The Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort is a resort hotel on

Waikiki Beach Waikiki (; haw, Waikīkī; ; also known as Waikiki Beach) is a neighborhood of Honolulu on the south shore of the island of Oahu in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Waikiki is most famous for Waikiki Beach, which is one of six beaches in the district ...

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

, Hawaii. The resort first opened in 1955, and since has grown to become the largest in the Hilton chain of hotels, and one of largest hotels in the world.

History

Located on the Hawaiian island of

O'ahu Oahu () ( Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over two-thirds of the population of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The island of O’ ...

, the John Ena Estate was originally built on the site of the former village of Kalia, which was the childhood home of Duke Kahanamoku. It consisted of a private estate with an owners' residence, tenant houses and a salt flat. The portion of the estate nearest the ocean beach was developed around 1900 as a small hotel named the Old Waikiki, then redeveloped in 1928 as the Niumalu Hotel. The Hawaiian Village Hotel was conceived, constructed and first administered by

Henry J. Kaiser Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of ...

, the industrialist who built the Hoover Dam and

Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, built to produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation water. Constructed between 1933 and 1942, Grand Coulee originally had two powerh ...

and founded the

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser ...

health system. In 1954, Kaiser and developer Fritz B. Burns bought the Kalia estate of John Ena and combined it with the Niumalu Hotel to construct the Hawaiian Village, converting the flat to a lagoon. They built thatched-roof cottages with 70 guest rooms, The Tapa Room, gardens and three swimming pools and the hotel opened on September 15, 1955. On May 1, 1956, Western Hotels assumed management of the Hawaiian Village Hotel. In 1957, the modern Ocean Tower and the famous Geodesic Dome were added. Conrad Hilton bought half of the resort from Henry J. Kaiser in 1961. Hilton Hotels & Resorts assumed management on February 1, 1961, renaming the resort the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Elvis Presley stayed at the hotel soon after while filming '' Blue Hawaii''. In 1968, the resort's iconic Rainbow Tower opened, with the world's largest and tallest ceramic tile mosaic on its facade, an image of a rainbow measuring 26 feet wide and 286 feet tall, which required over 16,000 individual tiles. The Tapa Tower was added in 1982, and the original Ocean Tower was gutted and rebuilt in 1987, with the addition of two floors, at which point it was renamed the Ali'i Tower. The 25-story Kalia Tower was added in 2001. The hotel might be best known as the location for the popular TV series '' Hawaiian Eye'', which aired on ABC from 1959 to 1963. (The purchase by Hilton was duly noted by the changed signage in 1961.) However, only second-unit footage was filmed there; the bulk of the series was shot at

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

' studio in Burbank. In 1999, The Hilton Hawaiian Village was used as a taping location for two weeks of ''Wheel of Fortune'' episodes. It would again be used for taping sessions in 2001. In 2006, Hilton Hotels received $25 million in settlement of its lawsuit over toxic mold grow in the Hilton Hawaiian Village's Kalia Tower. Then, in 2015, the hotel was inducted int
Historic Hotels of America
the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Today, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel sits on over of beachfront property, near the

Ala Moana Center The Ala Moana Center, commonly known simply as Ala Moana, is a large open-air shopping mall in the Ala Moana neighborhood of Honolulu, Hawaii. Owned by Brookfield Properties, Ala Moana is the eleventh largest shopping mall in the United States an ...

. It features the largest swimming pool in Waikiki, over twenty-two restaurants, exotic wildlife, and botanical gardens, Duke's Lagoon and historical exhibits on loan from the Bishop Museum.

Village plan

The main concept of the Hawaiian Village was to provide a complete Hawaiian experience for guests without leaving the resort, meaning guests could potentially stay at the resort the whole duration of their stay and be equipped with restaurants, shops, and more. In building the Hawaiian Village Hotel, Kaiser developed the "village plan" for his resort. In the village plan, various sections of the development were designed in specific types of motifs indicative of the culture of the hotel's surroundings. The various villages in the present-day Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa surround centerpiece towers: Diamond Head Tower, Ali'i Tower, Tapa Tower, Rainbow Tower, Lagoon Tower, Kalia Tower, Grand Waikikian and Grand Islander. The newest tower is the Grand Islander, which was opened to the public March 1, 2017. Kaiser's village plan is now used in various layouts of hotels and resorts throughout the world.

Wildlife

The Village Hotel includes a small pond filled with several types of turtles (

box A box (plural: boxes) is a container used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides. Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or very large (like a shipping box for furniture), and can ...

and soft-shelled). Other animals that live on the grounds include several types of ducks,

lesser flamingo The lesser flamingo (''Phoeniconaias minor'') is a species of flamingo occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and western India. Birds are occasionally reported from further north, but these are generally considered vagrants. Characteristics The lesser ...

s, sacred ibis, black-crowned night herons,

koi fish or more specifically , are colored varieties of the Amur carp ('' Cyprinus rubrofuscus'') that are kept for decorative purposes in outdoor koi ponds or water gardens. Koi is an informal name for the colored variants of ''C. rubrofuscus'' kep ...

chameleons Chameleons or chamaeleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Old World lizards with 202 species described as of June 2015. The members of this family are best known for their distinct range of colors, bein ...

macaws Macaws are a group of New World parrots that are long-tailed and often colorful. They are popular in aviculture or as companion parrots, although there are conservation concerns about several species in the wild. Biology Of the many differe ...

, and

parakeets A parakeet is any one of many small to medium-sized species of parrot, in multiple genera, that generally has long tail feathers. Etymology and naming The name ''parakeet'' is derived from the French wor''perroquet'' which is reflected in ...

. As of June 2014, Hilton Hawaiian Village relocated their 3 remaining South African black-footed penguins to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

Geodesic dome

The Village was the site one of the earlier geodesic domes constructed in the United States. Wanting an auditorium at the Honolulu village, Henry Kaiser acquired the license to produce

geodesic dome A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic do ...

s following the design work of

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...

. An aluminium-skinned dome with a -wide span was manufactured at the company's plant in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

and shipped to Hawaii in 1957. When Kaiser understood that the materials had arrived in Hawaii, he flew from San Francisco to follow the construction — only to discover the building was already complete, having been constructed in only 22 hours. Many records of the golden age of

Exotica Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny Exotica (Martin Denny album), album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon Wa ...

, notably most of

Arthur Lyman Arthur Lyman (February 2, 1932 – February 24, 2002) was an Hawaiian jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His group popularized a style of faux-Polynesian music during the 1950s and 1960s which later became known as exotica. His albums became ...

's albums, were recorded at the dome, renowned for its acoustics and natural reverberation. It was demolished in 1999 to make room for the Kalia Tower.

Gallery

Hilton Hawaiian Village boardwalk Oahu Hawaii Photo D Ramey Logan.jpg, Hilton Hawaiian Village boardwalk Hilton Hawaiian Village Panorama Oahu Hawaii Photo D Ramey Logan.JPG, Panorama of Hilton Hawaiian Village Hilton Hawaiian Village Peguins Oahu Hawaii Photo D Ramey Logan.JPG, Penguins at the Hilton Hawaiian Village

External links

References

{{coord, 21.282656, -157.837389, display=t, type:landmark Hawaiian Village Hawaiian architecture Hotels in Honolulu Resorts in Hawaii Buildings and structures in Honolulu Hotels established in 1955 Tourist attractions in Honolulu Waikiki 1955 establishments in Hawaii Historic Hotels of America