The notion of restatement of what John Summerson called the classical language of architecture is interestingly expressed in the Kamehameha V post office at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets. Completed in 1871 during the reign of Kamehameha V, it has come to bear his name, signifying the large number of building works begun in his reign, including the present Iolani Palace, completed, however, after his death. It served as the main post office for the city until the completion of a new structure a couple of blocks away in 1922.
Although not noticeably equipped with any recognizable decorative motifs that would be possessed of a particularly Hawaiian resonance, it is noteworthy that buildings completed under the patronage of the Hawaiian monarchs were strongly European in style, seeking by visual affiliation, to if not align then to identify themselves with their European cohorts. The Kam V post office is sited facing makai along Merchant Street the wharves and levees of Honolulu harbor that, at the time, would have been no more than 100 yards distant.
The building’s exaggerated balustrade-capped Tuscan colonnade was an environmental adaptation to accommodate post office windows and boxes that were originally accessible without actually entering the building. The choice of the Tuscan order perhaps indicates some particular knowledge of the hierarchy of the classical orders, with the choice of the more robust Tuscan for use in the ground floor colonnade something that Vitruvius himself would have understood.
In an interesting bit of urban organicism, the colonnade curves along to the Diamond Head side of the building, but the frontage along Bethel Street seems truncated, bereft as it is of the colonnade. The lack of the colonnade does expose, though, the rusticated effect achieved with the use of pre-cast concrete blocks, the first of their kind ever used in the islands, and what was to become and remains to this day a mainstay of island commercial and residential construction.