If you worked in this building, you might.

From the Star Bulletin Archives – July, 2004:

The Hawaiian Electric building was completed in 1927. HECO contracted with New York architects York & Sawyer, the same team who designed the post office, to create a similar building but lofted in a more vertical plane. Local architects Emory & Webb were in charge of construction.

Created in an era when Honolulu was slower-paced, the building includes friendly details like built-in benches for weary pedestrians, horse hitching racks and coolly arched portico entrances on the King and Richards streets sides. Old pictures show a kind of bell-tower/gazebo/cupola structure on the makai roof that is now hard to spot.

The roof is low-rise and thoroughly tiled with glassy barrel-mission tiles.

York & Sawyer reached back into Spanish history for the decorative column supports and half-stilted arched windows — the style is reminiscent of early 1800s designs by Spanish architects Churriguera and Ribera.

Bounded by the convergence of King and Merchant streets, the building is trapezoidal in plan, with the point of the pizza slice becoming the business entrance on Richards. The building is four stories tall, of reinforced concrete with steel framing. The cost, high for the time, was $750,000.

The ground floor is actually a grand story and half in height with column supports for the vaulted ceiling, decorated by J. Rosenstein.

The Richards Street portico ceiling paintings are by Julian Jarnsey.

The wide end of the building — the crust side of the pizza slice — sports a covered through-structure hallway. Here were stairs leading to Hawaiian Electric administration offices, and there are some small shops in the arcade.

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Historic Hawaii Foundation 1974~2014 ~ Celebrating 40 years of preservation in Hawaii!

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