See Dai Doo Society Building
Kukui and Fort Streets, Chinatown

Title

See Dai Doo Society Building
Kukui and Fort Streets, Chinatown

Description

First Image: The See Dai Doo Society Building in 2021, substantially the same as it was at its opening in 1962.

Second Image: Except for the traditionally-designed Chinese cupola on the left side of the roof, the See Dai Doo Society building is otherwise a modern American-style building of its time period.

Third Image: Back view of the See Dai Doo Society Building. The Society is composed of people who trace their ancestry to Kwangtung Province in China. It began in Honolulu in 1901. This view shows the below-grade parking level and the first floor retail spaces. The second floor contains offices and the third is used by the Society.

Fourth Image: Both the front and back sides of the See Dai Doo Society Building have an exterior metal mesh attached to framework. Compared to the building's appearance at its opening in 1962, the material in 2021 is more opaque and obviously is a replacement of the original.

Fifth Image: Detail of textured cement blocks at the See Dai Doo Society Building.

Sixth Image: The See Dai Doo Society Building at its traditional Chinese dedication, including firecrackers, on November 4, 1962. Its groundbreaking had been on September 10, 1961. It was the fifth new structure in the Queen Emma Development Project, which was part of the large federally-funded Urban Renewal project which demolished much of downtown Honolulu in the 1960s. The See Dai Doo Society's previous building just a few block away had been condemned as part of this project and it too was removed in spite of having only been built in 1950.

Creator

Contributor

DeSoto Brown

Citation

desotob, “See Dai Doo Society Building
Kukui and Fort Streets, Chinatown,” Hawai'i Modernism Library, accessed March 29, 2024, https://docomomo-hi.org/items/show/1122.

Output Formats

Geolocation