Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives

The three oldest houses on these grounds share a striking feature: walls built from slabs of coral reef, cut directly from the harbor floor by Native Hawaiians. Arriving in eighteen twenty, New England missionaries constructed these buildings to replicate the homes they left behind. Their leader, Hiram Bingham, chose coral because it was readily available and hardened when exposed to the air. It took thousands of coral blocks to raise the frame house, a grueling process that anchored a foreign culture into the island landscape.