History
In 1795, the land known as Ka Punahou was taken in battle by King Kamehameha I. Along with Ka Punahou, he gave a total of 225 acres (0.91 km2) of land (from the slope of Round Top down to the current Central Union Church, which included a 77-acre (310,000 m2)-tract of Kewalo Basin) to chief Kameʻeiamoku as a reward for his loyalty. After Kameʻeiamoku died, the land was passed down to his son, Ulumāheihei Hoapili, who lived there for twenty more years. When Hoapili left to become the governor of Maui, he gave the land to his daughter, Kuini Liliha.
Ka Punahou was given by Oahu's Governor Boki and his wife, Liliha to Reverend Hiram Bingham, one of the first Christian missionaries in Hawaii. Powerful leader Queen Kaʻahumanu was a strong supporter of the mission, and built a house for herself near the Binghams. A portion of the stone wall she had built to protect the compound from roaming cattle has been preserved.
Founded in 1841, Punahou School was originally a school for the children of missionaries serving throughout the Pacific region. It was the first school with classes only in the English language west of the Rocky Mountains. The first class was held on July 11, 1842, and consisted of only fifteen students.
Daniel Dole (1808–1878) was its first principal. It was known as Oahu College from 1853 to 1934.
During World War II, much of the Punahou campus was commandeered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Castle Hall (the girls' dormitory when Punahou had boarding students) was used as a command center, buildings were connected with tunnels, athletic fields were used as parking lots, the library was cleared to become sleeping quarters and an officer's mess. The cereus hedge on the campus lava rock wall was topped with barbed wire. Punahou students volunteered in hospitals and raised enough in war bonds to purchase two bombers and a fighter (among other airplanes) which were named after alumni who had fallen in service.
In the 1970s, Punahou's upper field and gymnasium were used for the Superstars nationally televised athletic competitions.
The campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Oahu on August 7, 1972.
Read more about this topic: Punahou School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)