Qualla: Moana Hotel

Moana Hotel: Introduction

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joel Bradshaw, Public domain. In February 1905, Jane Stanford -- co-founder of Stanford University -- died of strychnine poisoning in a room at the Moana Hotel. She is believed to have been murdered, but the source of the poison was never identified. This is not the story the Moana tells about itself, of course. The hotel prefers to emphasize its Ionic columns, its lace-curtained hallways wide enough for steamer trunks, and the enormous banyan tree in its courtyard. But the Stanford mystery captures something true about the Moana: this is a building where elegance and strangeness have always coexisted, where the glamorous surface of Hawaiian tourism conceals layers of more complicated history.

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Image: Joel Bradshaw | Public domain

Moana Hotel: The First Hotel on the Sand

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joel Bradshaw, Public domain. Walter Chamberlain Peacock, a wealthy Honolulu landowner, incorporated the Moana Hotel Company in 1896 with a vision of transforming Waikiki from a stretch of bungalows and beach houses into a proper resort destination. Architect Oliver G. Traphagen designed the building in Europ...

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Image: Joel Bradshaw | Public domain

Moana Hotel: Royalty, Radio, and Ruin

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peaceray, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Moana attracted remarkable guests from the start. In 1920, the Prince of Wales -- the future King Edward VIII -- reportedly fell in love with the hotel's private pier, diving repeatedly into the ocean. Agatha Christie and her husband stayed in August 1922 while traveling the ...

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Image: Peaceray | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moana Hotel: Concrete, Steel, and Sheraton

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Meowmeow10, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two floors were added in 1918, with Italian Renaissance-styled concrete wings creating the H-shape visible today. In 1925, wood-frame bungalows opened across Kalakaua Avenue on the former estate of Princess Ka'iulani. The postwar decades brought more construction: the SurfRider H...

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Image: Meowmeow10 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moana Hotel: The Tree That Outlived Them All

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ajtnk, Public domain. In 1989, a $50 million restoration stripped away decades of modifications and returned the Moana to its 1901 appearance, merging it with the adjacent hotel buildings into the Sheraton Moana Surfrider. The project earned the President's Historic Preservation Award and the National...

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Image: Ajtnk | Public domain