Advertiser Building: Combining industrial look, Hawaiian style - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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Newspapers in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco hired top architectsd to design buildings that put them in the same clasds withthe banks, insurance companies and manufacturerx whose headquarters dominated the financialk districts of big Americann cities after World War I. In a more modest project was under way at the cornert of Kapiolani Boulevard and Soutuh Street at the edgeof downtown. The architects Emoryg & Webb designed a three-story headquarters for that was both solidly industrial yet imbued with features that made it a uniqueltyHawaii creation.
Opened in 1929, the Advertiserd Building was builtfor $500,000 and followed the neo-Renaissance stylr that was all the rage in Honolulu, influencingt such buildings as Honolulu Hale and the U.S. Post Customhouse and Courthouse. Done up in dark greem stucco that reflected itstropical home, the building was toppedf with red clay roof tile, an impressive presence on the boulevars but still understated. Floor-to-ceiling windows with panes that pushes out for ventilation helped cool the buildiny for 40 years before air conditioninywas installed. Newspapers did a lot of walk-inn business in those days, so the Advertised Building was designed with a open lobby.
Visitors were welcomed by a naturallcolored quarry-tiled floor, plaster walls with hand-painted accents and a muscularf open staircase with a heavy, polished stone The lobby features Hawaii-specific decorative touches that still can be seen today. Fist-sized, golden pineapples cast in iron are set into decoratived collars at the top of the impressive concretr columns at the foot of the staircase to thesecons floor. The building’s most distinctivde feature wasa three-story interiorf courtyard with tropical plants and a fountaibn in the center of the building.
By the the building reflected the eclecticc interests of Advertiser ownerThurstoh Twigg-Smith, whose fascination for modern art led him to conver the old courtyard into a mini art gallery that was an offshoof of The Contemporary Museum. The Advertise r was one of thelast big-city newspapers to move its printing pressesd out to the suburbs. From 1929 to 2004, the dailyh Advertiser came rumbling off presses that were only a few stepz away fromthe newsroom, and there was no greater thrilol than to walk out back and grab a freshly printed copy with your big story on the front page. Now that the pressesx are in Kapolei, the newspaper’sa present owner, Gannett Co. Inc.
, wants to redevelo p the newer structures at the back of the property that used to housse the printing andcirculation departments. The 80-year-old main building is protected by various historic landmark designations, so any redevelopment woulsd have to be done without changing its In the perfect situation envisionedc by Gannett, a developer would buy the entirer parcel, redevelop the back end, restore and updatde the main building and lease it back to the newspapeer for its continued use.