Photograph of Star of the Sea Painted Church — Photograph by Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Star of the Sea Church-Kalapana Painted Church

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

From the record

“The Star of the Sea Painted Church is a Catholic Church in Kalapana, Hawai'i, United States of America. It was built in 1927-1928 under the direction of a Belgian Catholic missionary, Father Evarist Gielen.”
Wikipedia article Star of the Sea Painted Church, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 107 National Register listings published here for Hawaii County · listed in 1997 · 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.
Listed as. Star of the Sea Church--Kalapana Painted Church - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. HI 130, .7 mi. N of Kaimu, Kaimu, 96778
When was it listed? May 1997
Category. building
Census division. Pahoa-Kalapana
Architectural style. Colonial Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 97000407 - 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

19 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 19 fires within 5 miles of Star of the Sea Church-Kalapana Painted Church between 2004 and 2010, burning about 19 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	19

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
8 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
30 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
29 September 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
10 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
27 August 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
25 July 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	5.0 acres	County of Hawai'i	not named
17 July 2007	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named
12 July 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	County of Hawai'i	not named

Every fire recorded in Hawaii 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.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 97000407 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Hawaii County	All 107 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.