Kapalama Canal

Kapalama is a neighborhood of Honolulu adjacent to the Kalihi area. The photograph above was taken from the Kapalama Canal Bridge on Dillingham Boulevard. The Kapalama Canal Bridge is associated with the development of an effective road transportation system on Oahu. This bridge was built in 1930 as part of Dillingham Boulevard, an important arterial in Honolulu’s urban core. It facilitated passage through Kapalama and significantly improved access to Pearl Harbor from Honolulu’s downtown and port area.

Kapalama Canal Bridge is a five-span, reinforced-concrete, tee-beam deck-girder bridge, about 113′ in length. It was built for the City & County of Honolulu, under the tenure of Bureau Engineer D. Balch and design engineer George Dawson. Its concete parapets are pierced to form balustrades with arched-topped vertically oriented openings. This arched-top design pattern for balustrades was a standardized pattern of Territorial Highway Department bridges of this period. The balustrades of this bridge are divided by four regularly spaced stanchions that have thick rectangular tops with a very-low-slope hipped cap. The face of each stanchion has a recessed rectangular panel with a raised pyramidal design. The end stanchions are similar but slightly larger with flat panels that are inscribed “Kapalama Canal” and on the opposite stanchion, “1930.” There are 10′ sidewalks on both sides of the bridge