DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM This house at 2911 Makalei Place was the personal home of famed Hawaii architect Charles W. Dickey.

House shoppers have designs
in isle architect’s family home

Dickey's granddaughter, Dorothy "Tita" Thacker Johnson, and her husband, Paul, have occupied the home most recently, since completing an eight-month restoration project in 1998.

They never planned to live in the house permanently, but the decision to sell was made with "very mixed emotions," she said.

Nevertheless, Dorothy said, "we're really getting too old to live in such a big house -- and all of our grandchildren live on the mainland, so it makes more sense for us to move back there."

The Johnsons have a home in Pasadena, Calif., where Paul is an investment banker.

Tita was born and raised in Hawaii and is a 1948 Punahou graduate. After high school the family moved away, but came back for a year and a half in the 1950s. Later, she brought her own children to the islands every other year.

She and her husband returned in the spring of 1998 to restore the 3,858-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bathroom home (with separate maid's quarters) on a 10,454-square-foot lot.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM An unusual detail in the home of Hawaii architect Charles W. Dickey is this set of shelves and an entry way that close up to look like a wall. The home's owners, Paul andTita Johnson, are selling the 2911 Makalei Place house for $4.5 million. Dickey is known for creating dual- angled roofs to maximize ceiling heights and keep homes cooler.

The masses won't get to see the home's cool features -- such as shelves that disappear behind panels to create a wall -- during an open house. Viewings are only by appointment through Realtor Patricia Choi.

Dorothy hopes a detail freak will buy the house, which is listed as unfurnished. "But if anybody wanted it furnished, they could have it."

With partners or solo, Dickey is listed as the architect on many historic Honolulu buildings including the Bishop Estate Building at 71 Merchant St.; the Model Progress Building at 1188 Fort St.; Alexander & Baldwin Building at 822 Bishop St.; Central Fire Station at 104 S. Beretania St.; Honolulu Hale at 530 S. King St. and the Mabel Smythe Building at the Queen's Medical Center. The buildings were opened for business between 1896 and 1937.

Dickey is also acclaimed in Oakland, Calif., well-known as he is for several historic buildings there. Dickey returned to the mainland during an economic slowdown in the early 1900s, after Dorothy's mother was born. "But he had continued to do work here from the mainland during those years," Dorothy said.

The commute involved ocean liners, one of which brought him and his family back to Hawaii to stay in the 1920s. Dickey, born in 1871 in Alameda, Calif., died in Honolulu in 1942.

"Dickey was a great architect," said Don Goo, senior vice president of Honolulu-based architecture and planning company Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo.

"I think anybody that sees any of the homes of his design can understand the detailing, the spaces, the use of wood." What is better known, however, is the profile of the so-called Dickey roof.

"He developed a high-pitched roof for a high-volume interior ceiling, and then if you carry that same angle of the roof, you woudn't have that much protection over the windows. That's why the angle of the roof changed right near the top of the wall, so that it projected out further. It's a double slope," he said.

The function of the high-pitched roof, in the days long before air conditioning, was to allow hot air to rise away from the occupants of the room below.

"There was more air and therefore, more comfortable interiors," said Goo.

At his family home, Dickey "used his signature roof on the roof of the lanai," Dorothy said, "you can actually see the underneath construction of the roof ... the beam is curved to make the arc. I don't know if people realize that."

Not everybody who comes in notices the Dickey details, "but a lot of people see everything, and they're caught up," she said.