Charles William Dickey

Charles William “C.W.” Dickey (6 July 1871 – 25 April 1942) was an American architect famous for developing a distinctive style of Hawaiian architecture. He was known not only for designing some of the most famous buildings in Hawaii—such as the Alexander & Baldwin Building, Halekulani Hotel, Kamehameha Schools campus buildings—but also for influencing a cadre of notable successors, including Hart Wood, Cyril Lemmon, Douglas Freeth, Roy Kelley, and Vladimir Ossipoff. Biography Dickey was born in Alameda, California. His maternal grandfather, William P. Alexander, was an early missionary to Hawaii. His mother was Anne Alexander (1843–1940), whose brother Samuel Thomas Alexander founded Alexander & Baldwin with Henry Perrine Baldwin who was married to his aunt Emily Alexander. His father was Charles Henry Dickey (1841–1932). He grew up in Haikū on Maui, but he returned to California for schooling. After finishing high school in Oakland, California, he obtained a B.A. in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894, then worked with Clinton Briggs Ripley (1896–1900) and E.A.P. Newcomb (1901–1905) in Honolulu, Hawaii, before returning to open his own firm in Oakland. He died in Honolulu, Hawaii Work His initial designs in Hawaii were eclectic. Influences of the then popular Richardsonian Romanesque style can be seen in Punahou School's Pauahi Hall (1894–96), the Bishop Estate Building on Merchant Street (1896), the Irwin Block (Nippu Jiji building) on Nuuanu Street (1896), and Progress Block on Fort Street (1897) in Downtown Honolulu, the last now occupied by Hawaii Pacific University. One of his finest early designs was the Italianate Stangenwald Building (1901) on Merchant Street. Many of these are contributing properties to the Merchant Street Historic District. Even while in Oakland, Dickey continued to design for clients in Hawaii. Dickey’s California firm designed the plantation office building for the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S) at Puunene, Maui in 1917 (and his Honolulu firm designed renovations to the building ten years later). HC&S, a division of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc., was the last remaining sugar plantation in Hawaii when it closed in 2016. In 1920, he reopened an office in Honolulu, in partnership with Hart Wood, and then returned for good in 1925.