Hawaiian Mission Houses

Oldest remaining Western buildings in Hawaii, built by 1820s missionaries

The Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site preserves the three oldest Western-built structures remaining in Hawaii — a prefabricated wooden house shipped from Boston around Cape Horn in 1821, a coral-block house completed in 1831, and the original printing house where the first Hawaiian-language Bible was produced. The complex was the headquarters of the American Protestant mission that transformed Hawaiian culture in the 1820s and 1830s.

The printing house is particularly interesting — the missionaries developed the Hawaiian alphabet and printed an entire language that had never been written before. Guided tours tell a nuanced story that does not shy away from the complexity of the missionary enterprise. Located next to Kawaiaha'o Church in downtown Honolulu.

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