A story of treasure hunting, mystery and the amazing Mauna Loa of Detroit.
Photo Credit: TikiRoom.com
Last weekend (April 5,2008) I decided to take on the daunting task of cleaning out my garage. It was 60 degrees out, a beautiful morning and the kids were at their Aunt's for the day so I figured I'd make myself useful (which I rarely do) and get to work. Now our garage has been loaded with tons of "stuff" since we finished our basement over the winter, and there were boxes on top of boxes filled various "things" as well as pieces of furniture we received from my wife's parents after her mother passed away. As I began rummaging through the mess of things I came across a box of old classes and cups my wife's Grandmother had given to us. They were old and dusty and Grandma tried selling the box of glasses on multiple occasions at rummage sales for as little as 5 cents a piece. At one point she couldn't even give them away! Till they offered them to my wife that is. So, after a brief glance I called my wife out to the garage to see what she wanted to do with them and she just told me to "pitch em". As I walked to the trash can, I poked through the box and found a couple Michigan State glasses I thought were neat that I would keep, but then I saw these really weird Tiki cups. They were actually kind of interesting. They were ceramic with a kind of odd brown and shimmery finish, they looked like carved tiki figures with the tongues sticking out and what not. Carved on the bottom (which obviously looked freehand) were the words "Mauna Loa" and "Detroit". "Hmmm", I thought, "I've never heard of any place called that in Detroit." And why would my grandmother own these anyway? She doesn't go to Detroit and she definitely isn't the type to leave the city much, let alone check out exotic restaurants or curio shops. She's a "farm girl", or so I thought. "And what is a Mauna Loa? There's no place named that, that I'm aware of".
So I set the cups aside for later and finished cleaning the garage. Later, I decided to get on the internets (I love the internets, see) and look up "Mauna Loa". First I found that it is the name of a volcano in Hawaii. Then I searched "Mauna Loa Detroit" and what I discovered next was REALLLLY cool. Apparently the "Mauna Loa" was a VERY famous Polynesian restaurant in Detroit back in the early 60's. You really can't find much information at all on it but luckily Wayne State college has some archived information on the restaraunt. It's as if it never existed.
In its day Mauna Loa was one of the most lavish, expensive and spectacular Polynesian palaces of the Midwest, if not all of North America. Located on a man-made lagoon at 3077 West Grand Boulevard and Cass Avenue in Detroit's New Center area, it was surrounded by palm trees, swaying, waving, and beckoning swanky Detroiters of the late 60's to come inside to another world.
Unfortunately, if you go there today, there is nothing there, not even the building shell. After The Mauna Loa closed, new owners opened an American seafood restaurant there, but apparently it caught fire and had to be demolished. The site of this once proud South Seas supper club is now the St. Regis hotel parking lot.
Here is some really interesting information on the restaraunt.
The Interior:
The Monkey Bar:
Situated in the centre of the Mauna Loa, the Monkey Bar's actual bar-top had 1,250 Chinese coins embedded in Lucite, as well as four-bladed fans from a Hong Kong saloon. The bar tables were brass bound hatch covers from trading schooners.
The Bombay Room:
This room was a formal dining area with 3,000 zircons imbedded in the filigreed teakwood panels that surrounded a sacred elephant shrine. The waiters wore turbans, no idea if they were East Indian, or perhaps just some white guys serving up birdie num-nums while wearing dark make-up like Peter Sellers in The Party.
The Papeete Room, the Tonga Room, the Lanai Room and the Maui Room:
I don't know anything about these rooms, except the Oriental waiters wore Mandarin jackets.
The Mugs and Other Dinnerware:
The Mauna Loa mugs were specially designed for the restaurant.
The Polynesian Pidgeon:
The main body is designed to look like a section of bamboo, and the handle is actully a bird, climbing up the bamboo. The drink that came in this mug was called Polynesian Pidgeon. As the menu says, "Two or more will stimulate you enough to give yourself away. Watch out!!"
Bob's Rum Barrel:
Shaped like a rum barrel. Holds the drink called, of course, Bob's Rum Barrel. "This barrel of varieties of rum specially blended and made for adventurers and lovers (sic)"
The Coconut:
Your standard coconut shaped mug. "Coco Aku: Coconut milk, spices and rums are delicately blended to suit the most discriminate taste."
The Signature Mug:
A funky little tiki man impetuously sticking out his tongue. This mug came in both black and brown varieties and held the drink they called Baha Lana. The menu cautions "you wouldn't really care what happens before or after you take this drink". The bottom reads "Design by Mauna Loa Detroit".
The Salt and Pepper Drums
These seem to be not too hard to find, even today. Perhaps they were sold in a gift shop, if the Mauna Loa had one. They are dark brown ceramic drums that read "Mauna Loa" with tan skins stretched over the top. The bottom reads simply 'Japan'.
The Sugar Bowl - A squat, round brown ceramic tiki head with lid. Bottom reads 'Design by Mauna Loa Detroit'.
The Menu: (missing the main course section)
Hot Appetizer Selections:
Shanghai Crab Roll 1.85
A fluffy combination of exquisite delight.
Polynesian Puff 1.65
A stuffed sensation from the Islands.
Hikoki Tidbit 1.50
The Polynesian meatball.
Rumaki 1.60
Water chestnuts and spiced chicken livers, rolled in crisp bacon.
Puffed Shrimps 1.95
A for real Oriental preparation
Napuka Fishfang 2.25
A sweet and sour fish presentation on a bed of romaine, with hot plum sauce.
Hawaiian Barbecued Ribs 2.40
Meaty baby back ribs marinated in Island spices from our Polynesian ovens.
Nuku Hiva Drums 1.75
Specially marinated chicken upper rings, a masterpiece of island culinary art.
Cha Siu 1.90
Slices of lean pork loin, cured in barbecue sauce.
Bali Miki 1.95
Sweet soya cured slivers of selected beef on bamboo spears.
Avaku Pillow .95
The Chinese egg roll.
Taipi Beef 2.45
Oriental seasoned tender beef cubes on picks, served in Kobe.
Delightful, Exotic Dessert Presentations
Hawaiian Snow Ball 1.25
French Vanilla ice cream rolled in shredded coconut with crushed pineapple and chocolate syrup.
Captain Bob's Banana Boat Flambe 1.25
Baked banana with kumquats and coconut pineapple ice cream flamed at your table.
Orange Blossom Flambe 1.25
Stuffed orange with brandy ice cream flamed with orange brandy at your table.
Mauna Loa of Snow with Fresh Fruit
A sensation of fruit arrangement made from selected tropical and continental fruits.Content Credit: TikiRoom.com
So obviously, my first instinct was to contact grandma and ask her about it. "About those weird ceramic tiki cups, what were you doing at one of the most expensive restaraunts in Detroit!? You're a farm girl!", I asked her. She replied, "Oh those ugly old things? I tried selling those for 8 years at our rummage sales for a nickel and nobody would buy them. I got them in Flint (MI) at a restaraunt called The Copper Penny back in the 80's. You got one of those cups every time you ordered a special drink."
Interesting to say the least. So the cups went from the Mauna Loa in the 60's, they were probably auctioned off or sold off later when the club closed and purchased by other restaraunt owners, they end up in Flint at this Copper Penny restaraunt and now here they sit on my kitchen counter looking new as the day they were made. Very interesting indeed!
Here is some more interesting information I found surrounding these cups:
3 kitchens and 2 for different cuisines?! Pretty amazing. Nobody would build a place like this these days. Amazing.The Bay City Times, Sunday August 20 1967
BAY CITIAN WAS ART DIRECTOR-DECORATOR - PHOTO (wish I had it dammit)
An artist's sketch above shows Detroit's new Mauna Loa restaurant, one of the most expensive of it's kind ever built in the Midwest. Circled areas show the hand-carved bird heads, some of hundreds of authentic artifacts imported from the Pacific Archipelago under the art direction of Florian E. Gabriel, 39, a native Bay Citian who was art director and decorator for the building.
BAY CITIAN HELPS DESIGN 'MAUNA LOA' - ARTICLE
A former Bay Citian can confirm the authenticity of the elaborate Polynesian décor of Detroit's newest, luxurious restaurant, the Mauna Loa.
Florian E. Gabriel, 39, son of Mrs. Rose Gabriel, 1701 S. Chilson ave, was art director and decorator for the $2.25 million restaurant nestled on a man-made lagoon at West Grand Boulevard and Cass Avenue.
Gabriel, who now resides in Los Angeles, and George Nakashima, chief designer of the Mauna Loa, also have designed lavish restaurants in Montreal, Portland, Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland and Beverly Hills.
Their latest accomplishment provides patrons with a make-believe trip through the Pacific Archipelago and India. On the site a waterfall rushed down a hill of volcanic lava into a lagoon surrounded by flaming tiki poles and seven palm trees.
The interior design, said the 1945 graduate of Bay City Central High School, "is a fusion of many exotic locales," all authenticated since the plans were begun two and one half years ago.
Gabriel, who attended St. Hedwig school, spent three years in Special Services of the Air Force after high school graduation. Later he studied four years at the Art Center School, Los Angeles.
Ten years ago Gabriel, whose sister, Mrs. Clarence Meier, and a brother Robert still live in Bay City, became art director for Stephen Crane Associates in Beverly Hills. (Crane owns the Luau Restaurant in Los Angeles). Gabriel and Nakashima have been advisors for the Crane firm the last four years, but are no longer in its fulltime employ.
The Mauna Loa's foyer is a ceremonial hut with a red box hanging from the roof. In the islands, when a Polynesian swain takes his maiden into this hut, it indicates they will be married, said Gabriel.
The heroic island figures and the tiki poles with carvings are authentic, as are the glowing blowfish and an enormous war canoe from Samoa.
The bar, embedded with 1,250 Chinese coins, has four-bladed fans from a Hong Kong saloon, Bar tables are brass bound hatch covers from trading schooners.
The Bombay Room, formal dining area, has 3,000 zircons imbedded in the filigreed teakwood panels that surround a sacred elephant shrine. Turbaned waiters serve diners there, while in the Papeete Room, the Tonga Room, the Lanai Room or the Maui Room, the Oriental waiters are Mandarin-jacketed.
The upstairs banquet area is of a Mediterranean décor with hand rubbed woods, burnished bronze statues, three interior pools with tropical plantings and waterfalls and a bar-b-que pit.
Mauna Loa has both American and Oriental kitchens, plus a third one to serve the banquet room. Visitors are welcomed there, but not in the service bars where island drinks are mixed with secret formulas.
Gabriel and Nakashima will revise and add to the Mai Kai restaurant in Fort Lauderdale and work on another Mauna Loa, this one in Pittsburgh that will be headed by the Detroit project's 40 local stockholders.Content Credit: Bay City Times
The Detroit News, August 20, 1967
The Mauna Loa: Million Dollar Gamble, Polynesian Style
Money lenders take a cynical view of the chances for success of a plush restaurant . Loans to build them often are backstopped with demands, that the building be designed in such a manner that it may be converted into another use.
A top eastside restaurant, for example, had to be located an built so that if necessary it could be made into a funeral parlour. Fortunately, the transition has not had to take place.
Robert L. Fenton, an astute 37 year old lawyer, is well aware of the mortality rate and high risk of his latest enterprise. He is president and leading stockholder of what may be the Midwest's most lavish new eating place, the Mauna Loa, nest to the financially troubled hotel, the St. Regis, on West Grand Boulevard.
Fenton is not thinking the unthinkable. And neither are his investors, which include such sports celebrities as Al Kaline, Hank Aguirre, Milt Plum, Walter Burkemo, Wayne Walker, Ted Lindsay and Gail Gogdill. the 42 others in the syndicate are such business and professional men as Eugene Bordinat Jr, of the J. L. Hudson Co, and many Detroit lawyers. The architect and contractor also have a slice.
The restaurant will cost 1.6 million when all the bills are paid for such things as imported lamps, weatherised palm trees, ($1,500 each), authentic South Pacific artifacts, lutes and indoor waterfalls and pools.
"We beleive it is the most expensive restaurant ever built of it's kind in the Midwest:, says Fenton. "But we don't have a doubt that it will not be supported in Detroit".
One of the contractors pointed out that if it does fail the structure is so designed that it can be converted into an office building. The interior decorations would be yanked out, the waterfalls dammed and the two-level building divided up into offices.
But what a shame, say most people who already have dined in the place which opened last week.
And thus would collapse the heady dream Fenton has been dreaming since 1964. A partner in the law firm of Fenton, Nederlander, Tracy, and Dodge, the restaurant business is a new venture for the tax and corporation law specialist who six years ago parlayed his friendship with golf pro Walter Burkemo into a career managing sports celebrities.
"It was about six years ago that Wally Burkemo, then the pro at Franklin Hills, gave me a hurry-up call," recalls Fenton, a University of Michigan Graduate.
"He was coming on strong in the National Open, and told me he was beseiged by offers to endorse things in case he won. Wally wanted me to handle the negotiations. I flew to the course. But he blew a couple of putts and ended up fourth or something and some of the offers faded away. But he wanted me to handle his investments. That was the beginning."
Fenton, who speaks several languages including Russian, says that a few years ago Al Kaline heard about tax benefits that could come from such things as deferred compensation programs, and wanted him to handle his contracts.
"The word spread in sports circles," said Fenton, an intelligence officer for the air force in the Korean War. " A Few years ago these big sports stars were spending their money as if it was water. Then they started thinking about salting some of it away when they got too old to play. One word led to another and pretty soon about 15 top stars were letting me handle their contracts."
Includued were such people as Roger Maris, Pat Studstill, Carl Sweetan, Marty Pavelich and the others now in the Mauna Loa syndicate.
Fenton's labors for the spots figures not only include helping them get new and sweeter contracts, but advising them how to invest their surplus money.
It was his roster of celebrities that led to the reaization of the Mauna Loa.
"I was on the West Coast for a client", says Fenton, "and got the idea of building a Polynesian type restaurant. That type of place booms everywhere they're built. I figured Detroit was ready for one. I talked it over with the sports people and they agreed it would make a good investment.
"Hank Aguirre thought perhaps a Mexican restaurant would be better, but Hank's Mexican and partial to that food. Finally everyone, including Hank, wanted to take a slice. We found other business and professional people here who also agreed to invest and that's the way it started."
Fenton's idea, based on exhaustive reseach, was to build a place so exotically plush it would dazzle Detroit diners. Once eyes get accustomed to the romantic darkness of the interior as conceived by Florian Gabriel, the decorator, M. George Nakashima and George Pelham Head, the designers, the sight indeed is quite bedazzling. Sounds are muted by heavy rattan ceilings and pandanus leaf walls.
For more than a year Fenton's law office in the Guardian Building became the stagin building for the restaurant, Special crockery, silverware and trays were stored in one section of the offices awaiting a building.
Fenton has been beset by labor problems, material shotages, and other headaches. He expected to have the place open in May.
"Key personnel such as Joe Spada, his "mixologist" who carries the secret recipes for exotic rum-based drinks in his head; John S. Karydes ,catering manager, B. F. Enriquez, for erly of Washington's Mayflower Hotel, now assistant manager of the Mauna Loa, Kurt Mecklenburg, a volatile west german chef and Jimmy Mark, a goateed chinese cook, have been on the payroll for months.
His General, manager, Jerome L. Cohen, former manager of Chicago;s Playboy Club, was assig ed a year ago. Cohen also is an investor.
"To get these men", says Fenton, "we had to hire them even if we didn't have a restaurant ready"
Detroit-born, Fenton once worked for the Atomic Energy Commission as an intelligence officerf and observed seven atomic detonations.
For the past several weeks, he has lived at Mauna Loa, named after a live Hawaiian volcano, he had to get his meals elsewhere, Pots in the huge stainles steel kitchen did not start bubbling tilll last tuesday.
But the lighted waterfalls flowing from nearly every corner and even behind the huge bar, romantic lights glowing from stuffed blowfish, shells and papier mache globes, werre a welcoming sight to Fenton and his associates,
Before it opened Fenton reflected some of his apprehension by interviewing passersby watching workmen put finishing touches on the Mauna Loa's entrance.
"Do you think it will be a good place?" he asked a pair of secretaries who work at the General Motors Bilding, across the street.
"Well, it ought to be" replied one, "i hear it cost $21 million to build".
"That shook me a little", says Fenton, "because if the public gets the idea it cist so much to build the prices will be to high for such peoople as the secretaries and workingmen to eat".
"Our idea is just the opposite. We made it lavish". continues Fenton. "a shopwpiece to attract people, but the food prices will not be any higher than an ordinary restaurant"
HE pointed to an 8 page menu listing such esoteric far east foods as cha Siu, Avaku Pillow, and Napuka Fishfang, carrying price tabs of $1.75 to $2.00. The high ticket foods will be the traditional American steaks, the restauarant will feature far east foods, but there also will be gourmet dishes from all parts of europe and the United States.
"Building a restaurant has been an education for all of us." - Fenton mused as he stalked through the dimly lighted dining areas, crossing bridges over strweams created by the water gushing over real lava.
" But the delays and extra expenses we ran into have been worth it," headds. He sipped a tall drink created by Spada. "In fact we were so ecxcited about i we may build another just like it in another city".
Chances are good that Fenton,l exhaustedfrom months of tension, will take a breather.
When the doors finally opened last Tuesday, Fenton sighed and reckoned he now knows what it feels like to be a mother.Content Credit: Detroit News
Anonymous (poster on TikiCentral forums @ TikiRoom.com)
The Mauna Loa is the prime example of how much the cost of building a Polynesian Palace and doing it right had risen by 1967. That and the fact that there was no rich Hilton or Sheraton hotel chain behind it, PLUS the fact that the Tiki trend was on its way out, ...PLUS the downtown riots, made the place go bankrupt pretty quickly. That is why any ephemera from it are so rare. I don't think they ever had time to even print postcards.Content Credit: TikiCentral Forums at TikiRoom.com
Anonymous (poster on TikiCentral forums @ TikiRoom.com)
OK, when I was about 8 or 9, my folks took me and my sister to the Mauna Loa. It was a big deal because it was EXPENSIVE and we drove 3 and half hours from Battle Creek to do it. You can't imagine how excited my crazy dad was to take us there. There was a river inside. There was a deep pool where on one night a week a diver would dive for pearls. I definitely had a drink in a pineapple. This is not the kind of thing we did often. I am so sad to hear that it is completely gone.Content Credit: TikiCentral Forums at TikiRoom.com
Anonymous (poster on TikiCentral forums @ TikiRoom.com)
when i met george nakashima, the architect (a year before he died) , i asked about the mauna loa...i guess it was only open for 8 months before it closed...there were too many investors and people involved with the place from the beginning...they started to lose money rapidly due to some of the folks embezzling money directly from the place and also giving away alot of free food, drinks, and such favors to friends, politicians, celebrites etc....eventually the place imploded on itself and went bankrupt...but, man that must have been some swinging time to be a regular there for those 8 months....imagine all the scandalous stuff you could have witnessed or even been involved in!! chins bought a bunch of stuff from the mauna loa during the auction...some of which was never used in chins, but just kept in storage...Content Credit: TikiCentral Forums at TikiRoom.com
Pretty amazing the names that were involved in the project. I hope you enjoy this incredible piece of Detroit history as much as I have. If you google "Mauna Loa Detroit" and "Con Tiki Detroit" you'll find some pretty interesting information.
Mahalo!