This year marks the 185th of Punahou School’s existence, and the private school is celebrating in part with the opening of a new facility honoring Mary Kawena Pukui, a teacher who worked at the school in the mid-20th century.
The Mary Kawena Pukui Learning Commons is a 53,000-square-foot renovated building at the heart of the high school. When the original facility was first built in 1965, it was known as Cooke Library.
“As you might imagine, the way that we store information, the way we teach and learn, and libraries themselves have changed a lot since 1965,” said Mike Latham, president of Punahou School. “We’ve seen all kinds of transformations, especially in the digital revolution and the way that we think about and acquire knowledge. And so, we wanted a space that would facilitate a lot of that more collaborative learning.”
Latham says the heart of the project is its focus on creating space for students to work together on different projects in a technology-rich environment. The facility includes individual student rooms and a lanai space equipped with power.
The building is named after Mary Kawena Pukui, a teacher who worked at Punahou from the late 1930s through 1941, when World War II began. Pukui was born in 1895 on the Big Island, and she spent much of her life devoted to capturing, commemorating, and recovering as much Hawaiian culture as she could. She and her family moved to Oʻahu when she was a teenager.
“By that time, she was walking around carrying a notebook in her hands, in which she would write down Hawaiian proverbs, songs, chants, and commit them to memory. And already, even as a child, was beginning to preserve this culture that surrounded her,” he said. “So, I mean, a remarkable person, really kind of a shining example of the kind of creativity and curiosity we want to promote in our own students.”
Latham described Pukui as the preeminent scholar of Hawaiian culture in the 20th century.
“For us to be able to recognize a person of that caliber, a scholar of that stature, who also taught at Punahou, is really special,” he said.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 12, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Annabelle Ink adapted this story for the web.
