The Chamberlain House (also known as Mission House) is an American museum and library, which originally served as a missionary home and office. It is located on King Street, in the rear of Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. Construction occurred from 1828 to 1832 for a design by Levi Chamberlain, secular agent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to the Hawaiian Islands. Along with other buildings in the immediate area, it is a part of the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society's Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives (1920), and includes designations of U.S. National Historic Landmark (1962) and National Register of Historic Places (1966).
History
This house was built under the direction of Levi Chamberlain during the four years from 1828 to 1832. It was called the Depository because all good belonging to the mission were received and stored there, and from here were distributed to the various mission stations, until about 1840 when a separate Depository building was erected seaward of this house.
Levi Chamberlain, secular agent of the mission from 1823 to 1849, found that a grass house was not a safe place in which to store goods, so after his marriage in 1828 to Miss Maria Patton, a young woman who arrived that year in the third missionary company, he began to build. His third child, Maria Jane was the first to be born in the Chamberlain House.
The house was considered altogether too costly and pretentious by many at the time it was built and a great deal of disapproval was voiced. But it was soon seen that it was none too large as the missionaries and others from the outside islands were almost constant visitors. It was the Mission House; its agent resided there and from him, assistance and supplied were to be obtained. Frequently, a shipmaster bound for the Arctic would leave his wife with the Chamberlains until his return in the autumn, confident of her comfort and safety meanwhile. Rev. E. Bond, of Kohala, made the Chamberlain House his home when in Honolulu. At General Meeting time, he came in company with his daughter. Rev. J. D. Paris, of Kona, came often to the Chamberlain House. Mr. Abner Wilcox and his wife from Waioli, Kauai, were friends, who, when in Honolulu from time to time, made a tarrying at Mrs. Chamberlain's accommodating house. The Rev. D. B. Lyman, of Hilo, and members of his family may also be mentioned as often being at home at the Chamberlain House.
In 1903, the whole assembly of "Cousins" were happy when A. B. Clark spoke of a home for the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, a regular place of meeting, and a safe place to deposit records and mementoes of the missionaries. Through the generosity of a Cousin, the records were stored in the stone office of the Old Mission Home, and by means of later gifts, this larger, insect-proof, fire-proof building was now assured.
A meeting of the Board of Managers was called by the president, G. R. Carter, for December 13, 1909, at which a paper was read stating that through the generosity of the Chamberlain heirs, the sons of C. M. Cooke in memory of their father, and of B. R. Banning, the old Chamberlain property had been bought and deeded to the Society. It was also stated that the Castles had secured the frame house adjoining the coral building and transferred it to the Cousins, thus making it possible to straighten Kawaiahao Lane and to add a part of the property into Kawaiahao churchyard.
Plans were submitted for the renovation of the building, showing the assembly room, stairway, dressing-room, pantry and kitchen below as well as above the museum and library. The veranda was to be taken away, leaving the front with its stone steps as originally built. All outside improvements were to be made at the back, where a lanai would extend from the coral house to the stone office.
By 1920, the House was restored. The woodwork, which had been riddled with borers, was replaced with new, the roof covered with asbestos shingles, and green shutters placed at the windows. The inside remained the same, with steep stairways, small-paned windows, a great attic, and low-ceiled kitchen. The services of Mr. Eskew, who did the restorative work on the Chamberlain House, were also secured for the restoration of the Adobe Schoolhouse (1920–21).
Building materials
There were no facilities for drawing stone in those days except by hand, therefore much time elapsed before all the stone was on hand to complete it. It required time to get all the lumber and shingles which had to come around Cape Horn. As it was a matter of accommodation only that whalers should take any freight they would, of course, take only small lots of lumber, and it required several vessels to bring sufficient for the house. Also, mechanics and carpenters were not abundant, and one or two competent men, mason and carpenter, had a long job at the work. The lumber of the house, and of all old Mission buildings, was of the best character, being of white pine which came from the State of Maine. The lumber of the house has remained in place now, very close to eighty years, and is damaged and deteriorated, not so much from age as from the ravages of ants and insects which have gotten into and multiplied upon these Islands during the past fifteen or twenty years.
The material of this house was obtained from the coral reef seaward, being cut out by natives in blocks of the required size with axes supplied for that purpose, and it was current among the people that a new axe could be had in exchange for one that had been otherwise in use for some time, its edge thereby being blunted, so making it more suitable for working in the coral stone. The transportation of the large blocks, cut out and prepared to the required size at the reef, were carried by men on their shoulders by means of ropes and a pole, or shoulder-stick inserted that two strong natives could lift and convey between them the burden for a long distance, as was their ordinary method before the introduction of bullock and wheel conveyances.
A deep and large pit was excavated not far from the house for a lime kiln. The stone was brought from the seaside in containers upon the shoulders of men, and when layers of wood, cut from the mountain forest, or wherever obtainable, had been placed in suitable quantity, the stones to be burned for the lime were spread over and heaped upon the fuel to a considerable height above. The center pole was withdrawn and fire communicated to the deepest part of the pit by throwing in live coals to reach the light combustibles at the bottom, from whence the entire mass of fuel was in time burned up, the heat therefrom reducing the stones resting above to the required lime for mortar.
They were put together with a lime mortar made by burning coral. The woodwork, good white pine, was brought from Maine around Cape Horn, though the beams came from the Oahu mountains, hauled down by man power, and were supplemented by driftwood. A ship's mast formed one of the beams in the cellar. This pine woodwork, injured by borers, was replaced in 1920, without altering the original New England design.
Architecture and fittings The house is two stories high, long and wide, with a cellar and attic of the same dimensions for storage. With its three front doors facing on Kawaiahao Street, and its two deep-set windows, with four windows of the same size above, it presents a somewhat austere appearance.
The parlor, where prayer-meetings as well as public and private receptions were held, was entered by the middle one of these deep, open doors, and another outside door opposite opened to the shady court between this building and the printing office. Doors led from this to the dining room, the kitchen and the family rooms, and the three windows gave sufficient light. The room was plainly furnished.
The house contained relics from the various mission families. From the parlor, one enters seaward the dining room where a koa table stood. One door leads from this room out to the well under the tamarind tree, and another opens, with one step down, into the kitchen. The kitchen has a low ceiling, two small, deep-set windows, and a New England fireplace with hanging crane, pots and kettles, tongs and irons. A kitchen safe stands in the same corner where Mrs. Levi Chamberlain baked. The doors, one opening to the trade-wind from the mountains and the other to a brick-paved lanai near the tamarind tree, keep the kitchen cool. From this lanai, coral steps lead down to the huge cellar below.
The second floor of the House is reached from the dining-room by a very steep stairway, and from the small platform above, three doors open out. The large room to the right was Mr. Chamberlain's office. Here the accounts of the mission were kept, letters received and answered from missionaries on the other islands and from Boston, and orders were filled for all kinds of merchandise. Hundreds of these letters were stored in the Cousins' vault in the Mission Memorial Building, with account books dating back to 1823. Much business connected with the Hawaiian kingdom was planned and discussed in this room, and many events of historical interest were registered. Over the parlor, the room on the Waikiki side, which was occupied by Mr. Castle, who kept the books. In this room were two small single beds, occupied at night by the two younger boys of the family, the eldest two being in the U. S. The room over the kitchen was occupied by Mr. E. O. Hall, whose business was to fill orders, and who had access to the whole house, from the garret, where all light goods, tinware, crockery, etc., were opened, to the cellar, containing the molasses barrel, the whale-oil for lamps, the lumber pile and the unopened goods of the mission.
Dry goods and small staple articles of merchandise were kept on shelves in this room, but larger supplies were stored in the cellar or carried to the attic by tackle and pulley. A doorway was left in the gable end, both of the attic and second floor room, through which the goods were carried. A wooden grating protected this doorway where visitors often came to get an unobstructed view of the sea when vessels were entering or leaving the harbor.
A stairway from this room leads to the attic, where at General Meeting time, in May and June of each year, mats were spread for the boy guests at night, and here in the midst of boxes, barrels and bundles, the children would come to play "I spy.” The two rooms at the left on the second floor were fitted up as guest rooms.
Returning to the first floor, is the family rooms at the mauka end (toward the mountains) used as a museum filled with such treasures as the old civil war flags from Waimea; the pictures of the second generation of "Cousins" or Mission children on the picture pillar (a device invented by the Mission's first Recorder); Dr. Judd's old medicine chest; the much traveled rocking chair of Mother Thurston; and in the smaller room, a wardrobe full of the garb of other days, chiefly from the Lyman family; the Lyman cradle; and the Bond family bookcase with treasures from the old Kohala home. The little room above this contains furniture from the Lyons' and other Mission homes, and the further room served for several years as the office and workshop of the Historical Commission of Hawaii.
From these little upper rooms, a steep stairway leads to the parlor below.
Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library