Beauty in decay : Exploring a Graffiti House on Hawaii's North Shore

While driving down Kamehameha highway 83 around Hawaii we spotted an abandoned house. It was in disrepair covered with trees and through beams of lights and space between the leaves you could see bright graffiti adorning the walls with an unmistakable "ALOHA and stonework engraving of "1916" attached to the front of the building.

​Stepping into the house there were piles of trash, car seats, buckets, a pallet,  and an abandoned mattress on the ground. The house was made of concrete, but had no glass in the windows, only shells of large squares leaving room for large trees to weave in and out and up through the missing room in a jungle-like fashion. One tree grew through corner of the interior and joined with the walls reminiscent of Angkor Wat/Ta Prahm in Siem Reap, Cambodia; Like a modern urban-jungle version of the "Tomb Raider Temple." Stepping behind the house  and looking beyond the barbed wire, we spotted an abandoned car fully covered in matching graffiti.  Each room and corner of the house featured its own unique version of street artwork.

Research  on the history of the building at 51830 Kamehameha highway links to a property owned by Crawford's Convalescent home. However, it seems that another larger adjacent abandoned building used to be a reform school for deviant and wayward boys  known as Waia'lae Boy's Industrial School that burned down in 2002. The building I photographed appeared to have been established in 1916 by the markings on the building, and according to a ghosttown website, it was formerly a band room, jail, and Poi factory.

​Hawaii is known for its beauty and among the highest cost of living in the US, which is contrasted by its extraordinary high poverty and homelessness rates. The colorful dilapidation of this ghost house amidst the contrasting beauty of the north shore seemed like a metaphor for the juxtaposition that exists in Hawaii, while having an allure of its own.

http://ghosttowns.com/states/hi/waialee.html
​www.TomorrowlandTrekkers.com