Kamehameha V Post Office

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

From the record

“Kamehameha V Post Office at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets in Honolulu, Hawaii was the first building in the Hawaiian Islands to be constructed entirely of precast concrete blocks reinforced with iron bars. Osborne in 1871 and the success of this new method was replicated on a much grander scale the next year in the royal palace, Hale.”
Wikipedia article Kamehameha V Post Office, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 154 National Register listings published here for Honolulu County · listed in 1972 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Corner of Merchant and Bethel Sts., Honolulu, 96813
When was it listed? May 1972
Category. building
Census division. Honolulu
National Register reference number. 72000416 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

746 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 746 fires within 5 miles of Kamehameha V Post Office between 1992 and 2017, burning about 909 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	746

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
9 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
9 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
9 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
9 September 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
9 September 2003	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
8 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	30 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named
8 September 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4.0 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named

Every fire recorded in Honolulu County

Storms near this property

26 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Honolulu, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1996 and 2023: 7 flood, 7 flash flood, 4 heavy rain, 2 funnel cloud. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Honolulu	$2,000	no account filed
April 2023	Flood	Honolulu	-	Oahu emergency management reported the School Street onramp to H1 Freeway was\|closed due to water over the roadway.
June 2019	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	Heavy runoff from showers and thunderstorms caused deep ponding on the H-1 freeway near the Liliha Street overpass. Deep ponding of precipitation also occurred along Nimitz Highway near Fort and River streets, on Ahua Street in the Mapunapuna area, and H-1 freeway westbound near the Pali Highway off-ramp.
September 2018	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	Kalihi Stream overflowed onto Dillingham Boulevard in Honolulu on Oahu, closing the roadway.
July 2016	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	H-1 Westbound at Liliha Street on Oahu closed due to flooding waters and stalled vehicles. Precipitation was associated with Tropical Storm Darby.
September 2015	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	One foot of water flooded the intersection of Liliha, Dillingham, and North King Street in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. More flash flooding was reported at the intersection of Dillingham and Alakawa, and Liliha Street was closed in both directions from King to Vineyard Boulevard because of excessive ponding on the roadway. In the Iwilei section of Honolulu, Dole Cannery and surrounding offices had to be evacuated due to flooding on the first floor, including rooms with electrical equipment.
December 2011	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	Heavy rain caused a debris flow at the westbound H-1 Freeway off ramp to School Street. This closed the roadway for a time while highway crews cleared the debris.
December 1996	Flood	Honolulu	-	Scattered areas of minor street flooding reported across Oahu.
November 2011	Heavy Rain	Honolulu	-	no account filed
November 2007	Heavy Rain	Honolulu	-	no account filed
November 2007	Heavy Rain	Honolulu	-	no account filed
January 2005	Heavy Rain	Honolulu	-	no account filed
June 2005	Funnel Cloud	Honolulu	-	no account filed
February 2004	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
October 2002	Wildfire	Honolulu	-	no account filed
September 2002	Wildfire	Honolulu	-	no account filed
June 2001	Flash Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
October 2001	Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
January 1999	Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
December 1998	Waterspout	Honolulu	-	no account filed
January 1998	Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
August 1997	Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
April 1997	Waterspout	Honolulu	-	no account filed
March 1997	Flood	Honolulu	-	no account filed
March 1996	Funnel Cloud	Honolulu	-	no account filed
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Honolulu	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Honolulu County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Joseph W. Podmore Building	under 500 feet	1983
Dillingham Transportation Building	0.1 miles	1979
U.S. Post Office, Customhouse, and Courthouse	0.1 miles	1975
Alexander and Baldwin Building	0.1 miles	1979
Merchant Street Historic District	0.2 miles	1973
C. Brewer Building	0.2 miles	1980

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 72000416 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Honolulu County	All 154 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.