Spalding House facts for kids
Spalding House is a historic building in Makiki Heights, Honolulu, Hawaii. It was also known as the Cooke-Spalding House. Anna Rice Cooke, who had it built, called it Nuumealani, meaning "heavenly terrace." This special place, along with its gardens, used to be a 3.5-acre art museum.
A Home Becomes a Museum
Spalding House was first built as a home in 1925. Mrs. Anna Rice Cooke, whose husband was a local businessman, had it made. At the same time, she was also helping to build the Honolulu Academy of Art. This art museum is now called the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Famous architects helped design the house. Hart Wood was the first designer. Later, the firm of Bertram Goodhue made it bigger. In 1950, Mrs. Cooke's daughter, Alice Spalding, had the ground floor updated by Vladimir Ossipoff.
The Honolulu Museum of Art received the house in 1968. From 1970 to 1978, it showed Japanese prints there. Later, it was sold. In 1986, the Thurston Twigg-Smith family turned it into a new museum called The Contemporary Museum. After some changes inside, the museum opened in 1988. It even had special doors made by artists Robert Graham and Tony Berlant.
In 2011, The Contemporary Museum joined the Honolulu Academy of Art. It became known as the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House. The building, which has about 5,000 square feet for art, went back to its old name, "Spalding House." Around this time, the Honolulu Academy of Art changed its name to the Honolulu Museum of Art.
The Milton Cades Pavilion
The Milton Cades Pavilion was a special part of Spalding House. It held a unique art display. The famous artist David Hockney designed stage sets for three French operas in 1981. He rebuilt these sets for an art show in 1983. One of these, from an opera called L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells), was brought to The Contemporary Museum in 1988. It was placed in the Milton Cades Pavilion for everyone to see.
Beautiful Gardens
The gardens around Spalding House were first designed between 1928 and 1941. They were made as a Japanese stroll garden by Reverend K. H. Inagaki. Sadly, he went to Japan in 1941 and was never heard from again.
From 1979 to 1980, a landscape architect named James C. Hubbard helped bring the gardens back to life. In the 1990s, Leland Miyano made the gardens even more beautiful. When Spalding House was a museum, the gardens displayed sculptures by many artists. These included Satoru Abe, Charles Arnoldi, John Buck, Mark Bulwinkle, Deborah Butterfield, Gordon Chandler, Jedd Garet, Jun Kaneko, George Rickey, James Seawright, Toshiko Takaezu, Tom Wesselmann, and Arnold Zimmerman.
Closure of the Museum
In July 2019, the Honolulu Museum of Art announced that it would close its Spalding House location. The property was put up for sale. The museum officially closed to the public in December 2019.
