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Maui hotel LAHAINA, Maui -- Jack London and his wife were guests in the early 1900s.
marks centennial
Lahaina's Pioneer Inn has
weathered hard times to keep
its period charmBy Gary T. Kubota
Star-BulletinJacqueline Kennedy had brunch in the dining room in the late 1960s.
The TV series "Baywatch" filmed a segment in the historic hotel last October.
While hundreds of businesses have come and gone in Lahaina, the Pioneer Inn has remained a Maui landmark with its small-town yet cosmopolitan appeal.
The wooden two-story hotel, which has been getting a $2 million-plus face lift in recent years from new operators, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
"It's always been the watering hole of Lahaina," said Joan McKelvey, a Lahaina businesswoman for more than 30 years who dined with Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1960s. "The great and near-great have at some point visited the Pioneer Inn."
The hotel, overlooking Lahaina Harbor, is within a stone's throw of historic structures dating back to the early 1800s, when the town was the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom and a rest stop for whalers.
In the mornings, as the wharf awakens to fishing and whale-watching activities, hundreds of birds start singing in a nearby giant banyan tree.
About the Pioneer
Some facts about the Pioneer Inn:Old-style dining: Each Sunday through the rest of the year, the Pioneer Inn will be celebrating its 100th anniversary with special turn-of-the-century dining.
Employees will be dressed in early 1900s wear, and the menu will feature some items popular during the era, such as mango-glazed pork tenderloin and bread pudding. The four-course meals will cost $39 and will be served in an area separate from the regular restaurant.
"It's a yearlong celebration that hotel guests and the community can take part in," said hotel official Becky Lennon. "We hope they will feel like they've stepped back in time."
Seating is limited to 25 people. Call (808) 661-3636.
Children, escorted by parents, walk to King Kamehameha III School.
Along Front Street the students pass a public library, a museum that once served as a missionary home in the 1800s, the birthing stone of Kamehameha royalty and a building that once served as the Lahaina Court House and jail.
California visitor Ginger Langem said she has been a guest of the Pioneer Inn 15 times since 1978.
"I love the history of the building," she said. "The aura of the area is tremendous."
The hotel, now with 44 rooms, was a modest 10-room accommodation with a common bathroom down the hall when it was initially built in December 1901. The Hawaii Historic Preservation Division said the Pioneer is one of the oldest hotels in the islands still in operation.
A glimpse into the past
Guest rules, now a tongue-in-cheek memento of the past posted on a lobby plaque, give an inkling of the hotel's sometimes rough-and-tumble beginnings."Women is not allow in you room. If you wet or burn you bed, you going out. You are not allow to gambel in your room," the rules warned.
Pioneer Inn developer and owner George Freeland, born in Cobham, England, was 38 when the hotel was built, and had worked in various professions in Canada before moving to Maui.
"He was a miner, a provincial police officer, and at some time was involved in being in the livery and grocery businesses," said Peter Freeland Hamilton, a descendant who is writing a history of the hotel. "He was an entrepreneur who really wanted to be in business."
Freeland also liked Maui and settled here to raise three sons and four daughters.
In the 1930s the hotel did not generate as much business as other enterprises operated on the premises. One of his sons, George Alan Freeland, ran a string of movie theaters located in various plantation camps in West Maui, with the main theater situated on the back side of the hotel along Front Street.
Near the theater were stores, including one that sold crack seed to movie customers.
The family lived in a house across Front Street, on the current site of the Wharf Cinema Shopping Center.George Alan Freeland's son, Keoki, said that before Lahaina Harbor was built in the 1950s, the ocean channel fronting Pioneer Inn was barely navigable during high surf.
Those who ventured out to board ships at night faced the possibility of being swamped.
"There were two rock piles out there, and there was a channel between the rock piles, but it wasn't dredged," he recalled.
"You took your chances through the surf."
Keoki recalled that while going to college, he returned home one summer and worked in Lahaina on the set of the film "The Devil at 4 O'Clock."
The film, released in 1961, starred Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, and the Pioneer Inn was cast as a fictional hotel on a South Pacific island.
"I built some canoes," Keoki said. "We made rocks out of fiberglass."
The hotel has been used as the background for other film productions since then, including the TV series "Hawaii 5-0," "Hawaiian Eye," "Adventures in Paradise" and, most recently, "Baywatch."
The hotel went through a period of expansion in the mid-1960s with the development of 34 rooms on the second floor and more ground-floor stores facing Front Street. But it has struggled financially at times.
In the 1980s it was known as among the cheapest places to stay in town, with rooms under $45 a night.Texas attorney Howard Lennon, who bought the master lease in 1973, decided the family should take a more active role in the business in 1993.
Since then the Lennons -- who have another 38 years on the lease -- have been operating the hotel and spent more than $2 million renovating the building.
New life for old building
The koa desk remains at the check-in counter. But the foundations of floors have been reinforced so that bartenders no longer step into a hole and the bar-restaurant doesn't slope into a main beam.The lobby stairs leading to the second floor no longer lean to one side, and a swimming pool has been reinstalled.
Thirty-four of the rooms, each with a bathroom, have been renovated and refurbished. Room rates start at $100 a night.
The Lennons plan to restore the 10 original rooms facing the harbor and turn them into suites. They continue to lease space to 18 retail shops.
Lennon's son, James, who is the manager, said it would not make financial sense to build a 44-room hotel by today's standards but that the rewards of operating the Pioneer Inn are gratifying.
"It's a labor of love. There's a satisfaction in working in a historical structure," he said.
James' wife, Becky, who is the controller, said patrons feel like they have a vested interest in the hotel, and they notice when changes are made and are not shy to voice their opinions.
For instance, there was the time the Lennons removed a painting of three nude sirens from the bar for cleaning.
"You would have thought we had stolen the crown jewels," she said.
"Anytime we're doing anything, we hear about it."