Post Modern

Spencer Tolley’s postcard collection represents a colorful journey through time and reflect Hawai‘i’s changing cultural landscape over the eras.

When Spencer Tolley moved to O‘ahu for work in 2012, he had a simple yet significant goal: Learn as much as possible about Hawai‘i.

“I wanted to familiarize myself with my new home,” says Tolley. “I thought postcards were a good way to do that because whenever I see one, I want to know what I’m looking at in the picture.”

Researching history had long been a passion for Tolley. Prior to moving to the Islands, he lived in Miami and worked for the City of Coral Gables’ Historic Preservation department and for the Miami Design Preservation League. Before that, Tolley spent 12 years with the Preservation Society of Charleston in South Carolina where he planned community events, reviewed design proposals for historic buildings, and did archival work.

As a child, Tolley carefully studied the postcards he received from his grandfather who traveled to trade shows in different American cities. Other relatives would also travel internationally on a regular basis and mail back interesting postcards from countries like Italy and Venezuela, which sparked Tolley’s imagination.

“I grew up in an era when writing and sending postcards was popular,” he says. “Today we have social media but there is no physical reminder of a photo or message you receive. Postcards can be on your wall or in an album. You can keep them forever.”

Keeping postcards was certainly easier for Tolley than his previous hobby of collecting first-edition novels and midcentury furniture. There was also no shortage of Hawai‘i postcards to find.

Since 1898 — the year when Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act, which allowed businesses to publish and sell postcards at the same rate (one cent) as government-printed cards — there was a plethora of local companies producing postcards in the Islands, including Hawai‘i and South Seas Curio Co., Hilo Drug Co., Island Curio Co, and Wall, Nichols and Co., among others. These lithograph prints offered sensationalized images of Hawai‘i’s beaches and beachgoers, nature scenes, notable landmarks and architecture.

“I see postcards as time machines,” says Tolley. “They help tell stories of Hawai‘i’s past, from the monarchy to the territorial era to statehood and the rise of the visitor industry. They show not only how Hawai‘i has changed through the decades but how mass-marketed tourism changed Hawai‘i.”

During the nascent years of Hawai‘i’s tourism boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the earliest printed cards were considered “pioneer” postcards because they were among the first to depict the Islands in a way that would appeal to visitors and helped establish Hawai‘i as an iconic destination. Many were adaptations of archival photos taken in the Islands by notable local photographers, including A.R. Gurrey, Jr., the first photographer to capture surfers in the water.

In 1907, Kodak introduced “real photo” postcards, which allowed people to produce cards from their own photographs and mail them. The ability to self-publish one’s personal images meant more photographers could capture unique and often lesser-known aspects of life in Hawai‘i.

For photographers James J. Williams and Ray Jerome Baker (who took motion picture lessons from Thomas Edison), real photo postcards presented an opportunity to document the Native Hawaiian people and their quickly vanishing lifestyles as a result of growing tourism and westernization. Their studio portraits of hula dancers and ‘ukulele performers presented a candid and more thoughtful look at local culture.

“Instead of mass-produced photos, an individual or small local company could produce a postcard with anything, whether that was other people in the community or an event or something they came across on their travels,” Tolley says. “If someone owned a hotel or business, they could promote it with real photo postcards.”

Of the thousands of postcards in Tolley’s collection, some of his favorites include those featuring the trendy, bungalow- style hotels of Waikīkī from the 1900s to the ‘40s. He has a soft spot for the Moana Hotel, built in 1901 at a time when much of the area was swampy duck ponds and taro fields. Other hotels quickly followed: the Halekulani and Seaside Hotels in 1907, ‘Āinahau Hotel (today the site of the Sheraton Princess Ka‘iulani) in 1913, and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1927.

“Plantation-style cottages were the trend at the time. It’s heartbreaking for me whenever one of those original buildings in Waikīkī gets demolished. Postcards are instrumental in keeping a record of what these places looked like,” says Tolley, who has a particular affinity for cards with buildings designed by famed local architects, such as C. W. Dickey, George “Pete” Wimberly and Vladimir Ossipoff.

Tolley has postcards of the former International Market Place, the former Waikikian Hotel (today the Hilton Grand Waikikian timeshare tower), and Kaua‘i’s famed Coco Palms Resort (featured in 1961’s Blue Hawaii with Elvis Presley), among countless others. He has a postcard from World War II with an image of barbed wire stretched across Waikīkī Beach. He has postcards written in Morse code.

”Postcards are time machines,” says Tolley, offering glimpses into Hawai‘i’s past — from the monarchy to statehood and the rise of tourism in the Islands.

Early ”pioneer” postcards helped shape the Islands’ image, capturing a changing Hawai‘i through the decades.

Tolley’s most notable postcard is possibly a torn photo of Honolulu Harbor taken near the end of the 1800s. The image isn’t particularly noteworthy but the sender is: John Soper, an O‘ahu businessman who was chosen by Sanford Dole to lead the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Soper would oversee the disarming of Queen Lili‘uokalani’s 272-man Royal Household Guard and later retired as brigadier general of the National Guard of Hawai‘i in 1907.

“Wish best wishes for the new century,” Soper wrote under the image of Honolulu Harbor, where armed marines and sailors from the USS Boston came ashore on January 17 to assist the coup d’état against the monarchy.

“When people look at postcards, I want them to understand that a lot has been lost,” Tolley says. “The preservationist in me wants viewers to value what’s left in Hawai‘i. Not just as a tourist but to learn the deeper historical and cultural aspects of this place that go beyond the beach. I want people to open their eyes to something that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.”

Find more of Tolley’s postcard collection on Instagram: @fotoaloha

(Photos by Brandon Miyagi.)