Maugham and Sadie I – The Lost Alexander Young Hotel of Honolulu
Posted: December 29th, 2008 | No Comments »
Passing time over the holidays re-reading some of W Somerset Maugham’s short stories and remembering how good his story Miss Thompson (sometimes known as Rain) was. It tells the story of Maugham’s (left, and rather youngish) voyage around 1917 from
What interested me was that Maugham stayed at the Alexander Young Hotel in
Sadly though the Alexander Young Hotel is gone – demolished in 1981 during the demolition and rebuilding craze in Honolulu that rendered it as bland as most other North American cities. They replaced the hotel with a bland condominium. Still there’s a picture of the building from a postcard and you can see the architectural design for the expansive lobby by clicking here.
The hotel was built in 1901 by (surprise, surprise) Alexander Young, a Scottish-born Honolulu businessman who had made a packet in sugar mills and as the General Manager of the Honolulu Iron Works.
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