Point 18

Hi! This is Cheyenne Braun-Char and Macey Rader from the CKTV Media Productions Class at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School and this is point 18, the Kress Building and art mural. Let’s begin with the Kress building.

The Kress Store was the first mainland-based chain store on Kauai which featured jewelry, a snack bar, toiletries, stationery, toys, hardware, and lots more.
The store was a one-story structure with a total area of 22,000 square feet on a 30,000 square-foot lot. Planning for this new building started in the early 1930s and it finally opened in 1938, and it has undergone numerous renovations since then. Now let’s hear from local historian, Pat Griffin.

Kress was able to gain a foothold on the island because the Rice family sold its dairy lands here precisely to blow a hole in what was then a haole-owned Lihue Plantation-controlled company town. For the first time, it also enabled Japanese and Filipino entrepreneurs such as the Kawakami’s, Miyaki’s, Tanaka’s, and Abe-Alde’s to buy lots and open businesses in the county seat, the heart of Kaua’i.

Thank you, Pat! Now let's turn our attention to the Genesco Company. Genesco acquired the Kress Company in the 1960’s, and shut down all Kress stores in the early 1980’s since the public preferred shopping malls to downtown stores. In 2004 the Salvation Army then bought the building and turned it into a thrift store. Mark Gabbay later bought the building from the Salvation Army for less than $2 million dollars in 2017 with the intention of turning it into an art center. The building is currently being renovated.

Now let’s take a look at the art mural in front of the building. Now If you look closer you will see a beautiful black and white mural painted on the temporary front wall of the building.
This mural was painted on November 19, 2018 by many different artists from Kauai and Oahu and was a collaboration between Keep it Flowing and the Garden Island Arts Council.

Carol Yotsuda of the Garden Island Arts Council came up with the concept of “FEAST’ or a live rendering by several artists without a plan of the design.

Director Kenneth Nishimura of Keep it Flowing came up with the idea for a monochromatic Hawaiiana-themed art installation to maintain some of the consistency.

All of the artists came up with their own ideas for designs and the audience voted on their favorite.

The whole mural was painted in less than 3 hours and was all done live and is the only one of its kind on the island.

Thank you so much for listening and learning more about this mural and historic building. Have fun on the rest of the tour. Aloha!