Summary

Pākalā Estate

1-1000 Kaumualiʻi Highway, Makaweli, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi 96769

Pākalā is a stretch of shoreline on Kauaʻi’s west side. The name is commonly translated as “the sun shines.” In 1865, a year after her family purchased Niʻihau, Eliza Sinclair acquired Makaweli, more than 21,000 acres running from this shoreline inland through ranch and agricultural country. Offshore, a long left breaks along the reef. An earlier generation of surfers called it Infinities for the length of the ride, and by 1971 it had entered the published record of Hawaiʻi surfing. The house at Pākalā was fifty-nine years old by then.

Pākalā Estate covers 8.6 beachfront acres between Kaumualiʻi Highway and the water. The drive passes through mature shade trees and coconut palms before the grounds open around the residence, which sits well inside the acreage with land on every side. Broad lawn runs from the lānai to a low wall of stacked lava rock and the shoreline beyond. The property faces due west. Niʻihau sits on the horizon and the sun sets straight ahead. No road comes between the grounds and the water.

The residence was built in 1912 for Sinclair and Ethel Robinson, the year Sinclair Robinson became manager of Gay & Robinson, a position he held for fifty-two years. It is a single level of roughly 5,000 square feet, with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, arranged around a covered lānai that runs the length of the ocean face and turns the corner. Built before mechanical cooling, the house relies on deep eaves, high ceilings, wide openings, French doors and interior pass-throughs to carry the trades through the plan. It has stood on this ground, facing this water, for more than a century.

The property holds a nonconforming use certificate permitting legal vacation rental use.