CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM The American Cancer Society offices are at 2370 Nuuanu Ave. in a renovated Victorian mansion, built in 1906.

Victorian mansion
houses ACS offices

You've heard of cottage industries, but this industry isn't exactly in a cottage. For the last decade, the offices of the Honolulu branch of the American Cancer Society have been located in a century-old mansion on Nuuanu Avenue.

The stately Victorian was built in 1906 by Englishman Arthur F. Ewart and also housed widower brother George and George's four children. Designed by H.L. Kerr and constructed for $4,000, it had two stories and five bedrooms with a large wraparound porch, and landscaped with gardens and a hot house.

Some years later, George's youngest daughter, Edith, married Robert Catton who, like Arthur, worked for Catton & Renny (now Honolulu Iron Works). George built a cottage next door for $3,600. Catton became disabled a few years later and worked out of the cottage as a carpenter.

Properly Victorian, the Ewarts and Cattons were quiet neighbors and supported the Hawaiian monarchy. Until the 1940s, Nuuanu Avenue was the only way to cross the Koolaus. Three generations of Ewart children swam across the avenue in Kapena Falls until a polio outbreak in the 1950s.

In 1993, Jean York, the last of George Ewart's direct descendants, died in the house at age 75. The property -- virtually unchanged -- was purchased by the American Cancer Society two years later.

It needed work. Old houses always do. Restoration and renovation was overseen by Spencer Leineweber of Spencer Mason Architects, a firm that specialized in historic preservation. The main building would be used for the society's Pacific headquarters, the adjacent cottage for a Honolulu treatment center.

The package wasn't cheap, coming in at about $3.3 million -- $1 million for the property, $1.3 million for renovations and $1 million in an endowment to cover operating costs.

Locating nonprofits in historic structures is common on the mainland, where it's cost-effective to invest in infrastructure. In Hawaii, however, high prices, governmental disinterest in preservation and scarcity of properties make it difficult. One of the first steps was to place the building on the state register of historic places.

"Nonprofits typically prefer to put money into programs rather than structures," said Carol Espinda, Honolulu program director at the time, unless the investment will become a permanent home.

Microscopic analysis of the paint revealed that the white building with green trim had always looked that way.

"A million shades of white, but always white," said Leineweber at the time. "It's always tempting for an architect to 'improve' on a design. The trick in historic preservation is recognizing what's valuable and leaving it, rather than making our own mark."

A physical problem was that the building needed to be re-leveled. It had dipped about two inches in the middle. Have you ever tried to lift a house two inches? The heavy stuff like computers and files remain on the bottom floor.

Named "Ka Hale 'Ohana," the ACS center today provides a meeting place for cancer support groups, for patients to have wigs fitted, for volunteer training, cancer screenings and seminars in cancer prevention, detection and treatment.

The original building is named Atherton House and the smaller building Watumull Cottage to honor donors. The campus itself is named for the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

On the lawn is a sculpture of a pueo, a Hawaiian owl, carved of bluestone. A gift from seven friends to memorialize longtime ACS volunteer Monsignor Charles Kekumano, the pueo is a protective 'aumakua for the ACS. And although she is now retired, Carol Espinda is still the go-to person for the building's history.