McCorriston Lanikai Home

1926 Bank of Hawaii Vice President Robert McCorriston and his wife Dorothy purchased Lot 38 in the newly introduced Lanikai Beach neighborhood. As some of the earliest buyers, they scored a prime location on the beach facing the Mokulua Islands at 1056 Mokulua Drive.  

About Robert McCorriston

After Robert graduated from St. Louis in 1901, he began his career at the Bank of Hawaii as a messenger, working his way up as a bookkeeper, teller, assistant cashier, and cashier, and then, in 1924, he became a Vice President.

Architect Robert G. Miller

As an upcoming bank executive, McCorriston hired an up-and-coming architect, Robert G. Miller, to build one of the “more extensive” beach houses on Lanikai Beach — the McCorriston Beach Home. Robert Miller, along with architects Hart Wood and C.W. Dickey, spearheaded the Territorial Era’s style of houses in Hawaii. As he worked on the McCorriston home, he also built many of Hawaii’s treasured landmarks of the era, including Honolulu Hale, the Kalihi Fire Station, and the now historic homes for J.P. Mendoca, Riley Allen, Claude Swann, and the Richard Botley residence. 

McCorristons’ Beach House for Parties

 

A May 15, 1926, Honolulu Star-Bulletin headline announced, “McCorriston house will be finished this month.” And it wasn’t long before the newly completed home became the hot and happening place for parties. The McCorriston Labor Day weekend party at the house, as did its Halloween party, made headlines. Their guests were the Who’s Who of Honolulu, with streets and neighborhoods named after them today: the Damons, McInernys, and the Walkers. 

But the celebrations came to an end too soon.  Just two years later, Dorothy died after having surgery in San Francisco, leaving behind her husband and their eight-year-old daughter. 

When Robert died in 1951, the McCorristons sold the home, and it became the home to Governor Farrington’s daughter, Frances Whittemore. While Whittemore lived there, she continued to host parties for visitors like her sister and brother-in-law, General Leahy.

Over the next several decades, the home served as a beachside retreat for successive families: the Flanigans, the Fukunagas, the Plas, the Mazzies, and the Lears, to name a few. 

In 1974, the home survived a fire fueled by a gas leak, and three additions and renovations, including a rental unit, have been added on. However, much of this home’s original character and style remains to mark that moment in time when Lanikai was a weekend retreat and place of celebrations in the roaring 1920s. 

The Hawaii State Register of Historic Places added the McCorriston home in 2005.