It would be difficult to consider vernacular style without a consideration of the influence of local materials. While the local oolitic limestone in Bath, with its golden color and ease of carving resulted in some astonishing effects, the use of basaltic lava in Honolulu is possibly, pardon me for saying this, Madame Pele, a little less pleasing.
What’s pictured is the Bishop Estate Office along Merchant Street built in 1898 and designed by the same Charles William Dickey who designed the entrancing Alexander & Baldwin Building around the corner. It is interesting to note that the original Bishop Museum buildings, constructed at the same time, are of the same stone, and have the same dour appearance. It would be hard to imagine the use of a more truculent building material, with the consequent effect the rudimentary elaboration the result of lava being so difficult to work with. Although the Bishop Estate Office has been described as Romanesque in the manner of Henry Hobson Richardson, the American architect who popularized massivity in scale wrought in stone in the late 19th century, I think the stylistic application to the Bishop Estate Building is not entirely appropriate.
Firstly, the building is very strictly symmetrical, with the heaviness of the building material ameliorated to a great degree with the fairly lavish use of apertures- note the doorways and the tripartite and thermal crowned window on the ground floor. The upper floor contains a range of four windows, interrupted only with engaged columns that function to draw the eye skyward where, in a fairly subtle decorative elaboration, the big-ish undressed stone blocks of the lower storeys gives way to considerably smaller blocks that for all the world remind me of Roman opus reticulatum. All in all, a thoughtfully designed and sophisticated building more in a classical idiom, made all the more noteworthy given the difficult vernacular medium used to achieve it.