Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory

the mount vernon ladies' association: us historic house preservation in the nineteenth century

In 1887, then Princess Lili'uokalani visited the tomb of George Washington, his mansion, and its grounds in the company of Queen Kapi'olani of Hawai'i, taking the tour with reverence. At that time, the rooms of Mount Vernon were sparsely furnished with a few artifacts that the MVLA had received as donations or had purchased including the key to the famous French prison of the Bastille—a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette—in the main hallway and the harpsichord of Washington's adopted granddaughter Nellie Custis in the music room. Ten years later, a deposed Queen Lili'uokalani again toured Mount Vernon during a lengthy visit to the capitol to petition the United States government to reinstate her rule. She described her impressions of Mount Vernon in Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (1898), a memoir published to support her attempt to reclaim her throne. In her recollection of the visits, Lili'uokalani discusses both the house as curated object and its curators, the MVLA or "ladies of the association" who, she says, had restored the house as a "sacred shrine" (126).

Almost forty years before Lili'uokalani's first visit, another woman made the same journey to Mount Vernon. Louisa Cunningham, however, encountered crumbling buildings, overgrown gardens, and rotting crops. "Why was it," she asked in a letter to her daughter Ann Pamela, "that the women of his country did not try to keep it in repair, if the [End Page 4]

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Figure 1.

Queen Lili'uokalani's signature and remarks written in the Mount Vernon Guest Book in May 1887. Lili'uokalani wrote in Hawaiian "Ilihia i ka ike i keia," which translates to "Stricken with awe at seeing this place." (Mount Vernon Ladies' Association Collection, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, 1887. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Translation provided by Washington Place Curator Travis Hancock.)

[End Page 5]

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Figure 2.

Princess Lili'uokalani (on left) and Queen Kapi'olani (on right) with several U.S. and foreign government officials outside of the mansion at Mount Vernon on the Potomac side. (Mount Vernon Ladies' Association Collection, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, 1887. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.)

men could not?" (Catalogue 6). In response, the younger Cunningham founded the MVLA in 1853—its dedicated mission to purchase and restore Mount Vernon as the first house museum in the United States.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, white women dominated an effort to write, and rewrite, history through preservation-focused organizations that restored colonial houses, assembled archival collections, and professionalized house museum management.² Such organizations exploited historical sites and museums through an anachronistic interpretation of the past in an effort to create a collective memory that served its own contemporary, even ahistorical, national vision (Halbwachs 40). Maurice Halbwachs explains that collective memory is socially structured and exists only within the social boundaries where it was created (43). Memories publicly preserved and displayed in a [End Page 6] house museum therefore can contribute to nation building and national identity (Halbwachs 178). Elizabeth Festa details how converting "civically oriented domestic settings" such as Mount Vernon and the Hermitage into museums at this time in the United States "could shore up the increasingly tenuous boundaries of national identity" (Festa 74). The MVLA introduced a new form of organization run entirely by women who addressed the public in an unthreatening framework of authority because upper-class women were typically associated with the domestic sphere and female reformers seized upon domestic imagery and the "cult of true womanhood" to justify their efforts to "tidy up our country's house" (Welter 21). Patricia West cites Mount Vernon as a prime example how the preservation of historic "shrines" appealed to "conservative as well as activist women because it was consistent with women's private, domestic role and because it was part of a wider pattern of nineteenth-century social reform" (West 2–3).³ Similarly, Barbara J. Howe examines the proliferation of women's preservation groups inspired by the success of the MVLA to demonstrate that "women and their voluntary associations were among the first to document and protect the country's history in the nineteenth century" (Howe 32).

Early-twentieth-century studies of the MVLA mythologize its origins, glossing over antebellum—and postbellum—tensions plaguing both the country and the Ladies.⁴ Cunningham chose as Vice Regents only women with a distinguished white lineage and/or prominent social status, such as actress and playwright Anna Cora Mowatt of Virginia, socialite and travel writer Octavia Walton Le Vert of Alabama, and the granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, Mary Morris Hamilton of New York. Not all American women, however, viewed house preservation as a worthy cause in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Cady Stanton adamantly rejected her invitation to join the MVLA. She was, she said, "pledged to a higher and holier work than building monuments, or gathering up the sacred memories of the venerated dead" and wanted Americans to work instead to change laws that denied equal rights to women (Casper 71). In contrast, when Cunningham resigned as Regent in June 1874, she warned: "The mansion and grounds around it should be religiously guarded from changes—should be kept as Washington left them…. Let no irreverent hand change it; no vandal hands desecrate it with the fingers of progress! Those who go to the Home in which he lived and died, wish to see in what he lived and died!" [End Page 7] (Cunningham, "Farewell Address"). She equates the conservation of Mount Vernon with an avoidance of "progress" that might taint the original estate; while Stanton emphasizes change, Cunningham betrays a fear of it. Striving for the mansion to be a bastion of a forgotten past, Cunningham sought to sanitize Mount Vernon by omitting acknowledgement of either the Civil War or its lingering trauma.

Collecting and curating objects to display in the many rooms of Mount Vernon proved daunting to the MVLA. It had taken several years to raise $200,000 to buy two hundred acres including mansion and tomb, and the organization would require additional funds to furnish the house to give visitors a sense how Washington lived there. To purchase artifacts and outfit the mansion, the MVLA relied heavily upon extensive fundraising carried out by the various Vice Regents in their states and through their social networks. In the beginning of the house museum's life, it looked more like a museum per se than a house museum, displaying only glass-encased objects unrelated to domestic life on the main floor. Early visitors were disappointed by the barren room with the representative reaction of one of them being, "Well this don't look like I want to see the home of Washington look. I want it to look comfortable." Another tourist complained that "they have not done anything to the house—there ain't a room furnished" (qtd. in Casper 112). Thus, between 1860 and 1880, the Ladies decorated the house with period-specific items even if they had not been owned by Washington himself.

By the 1880s, the Ladies had decided to redirect their acquisition focus, led by the Relic Committee, to purchase objects and furniture that Washington had owned at Mount Vernon in Washington's time, placing historical accuracy over historical adjacency, and the Vice Regent of each US state took responsibility for furnishing a particular room. Occasionally the Relic Committee would decline to purchase Washington's own possessions due to price, lack of interest, or both, including two volumes of his correspondence from London in 1795. Anthropologist Adrienne L. Kaeppler explains that the collection and placement of artifacts in museums "tells us more about the curators of the collections than it does about what the museumgoing public wants to see" (458). The goal was not to collect an archive of his work but to prioritize the most visually striking artifacts in a domestic setting ("Minutes" 44). By the time Queen Lili'uokalani made her visits, the rooms [End Page 8]

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Figure 3.

West Parlor of Mount Vernon as curated and decorated by the MVLA. Note the large rug with the United States seal and the framed painting of King Louis XVI. Photograph was published in An Illustrated Handbook of Mount Vernon: The Home of Washington in 1899. (Mount Vernon Ladies' Association Collection, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, 1899. Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.)

had been furnished with objects framing Washington as war hero and international diplomat. Three of Washington's swords were mounted across the hall from the Bastille key to emphasize his crucial role as general and to emphasize their use on ceremonial occasions (Dodge 13).

Another notable object reclaimed by the MVLA was the harpsichord of Washington's adopted granddaughter Nellie Custis, which he had given to her as a wedding gift. The stool was also original to Custis, and Washington's personal flute was on display alongside an English guitar he gifted to Custis. The harpsichord and guitar were both imported from London and used by Custis when she lived with Washington in Pennsylvania (never Virginia) (Kirk 17). Contrary to stories that circulated for years of Washington's musical acumen, Washington's family was much more musically inclined than him—"I can neither sing one of the songs, nor raise a single note on any instrument to convince the unbelieving," as he wrote to his friend and musician Francis [End Page 9] Hopkinson—but he enjoyed music and supported his progeny's musical education and talents (Washington Letter to Hopkinson). The printed visitor's guide that accompanied guests touring the grounds neglected to mention Washington's lack of musical skill, instead emphasizing the grand and authentic harpsichord (while lamenting the damage done to it "by relic hunters").

The MVLA challenged societal restrictions imposed on American women by establishing the house museum, but they also deployed their racial and social capital in the process, exposing the strict limits on their ostensibly progressive ways.⁵ Lili'uokalani also would expose those limits by challenging the insularity of preservationist efforts controlled by white middle-class women in the nineteenth-century United States; they sought to legitimize "the nation's relatively short history" through establishing sites of historic importance that emphasized patriotic white men in the face of growing immigrant populations (Howe 35). The Queen maximized the symbolic potential of her final royal residence in its display of Native Hawaiian culture. She also sought to resist the forces of US corporate and state-sponsored imperialism, attempts at American acculturation on the islands, as well as, ironically, the large immigrant populations of Americans arriving on the islands. The example of the house museum would inspire Queen Lili'uokalani to repurpose the tactics of the preservationist movement by collecting, cultivating, and presenting a narrative of Hawaiian nationhood in an informal, house museum-inspired context; however, instead of house museums' concentration on the past, Washington Place served as a curation of objects with an eye toward expectations of a Hawaiian future. That narrative, however, would still be shaped by what it excluded as much as by what it included.⁶ Her decision to emphasize the artifacts of Hawaiian royalty and its ceremonies neglected the larger history of Hawai'i and its people.

us newspapers racialize lili'uokalani's mount vernon visits and reject monarchy

While Cunningham downplayed her secessionist loyalties and refused to acknowledge their influence in her operation of the MVLA, Lili'uokalani very much presented the environment and forces that had shaped her against an ongoing backdrop of political unrest in Hawai'i. She proudly projected an image of strong female leadership, embracing [End Page 10] some Victorian ideals of femininity in her style of dress and fluent English while preserving Native Hawaiian heritage and customs in traveling with the ceremonial kāhili and writing in Hawaiian. The idea of a matriarchal society was foreign to most Americans and was beginning to fade within Hawaiian society as more adopted Protestant traditions.⁷ Many white American men refused to show Kapi'olani in the 1880s or Lili'uokalani in the 1890s the same respect bestowed upon international male monarchs, and when US Lieutenant Cowles exhibited too much flattery toward Kapi'olani on the steamer to Mount Vernon, he was skewered in the press. In addressing Her Majesty, he had said:

I ask your gracious Majesty's permission to speak. [the queen bowed her head.]…. The secretary of the navy … begs that your Majesty will accept of this vessel to convey you to Mount Vernon, the resting place of the illustrious founder of this country. The secretary is always glad to render any service to a beautiful woman, and is doubly pleased to-day in the fact that that beautiful woman is your gracious Majesty, the wise ruler of a nation near and friendly to the United States.

(The Newberry Herald and News)

Cowles' speech emphasizes Washington's tomb over his house, the more popular destination on the property before the Ladies furnished the mansion with period-specific furniture. The Newberry Herald and News of Newberry, South Carolina reported that the other Americans on the boat "were disgusted" and that "he was not obliged, you know, to call her dusky Majesty 'a beautiful woman' twice in a brief speech of fourteen lines." The Alexandria Gazette declared that the "speech has made the Lieutenant notorious, for no mortal ever before included beauty among the Queen's attractions." In a similar vein, The Daily Herald complained that "in this democratic country, it is in the worst possible taste to make much ado over royalty, especially when it is of the ginger cake colored variety." These severe reactions to Cowles indicate overt racism and sexism, as in the reports' collective anger about his description of her as beautiful. Lili'uokalani was subjected to the same kind of vitriolic attacks Queen Kapi'olani received in the American press, especially in newspapers of former slave states. In contrast, the American journalist Mabel Clare Craft Deering drew upon a detailed description of Washington Place to depict the Queen as a respected mistress of that [End Page 11] residence, "a big fine building, in the old Southern plantation style, with a veranda all around, and pillars that suggest the White House" in her book Hawaii Nei (1898), ultimately linking her to the official residence of the president of the United States—not just the home of the first president (60). Washington Place did, to an extent, thus support the project of reinstating Hawai'i's monarchy, countering the pejorative caricatures of Queen Lili'uokalani as an incompetent ruler.

To support this theory, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen recounts the appearance of Joaquin Miller, the "poet of the Sierras," at her trial in Honolulu and how she "was shown specimens of his poetry, especially that which he had written on my deposition, and in which he had alluded to me in the most favorable terms. I have been told that he was sent out as a press correspondent, with the expectation that he would take the opposite view, and that when the 'government' found out his real sentiments he was forced to leave Honolulu" (287). Miller worked as a journalist and poet, primarily based in California, and while his most famous poem "Columbus" celebrates colonization, he held a different viewpoint in regard to the United States's bogus charges against Lili'uokalani to justify taking control over the Hawaiian Islands. Miller's refusal to depict the trial in favor of the United States prompted the American government to release him from his reporting duties and to stop funding his international lodging, demonstrating newspapers' evident bias in supporting US governmental control.

Several years before Queen Lili'uokalani ascended to the throne in 1891, the Hawaiian Kingdom—which merged the rule of all the major islands of Hawai'i, O'ahu, Maui, Molokai, Lāna'i, Kauai, Kaho'olawe, and Ni'ihau in 1810 under King Kamehameha I—had been struggling with American businessmen living on the islands who had begun to assume more political control. They influenced government policies by restricting voting rights to wealthy Hawaiians, Americans, and Europeans while disenfranchising many Chinese and Japanese immigrants along with the lower socioeconomic classes of Native Hawaiians (Silva 126–27). A few years after that first Mount Vernon visit, in January of 1893, a company of US Marines marched through downtown Honolulu supporting several wealthy American businessmen's plan of overthrowing the monarchy, and within forty-eight hours, Lili'uokalani had been removed from power, placed under house arrest, and a provisional US government named the Republic of Hawai'i was put in place.⁸ This [End Page 12] move prompted turmoil in a political, cultural, and ethical sense across the islands of Hawai'i. The Queen wrote to Washington, DC to appeal to President Grover Cleveland, who sympathized with her pleas, and Congress, which did not and ultimately rejected her request to be reinstated. After Lili'uokalani's release in 1895, she tirelessly advocated for Hawaiian sovereignty by making several more trips to the US capitol. The Evening Star of Washington, DC stated: "How long it will take for Mrs. Dominis to signify her submission to these terms, and to accept a liberal pecuniary provision for herself and her niece, remains to be seen. At present, she appears to be in an exalted state of mind, highly scorning the idea of becoming less than queen." The United States had much to gain commercially and politically in taking over the Kingdom of Hawai'i, especially when the Spanish-American War broke out near the turn of the century. There was an incentive to attach Hawai'i to the edict of Manifest Destiny and refuse any other course of action, perhaps even suppressing alternate viewpoints from print.

As the Hawaiian Kingdom resisted US annexation in the 1890s, newspapers took aim at Lili'uokalani as a "black pagan queen who wanted nothing short of absolute monarchy" (The San Francisco Examiner). Echoing the accusations of sorcery that the Mount Vernon Ladies had encountered in the press from opponents warning Congress not to be swayed "by sentiment and female witchery," so Lili'uokalani's reign was declared to be "a study in superstition" (qtd. in Thane 71; Nichols 256). A white woman accused of witchcraft faces very different consequences and associations compared to a woman of color accused of similar spell casting, and racism undergirds those comments directed to Lili'uokalani. Her powerful position as a former queen threatened the United States, and despite her devout Christianity, newspapers repurposed her political power as supernatural and exotic, further removing Lili'uokalani from a place of respectability among American readers.

a monarch at mount vernon: queen lili'uokalani and the curation of washington place

Although Lili'uokalani's attempts to reclaim Hawaiian sovereignty were unsuccessful, she believed it important to preserve Hawaiian culture and continue her reign in spirit if not in literal practice. She therefore adapted the program of the MVLA to promote those goals by cultivating the same reverence for herself among her former subjects [End Page 13] as the Ladies hoped to cultivate among Americans for Washington. Lili'uokalani pivoted from a monument that commemorated white American nationalism and a founding father to a celebration of Native Hawaiian identity and female leadership. After her deposition as monarch, Lili'uokalani remained at Washington Place where she entertained, encouraging her visitors to speak Hawaiian and play indigenous music. As The Christian Science Monitor put it in 1916: "Of all the old regime, there still remains only the deposed Queen. Liliuokalani, living a still eventful life in Washington place, the home of her husband, the prince consort: a home filled with relics of the days of royalty: reminders of the days when King Kalākaua was the monarch, and she a Queen herself, during a brief reign of two years." Or as journalist and archivist Albert Pierce Taylor described Washington Place upon his visit in the 1910s: "Her home was the rendezvous for the old 'royal set' of Honolulu. It was a little kingdom and she was accorded all the honors and obeisances that are the privilege of a monarch to receive" (Taylor 539). This alternate Mount Vernon in Honolulu, like and unlike the original, transposes the model authority that the MVLA established in mid-nineteenth century Virginia to the Pacific, ironically in opposition to the annexation of Hawai'i by the United States—questioning the abuse of power wielded by the United States.

In Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, which details the exploitation of Hawai'i to gain the sympathy of American readers, Lili'uokalani reflects on her visit to the Washingtons' bedroom at Mount Vernon.⁹ She understands the resonance of arranged artifacts:

The simple four-posted, old-fashioned bedstead, with its chintz curtains, the arm-chair with valance and chintz-covering, the well-worn steps descending to a lower floor,—these homely souvenirs all spoke to me of the sister woman who had sat and reflected over the loss of that heroic life which it was her privilege to share, and rendered the visit almost too sadly interesting for the accompaniment of a pleasure tour.

(125)

Lili'uokalani imbues the popular tourist attraction with gravitas, homely comforts, mourning, and the reminder of mortality. As part of this visit, she received a small goblet carved from a tree located by Washington's tomb, which she brought back with her to Hawai'i and is [End Page 14] still in Washington Place today. On her second visit to Mount Vernon, she notes the installation of bars in front of the windows. Lili'uokalani explains of the MVLA that "as time has passed, and the means of visiting the sacred shrine have become more available to the many … so the ladies of the association having the care of this estate are obliged to protect the antique furniture and ancient ornaments from too close inspection" (126). These artifacts enabled the MVLA to write a more sanitized version of the nation's history devoid of its racist, exploitative, and imperial underpinnings. Lili'uokalani's second visit to Mount Vernon occurred after she had endured an eight-month imprisonment at her primary royal residence 'Iolani Palace (January 16 to September 6, 1895), five additional months under house arrest in her own private residence of Washington Place in which her freedoms were limited (September 6, 1895 to February 6, 1896), before being restricted more generally to the island of O'ahu (February 6, 1896 to October 6, 1896) (Hays 19). Thus, she was keenly aware of the use of bars not only to keep people out of a home but also to pen people in. As she recounts her release in Hawaii's Story from house arrest at 'Iolani Palace: "I was driven from my prison—once my palace" (295). She details her time imprisoned in both residences in her autobiography as this visual image of bars on the windows of Mount Vernon—the inspirational architecture for Washington Place—applies pressure to the entirely white MVLA and its limitations on membership. Especially relevant here, Lili'uokalani deplored the exploitative system of contract labor that had developed in nineteenth-century Hawai'i wherein white plantation owners brought Asian workers to the islands in poverty-riddled conditions (Proto 15). She hoped to move her country away from those practices as she believed "the 'slave labor' on the [sugar] plantations was 'inhuman'" (H. Allen 304).

Lili'uokalani remained in residence at Washington Place as "'Iolani Palace began a transition from royal residence to a makeshift capitol" of the American territories (H. Allen 300). Her subjects had not forgotten her. When she returned to Washington Place in 1895 after her unsuccessful visit to the US capitol, Native Hawaiians organized a ceremony typically reserved for public figures who had fallen in war by forming a guard of honor that flanked the walkway to the main entrance (Bonura 151). Lili'uokalani's Washington Place spoke to the past, present, and future political state of Hawai'i. Gordon Fraser considers her translation [End Page 15] of the ancient, multilayered creation chant Kumulipo that recounts Hawaiian royal genealogy while living in the United States for extended periods near the end of the nineteenth century as part of her campaign to reestablish her rule by emphasizing Hawaiian sovereignty. Brandy Nālani McDougall has noted the political accomplishments embedded in that translation as "continuing strength and survival of the Hawaiian people and nation" (755). Virginia Price similarly has explored the decades-long struggle between Native Hawaiian and American interests as well as political control through the history of Washington Place; the construction of Greek Revival style had represented an imposition of American architecture onto a tropical landscape that had always prompted curiosity among Native Hawaiians (48). I view Lili'uokalani's intentional curation of precious Hawaiian artifacts within Washington Place as a countermove to the imperial imposition explored by Price, one that had been long awaited given the house's first owner.

Washington Place first belonged to Mary Dominis—a fervent admirer of George Washington and early member of the MVLA—and her son John Dominis Jr., who would later marry Lili'uokalani in 1862 ("Mount Vernon Record" 175). Once mother and son died and Washington Place was willed to Lili'uokalani in 1891, she used the domestic space to preserve both pre-imperial American and Native Hawaiian perspectives, acting as a visual rebuttal to the United States's political and cultural assault on the islands. When Mary Dominis died in 1889, Lili'uokalani ordered the American flag to be removed from Washington Place, symbolizing her longtime aversion to an overt American presence in her residence, as she continued to fly the Hawaiian national flag and her royal standard. It would not be until Annexation Day, August 12, 1898, when the American Provisional Government ordered her to lower both Hawaiian flags, to which she acquiesced; however, she refused to raise an American flag for most of her time at Washington Place.¹⁰ The location of Washington Place in central Honolulu across from the state capitol and the ongoing respect of Native Hawaiians and Americans for Lili'uokalani enabled her and the house to influence civic and cultural conversations in Hawai'i for years after her overthrow. The Queen's birthday continued to be celebrated in a formal fashion at Washington Place as each year the Hawaiian Band serenaded her in the morning before she received guests from late morning until early afternoon at a "semi-state reception"; [End Page 16] newspapers such as The Pacific Commercial Advertiser and The Honolulu Times would cover her birthday events, often writing "Long live Queen Lili'uokalani."

Prior to her deposition, Lili'uokalani had spent far more time in 'Iolani Palace as well as her other residences, with Washington Place being one of her less-frequently used homes. It wasn't until 1915 when women's associations across the transpacific began linking their power to the structure of the house and female leadership, particularly the Daughters of Hawai'i, by restoring Queen Emma's summer residence, known as Hānaiakamalama, in Honolulu as a house museum in the early twentieth century—before turning their attention to houses from the Kalākaua dynasty. When Queen Emma died in 1885, a codicil to her will "required Bishop to found a museum as a condition of his inheriting her collection of 'native curiosities,'" not intending the site of her house to function as a museum but reflective of her interest in preserving royal artifacts (Kelly 197). The Territorial Government acquired Hānaiakamalama, and briefly had plans to convert the site into a baseball field given its extensive acreage; however, the Daughters of Hawai'i were given control of the home as long as they used and maintained the structure as a house museum, which were the contractual conditions of the Territorial Government. At this time, private organizations instead of government were initiating preserving the homes of royalty. As early as 1889, Lili'uokalani harnessed the power of Washington Place to serve as a counterweight to an increasingly Americanized Hawai'i when she began her collecting and curating at Washington Place.¹¹ In some ways, I consider this decision reflective of Linda Tuhiwai Smith's argument that indigenous peoples reappropriate colonial tools through practices of exclusion and misrepresentation: Lili'uokalani subverts the US house museum concept to decolonize Washington Place. Her efforts differed from Cunningham's motivation for the MVLA to serve as an endorsement of American practices and patriotic ideology.

After her overthrow, Lili'uokalani began reclaiming objects to exhibit in Washington Place (H. Allen 329–30). She wrote to her legal advisor Joseph Oliver Carter in 1899: "I would like to remind you about my memorandum book and papers and my husband's relics that were seized by the P.[rovisional] Government and are still in their hands…. If you can recover them, I would like to have them sent to Washington Place" (Hawai'i State Archives). She gathered what she called "relics" [End Page 17]

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Figure 4.

Lili'uokalani sitting on the front lawn of Washington Place in Honolulu after the U.S. annexation. Colonel Samuel Nowlein, a loyal monarchist, is standing in background. (Hawai'i State Archives, Queen Lili'uokalani Photograph Exhibition, PP-98–13-014.)

of John Dominis that had been confiscated before her arrest in 1895, an attempt by the US to exert its control and erase a pre-colonial history. According to Stacy L. Kamehiro, after the 1887 Bayonet Constitution, "a gradual but forceful erasure of Native Hawaiian art, culture and history ensued…. [L]egislators halted funding to government projects they felt unnecessary or wasteful" including "the Hawaiian National Museum and Library" (Kamehiro 130). Kamehiro also cites the marginalization of indigenous language, after the government mandated English as the language of school instruction, and the transfer of control of Hawaiian historical archives to descendants of missionaries as well as nonindigenous Hawaiians (130). Collecting and displaying these objects that represented her and the past of Hawai'i's independence indicates Queen Lili'uokalani's investment in the effectiveness of a house museum conveying a story; she was assembling under the roof of Washington Place a national history from the perspective of a dethroned monarch—an intriguing similarity to the curated artifacts at Mount Vernon that lionized Washington.¹² [End Page 18]

Lili'uokalani's desire to showcase a precolonial, precapitalist Hawai'i was as anachronistic as the bucolic representation of Mount Vernon that attempted to whitewash slavery. Her attempts would prove to be prescient of future museums concerned with Hawaiian pasts but also similarly unachievable. As Kaeppler's study of museum representations of Hawai'i concludes, "most current selections of objects and the manner in which they are exhibited emphasize the romantic notion of an uncontaminated 'other'—a Hawai'i that does not exist today and probably never did" (467–68). Hawai'i had a long history of cross-cultural contact before the onset of American imperialism, and the Queen's objects unintentionally reflect those contacts.¹³

Decisions in Lili'uokalani's curatorial strategies conveyed her penchant for prioritizing stories of the Hawaiian monarchy—specifically the Kalākaua dynasty over the Kamehameha.¹⁴ The feather sash or kā'ei that is a prominent feature in the Kamehameha Monument and a critical piece of evidence that supports Kalākaua as royal ancestry was taken by Lili'uokalani in 1891, thereby preventing it from being displayed in the Bishop Museum.¹⁵ The earliest museum in Hawai'i to curate and display Polynesian cultural artifacts, the Bishop Museum, was dedicated to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last heir of the Kamehameha Dynasty, by her husband Charles Reed Bishop in 1889 (Del Piano xiii). In contrast to Washington Place, the Bishop Museum sought to be "a functional museum of truly national character," to be reflective of the natural history of Hawai'i and the Pacific and its peoples, but notably, it was also developed during the turbulent 1880s and 1890s as a curatorial counter to the encroaching control of the United States (Rose et al. vii). Eventually, the sash made its way to the Bishop Museum as part of the acquisition of the Lili'uokalani collection (Kamehiro 119, 217). Like the contest over control of the sash, Lili'uokalani and her brother also did not want to give custody of a special drum to the "Kamehameha Museum," an early informal name for the Bishop Museum, or any institution that was not under their control (Kamehiro 117). The Queen did agree to have a feather cloak of hers photographed for the museum, as first director of the Bishop Museum William Tufts Brigham notes the "kindness of her majesty" in allowing for that in his book Additional Notes on Hawaiian Featherwork (Brigham 16). Ultimately, reminiscent of some of the preservationist strategies and motivations of the MVLA, Lili'uokalani embraced an American way of telling history by selecting to display and/or protect particular objects over others to priviliege her [End Page 19] reign and that of her predecessors of the Kalākaua dynasty (Hawai'i State Archives, Inventory, 1–2).

Early artifacts collected by Queen Lili'uokalani included calabashes that belonged to her father that emphasized her heritage and position as ruler (Price 62). Other objects embodied ancient Hawaiian culture; some were indicative of royalty, including several presentation calabashes with lids, the kāhili stand, and the umeke (bowl) that was often shaped like a gourd (Jenkins 323). These calabashes came from a carpentry family associated with the monarchy such as John Daniel Wicke, who in 1891 created a calabash on a stand for Washington Place that was at the foot of the main staircase, using a design similar to one created by his father for King Kalākaua five years prior (Jenkins 178). The Pacific Commercial Advertiser printed a description of the finished piece: "One of the large calabashes made for Her Majesty by J.D. Wicke is a magnificent one. It is placed upon a stand of polished wood and surmounted with a crown neatly carved, as well as the inscription on the side" (qtd. in Jenkins 178). Another calabash, created by W.H. Wicke (father of J.D. Wicke), was made from kou, which was considered one of the most beautiful woods native to Hawai'i and it became one of the rarest due to a red spider infestation (Jenkins 126). Other members of the royal family also collected royal keepsakes. A new residence for Princess Ka'iulani was being built in Waikīkī "crowded with relics of Hawaiian royalty, evidently hastily gathered together—feather coronets, shell necklaces, pieces of furniture, and in a large box was one of the celebrated feather mantles like those worn by the nobles" (Krout 106).

In addition to calabashes, Lili'uokalani displayed several kāhili and kāhili stands, potent emblems of Hawaiian royalty, prominent at royal receptions, by her bedside and in the formal living room of Washington Place. The kāhili belonging to Lili'uokalani had been removed from the Royal Mausoleum whereupon she then "commanded her principal featherworker, Naheana, to divide the feathers for use in two kāhili." These were new designs that appeared on poles made of walrus ivory and turtle shell, commonly flanking Lili'uokalani at royal receptions (Rose et al. 281). Although the size of the kāhili could vary, the two photographed in Washington Place between 1890 and 1910 were quite tall as they reached the ceiling, and some could be as tall as twenty feet. At one point in Lili'uokalani's time in Washington Place, there were at [End Page 20] least one hundred and sixty kāhili that belonged to various members of the royal dynasty that were frequently stored there (Williams 76–77). Paired kāhili also adorned the original cover of Hawaii's Story, and an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin details First Lady Helen Poindexter's efforts to maintain the artifacts still in Washington Place in 1934 including the Queen's original kahili, which were used in her funeral procession and are still in Washington Place today (G. Allen 1, 6). Craft also recalls the kāhilis in Washington Place as "they are doubtless the legitimate descendants of the fly-brushes with which retainers used to fan sovereigns in years gone by" and alludes to the appearance of kāhilis in other homes in Hawai'i in the 1890s as a denigration of their sacred nature in writing that "No one but a chief is entitled to have them, though you will find stolen trophies boldly set out in several drawing-rooms where they have no lawful place" (60–61). Additionally, Craft draws a compelling contrast between the homes of Queen Lili'uokalani and Princess Ka'iulani in terms of their incorporation of Hawaiian artifacts, with Ka'iulani's household of 'Āinahau being much more Americanized:"her drawing room is entirely modern, with its photographs and fauteuils, and might be in Belgravia or Fifth Avenue" and "her ladies-in-waiting are not Hawaiian" (61). Craft notes that outwardly, Princess Ka'iulani embraces Hawaiian culture on her person as she "seldom appears without a royal lei of oo feathers," but that this is not evident in the décor of 'Āinahau (61).

Furniture at Washington Place during the Queen's residence was built from both the native koa and kamani wood known for its glossy surface (Kamehiro 203). Koa in particular has a long association with pride in Hawai'i and items made from it are frequently passed through generations (Jenkins xi). The word itself means "brave, fearless" as well as "soldier" (Kamehiro 202). Popular woodworker Henry Weeks, Jr., whose father was English and mother was Native Hawaiian, began infusing his furniture with his love of Hawaiian music by designing his koa settees to look like a musical clef. Weeks Jr. was one of the only Native Hawaiian carpenters trained in the Western style. More akin to sculpture than furniture, his settees were praised for their Hawaiian-inspired design, and Queen Lili'uokalani prominently displayed one more than six feet long in the hallway of Washington Place. It remains in the mansion at this writing (Jenkins 218). She also owned a concert [End Page 21]

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Figure 5.

Front Parlor of Washington Place as arranged by Lili'uokalani during her lifetime. Photograph undated but between 1892 and 1896. Note the milo calabash with cover on the circle top table, made of several types of wood native to Hawai'i, as well as the koa stand in far right back. The table was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia ("Washington Place – Parlor," c. 1892–1896, Photographs of Hawaiian Royalty, the Royal Palace, Volcano Road, and More, PHA 186. Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum.)

grand piano made of koa given to her on her fifty-third birthday in 1892. A large koa tree from the Big Island was shipped to New York where J&C Fischer Piano Company built the piano. Meant to be "as Hawaiian as possible for her majesty," the piano boasts two gold painted L's surrounded by a crown on both sides on the open fall board and the inside metal plate (Des Jarlais et al. 51). The Kalākaua coat of arms appears on the right side of the piano and the outside cover of its keyboard.

conclusion: afterlives of washington place

When Queen Lili'uokalani died at the age of seventy-nine in November of 1917, one of her last wishes was for the continued teaching of Hawaiian music and language at Washington Place (Iaukea 121). Interestingly, in her will, she instructed her executor to auction most of [End Page 22] her possessions, including furniture and valuable antiques to fund her lāhui, the people of Hawai'i. Her will also bequeathed several heirlooms to the Bishop Museum: "all my large and small Kāhilis, six lei Palaoa, all my lockets and jewelry containing pictures of my family, one plain gold ring that belonged to my mother, and a gold chain bracelet a present from Alfred of England, Duke of Edinborough" (Queen Lili'uokalani's Will). A few months after the Queen's death, legal debates arose concerning the ownership and future of Washington Place among three parties: Prince Kūhiō, the trustee's attorneys, and C.P. Iaukea as executor of the trust deed. During negotiation, Iaukea endorsed the proposal of Prince Kūhiō to preserve Washington Place in a style similar to Mount Vernon: "Kūhiō's idea was to have 'Washington Place' kept up and maintained as a place of historical interest where all of the Queen's relics etc. might be preserved as is done with Mount Vernon [,] the home of George Washington. [Kūhiō was] even suggesting that some of the King's relics and momentoes [that had belonged to] her brother Kalākaua, now at their Waikīkī home, be kept at Washington Place" (Hawai'i State Archives Diary Entry from Curtis P. Iaukea). Prince Kūhiō made explicit what the Queen had been doing implicitly, the establishment of venues to preserve items from the monarchy. Due to funding shortfalls for the proposed "Lili'uokalani Memorial," Washington Place instead became the official governor's mansion until 2002 when it began to function as a museum, and in 2007 gained National Historic Landmark designation, with the State of Hawai'i building a new governor's residence behind Washington Place on the same grounds (Hays 7).

The symbolic and political significance of Washington Place endures. During the twentieth century, Washington Place was a site for events honoring Native Hawaiian culture and fostering cultural conversations. For example, Talk Story—the first conference of Asian-American and Hawaiian writers—hosted its opening party at Washington Place in 1978 (Kingston 2). Several recent documentaries as well as a new opera about Lili'uokalani address her anti-imperialist activities and the checkered history of Washington Place. Hawai'i born filmmaker Edgy Lee's Liliuokalani – Reflections of Our Queen (2017) examines her legacy in Hawaii, and a showing at Washington Place fundraised for the museum. PBS's The American Experience: Hawaii's Last Queen (1994) and the History Channel's Conquest of Hawaii [End Page 23] (2003) focus more specifically on the US coup to overtake Hawai'i and dethrone Lili'uokalani. Native Hawaiian composer, educator, and performer Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti received an OPERA America Women Composers Discovery Grant in 2022 to create an opera about Lili'uokalani's life when imprisoned in 'Iolani Palace for eight months drawing upon the Queen's diary entries, lyrics from her songs, and Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (Van Dyke). Leilehua Lanzilotti is a descendant of Territorial Governor of Hawai'i Samuel King and First Lady Pauline Nawahineokala'i King—the first Native Hawaiian governor and first lady. The opera is scheduled to open in 2025, and its conception and support reflects a current and ongoing interest in Lili'uokalani during her house arrest and the tactics of cultural resistance she deployed.

More recently on a local level, a June 28^th, 2023 episode of Aloha Authentic, a program covering Hawaiian culture and history, featured Washington Place. Host Kamaka Pili interviewed President of the Washington Place Foundation (and Dominis descendant) Louise "Gussie" Shubert, the Hawai'i Youth Opera Chorus Artistic Director Nola Nāhulu, and First Lady Jaime Kanani Green. These guests embody the historical trajectory of the mansion and its cultural intertwinements—particularly with the United States—with Green noting that "during the times of the territorial governors, they used this home …, but I think it kind of lost some of the value as the Queen's home" before praising Former First Lady Jane Ariyoshi for reviving interest in its monarchial past. Green adds that she would like to "bring Washington Place back out into the public…. [I]t's just such a special place, and as a Native Hawaiian, I know so many people who haven't been here. Who know Washington Place, know that it was the Queen's home, know that it's the governor's residence, but haven't actually been able to experience that." Her position and ancestry speak to the complex history of the mansion and its centrality to cultural relations between Hawai'i and the United States. Washington Place justifies the MVLA's and Queen Lili'uokalani's beliefs in the power of a curated house to tell a story of nationhood and leadership, however shifting or mythical. Washington Place continues to be a site of interwoven narratives that perseveres to rewrite—and reclaim—a country's past, present, and future. [End Page 24]