A rare use of bluestone on Maui, this well-proportioned building was one of the initial construction projects undertaken by the newly formed territorial government on Maui. The Maui News in 1904 declared it to be the finest public school building in the Islands, a statement that required little defending. In an era when most schoolhouses in Hawaii were frame buildings and many districts did not even boast a schoolhouse, this solid edifice must surely have seemed grand. Its broad, gable-roofed portico lent monumentality beyond the modest size of the structure.