Agawa Home Restoration
The Agawa Home Restoration will receive a Preservation Award at the Annual Preservation Honor Awards on Friday May, 27, 2016 at the Pōmaika‘i Ballrooms, Dole Cannery.
The home, located within Lahaina’s National Historic Landmark District, was built in 1920 and was the residence of one of the first Japanese lunas (supervisors) at Pioneer Mill. Slated to be demolished, fate intervened. A walk-thru of the house with one of the owners evolved into a long term lease with Lahaina Restoration Foundation (LRF).
Living room after restoration.
Built before the standard building plan types were approved by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association in 1921 makes this structure rare and unique. The building features a tongue and groove vertical board finish, hipped roof and six-over-six windows.
The bedroom after restoration.
The home, which was continuously occupied by the Agawa family for 84 years, had been vacant for several years, and a massive cleanup of the interior and exterior of the home was needed. An assessment of the existing building noted the areas that needed to be replaced due to damage or to conform to the building codes. Lahaina Restoration Foundation finished the restoration and it is now rented to a family to recoup the costs of the renovation and landscaping. It’s exciting to note that once those costs have been redeemed, LRF plans to turn the property into a Plantation Era Education Center to share the experience of home life during the early 1920s with Lahaina’s youth, residents and visitors.
It’s fun to imagine what a typical day at the Plantation Era Education Center for a class of elementary students might include: mixing, shaping and baking bread in the outdoor Portuguese oven to eat for lunch, listening to old radio programs on a large, wooden “tombstone” style radio, scrubbing clothes on a wooden washboard, playing “kick the can” and other plantation era games, picking vegetables from the garden, making toys and fishing poles, and holding a talk story with elders from the Plantation.
Congratulations to Lahaina Restoration Foundation; Lincoln Construction; and Garden View, Inc. for a great restoration project!