway in Lihu‘e.
Then in 1931, Charles A. Rice obtained ownership of Garden Island Motors, which he sold to his grandson, Holbrook Goodale in 1958, who in turn moved the business to the Lihu‘e Industrial Center in 1965 and sold it in 1998.
Businessman Charles W. Spitz and his wife, Bernice, a member of the Ahahui Ka‘ahumanu Society and the Daughters of Hawai‘i, had one son, Charles William Spitz Jr.
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Hank Soboleski has been a resident of Kauai since the 1960s. Hank’s love of the island and its history has inspired him, in conjunction with The Garden Island Newspaper, to share the island’s history weekly. The collection of these articles can be found here: https://bit.ly/2IfbxL9 and here https://bit.ly/2STw9gi Hank can be reached at hssgms@gmail.com
