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Authors: Lucinda Fleeson
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traveling all season. Yes, agreed John. He turned the automobile around and went back.
âThis is going to be my paradise,â Robert Allerton said. He wrote a check for fifty thousand dollars, and bought eighty-six acres and one of the most private coves in all Hawaii.
When they returned to Kauai later that year, Robert placed an ad in
The Garden Island
newspaper to announce that the beach was now private. No trespassing, it warned. For further protection, Robert leased two beautiful bays, extending his property almost to Spouting Horn, the ocean blowhole in Poipu. At the eastern entrance to the estate, the Chicagoans erected what we now call âthe King Kong gate,â with brick piers and swinging doors of Chinese red.
They sawed up McBrydeâs house and made a big bonfire. John sketched plans for a more open dwelling. âI want to see ocean and sky from every window,â Robert directed. John designed a flat concrete-slab floor level with the ground, so thatthere seemed to be no barrier between the outside and in. He had been intrigued by a photo of the headmasterâs house at St. Paulâs School in New Hampshire, Robertâs alma mater. That house incorporated a large veranda under the roofline, so that the structure resembled a giant porch. John copied the idea for the Kauai house, laying it out in an L-shape around an open courtyard, encasing the rooms behind long, screened lanais.
âWe thought the best idea was to fit in with the style that was on the island, and of course the first architecture that was here in Hawaii was what the missionaries brought with them from Cape Cod, so it necessarily meant a clapboard type of house,â John explained in that taped conversation. âSo when anybody asks me what this style of architecture is, I always say, âItâs early missionary.ââ
Simple and open to the sea breezes, the main house grew grand because of Johnâs flair with elaborate carved moldings. Working with a lumber mill in Waimea, he designed classic Georgian scrolls, lavish curved cornices, and wide baseboards. He paneled the library with intricate moldings and mantel, all painted in deep red. When finished, the room looked as if it could have been imported intact from Connecticut. Along the lanai surrounding the house he designed multiple sitting alcoves, small conversation groupings, so that Robert, nearly deaf without his hearing aids, could more easily socialize.
They renamed the beachfront property Lawai-Kai. There is no literal translation for their invented name, except that it conveyed a meaning of plenty. Plenty fish, plenty in the valley.
F OR THEIR FIRST two years on the island, building the house and starting a garden consumed them. They didnât evenbother to visit the two main sights on Kauai â the gorgeous red-banded Waimea Canyon or the castellated cliffs of the Na Pali Coast. They didnât want anything to do with local life, and the locals left them alone. The two men stayed only a few months each year, arriving on Kauai shortly after Thanksgiving and returning to Illinois in April to see the daffodils bloom.
Everyone on the island knew the Allertons were very, very rich. But odd. Almost a joke. It wasnât just that two men lived together or that they were
mahu â
the Hawaiian word for
gay
â or that they were rumored to be nudists. What made the Allertons laughably different in their early years on the island was their Deco furniture and modern art, their mainland taste, and the fact that they were rarely seen.
Robert and John remained so shut off from the rest of the island that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, the Allertons didnât know about it for a full day. Most of Kauai had prepared for some sort of outbreak, and residents jumped to assigned posts shortly after the December 7, 1941, bombing began at 8:30 a.m. By 11:45 a.m., all of Kauai had sprung to action. Within hours, sewing
âThis is going to be my paradise,â Robert Allerton said. He wrote a check for fifty thousand dollars, and bought eighty-six acres and one of the most private coves in all Hawaii.
When they returned to Kauai later that year, Robert placed an ad in
The Garden Island
newspaper to announce that the beach was now private. No trespassing, it warned. For further protection, Robert leased two beautiful bays, extending his property almost to Spouting Horn, the ocean blowhole in Poipu. At the eastern entrance to the estate, the Chicagoans erected what we now call âthe King Kong gate,â with brick piers and swinging doors of Chinese red.
They sawed up McBrydeâs house and made a big bonfire. John sketched plans for a more open dwelling. âI want to see ocean and sky from every window,â Robert directed. John designed a flat concrete-slab floor level with the ground, so thatthere seemed to be no barrier between the outside and in. He had been intrigued by a photo of the headmasterâs house at St. Paulâs School in New Hampshire, Robertâs alma mater. That house incorporated a large veranda under the roofline, so that the structure resembled a giant porch. John copied the idea for the Kauai house, laying it out in an L-shape around an open courtyard, encasing the rooms behind long, screened lanais.
âWe thought the best idea was to fit in with the style that was on the island, and of course the first architecture that was here in Hawaii was what the missionaries brought with them from Cape Cod, so it necessarily meant a clapboard type of house,â John explained in that taped conversation. âSo when anybody asks me what this style of architecture is, I always say, âItâs early missionary.ââ
Simple and open to the sea breezes, the main house grew grand because of Johnâs flair with elaborate carved moldings. Working with a lumber mill in Waimea, he designed classic Georgian scrolls, lavish curved cornices, and wide baseboards. He paneled the library with intricate moldings and mantel, all painted in deep red. When finished, the room looked as if it could have been imported intact from Connecticut. Along the lanai surrounding the house he designed multiple sitting alcoves, small conversation groupings, so that Robert, nearly deaf without his hearing aids, could more easily socialize.
They renamed the beachfront property Lawai-Kai. There is no literal translation for their invented name, except that it conveyed a meaning of plenty. Plenty fish, plenty in the valley.
F OR THEIR FIRST two years on the island, building the house and starting a garden consumed them. They didnât evenbother to visit the two main sights on Kauai â the gorgeous red-banded Waimea Canyon or the castellated cliffs of the Na Pali Coast. They didnât want anything to do with local life, and the locals left them alone. The two men stayed only a few months each year, arriving on Kauai shortly after Thanksgiving and returning to Illinois in April to see the daffodils bloom.
Everyone on the island knew the Allertons were very, very rich. But odd. Almost a joke. It wasnât just that two men lived together or that they were
mahu â
the Hawaiian word for
gay
â or that they were rumored to be nudists. What made the Allertons laughably different in their early years on the island was their Deco furniture and modern art, their mainland taste, and the fact that they were rarely seen.
Robert and John remained so shut off from the rest of the island that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, the Allertons didnât know about it for a full day. Most of Kauai had prepared for some sort of outbreak, and residents jumped to assigned posts shortly after the December 7, 1941, bombing began at 8:30 a.m. By 11:45 a.m., all of Kauai had sprung to action. Within hours, sewing
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