Liljestrand House: Architect and Clients

Nestled among eucalyptus trees on the slopes of Mount Tantalus, the home provides a 270°-degree view of Oahu that includes Punchbowl Memorial Cemetery, the Waianae mountains, Diamond Head, and downtown Honolulu. The Liljestrand family lived in the house from 1952 until Howard’s passing in 2004.

There his father served as the tsar’s military attaché to the emperor of Japan and was invited to stay after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Ossipoff family lived in Tokyo until 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake convinced Ossipoff’s mother that Tokyo was unsafe due to its earthquake-proneness, so, naturally, the Ossipoffs moved to San Francisco, conveniently located along the San Andres fault.

The time Ossipoff spent in Japan was seminal in shaping his design aesthetic. As a child, Ossipoff witnessed the building of Frank Llyod Wright’s Imperial Hotel, which undoubtedly left a lasting impression on the young Ossipoff. More importantly, the influences of Japanese craftsmanship and carpentry express themselves throughout many of Ossipoff’s Hawaiʻi homes, particularly in the Liljestrand House. Much of the interior detailing of the home was constructed by Japanese carpenters.

After moving to San Francisco, Ossipoff attended the University of California (now UC Berkeley) where he graduated in 1931. For a brief period Ossipoff worked for architects in San Francisco and Los Angeles but had difficulty finding employment due to the Great Depression, which was at its peak in the United States. Upon the suggestion of a college roommate who was from Hawaiʻi, Ossipoff moved to Honolulu in the hopes of finding steady work.

Once in Hawaiʻi, Ossipoff worked for architects Claude Stiehl and Charles W. Dickey. Dickey was a notable Hawaii-based architect from the generation predeceasing Ossipoff. Dickey pioneered what became known as the “Dickey Roof,” a double pitched roof whose upper portion is steeper than its lower and which has deep eaves. Ossipoff then went to work for Theo H. Davies, a company headquartered in London that had been operating in Hawaiʻi since the Hawaiian monarchy. Ossipoff led their design department for four years before opening his own office in 1936. Excepting a few years during World War II, his private practice ran continuously from then until his death in 1998.

Though Ossipoff was an integral player in the realization of the Liljestrand House, Betty and Howard Liljestrand were the driving forces behind its creation. Howard was born in 1912 to second-generation Swedish Americans who lived in a small town near Syracuse, New York. At the age of four (1916), his family moved to Sichuan, China where they lived until 1949. There, his father served as a Methodist medical missionary who taught and practiced medicine. Howard moved to the Western United States in 1927 to finish school and eventually attend college and medical school, but his intention was to return to China.

Betty was raised in a small town in Iowa. Eventually, she moved to New York to do graduate work in cytology at Columbia university. There she met Howard while he was a medical student at Harvard. After marrying in 1937, the Liljestrands hoped to return to China, but political upheaval in Asia prevented this. Instead, Howard agreed to intern at the Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Howard hoped to move to China once this internship was completed but was again unable to do so because of China’s political situation.

Unsure of what to do, Howard and Betty remained in Hawaiʻi with the hopes of eventually returning to China or the Continental United States. As the years passed, it became clear that Hawaiʻi had become their home and the Liljestrands decided it was time to build a house. In the early 1900s, many people building homes in Hawaiʻi wanted to do so on or near the beach. The Liljestrands were an exception to this unspoken rule. As a child Howard spent his summers in the Tibetan mountains and wished to find a site for their new home that embodied the views and cool breezes that characterized this period of his life. One day, while hiking in a part of Honolulu called Tantalus, the Liljestrands stumbled across a trail located where the house’s lower driveway now sits . After negotiations with landowners and the Territory of Hawaii, the Liljestrands acquired the land on which they would build their new home.

Vladimir Ossipoff often paraphrased Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa who said, “The perfect structure is an umbrella; it protects you from the sun and rain and you shouldn’t add anything more unless it is absolutely necessary.” The house born of the partnership between the Liljestrands and Ossipoff encapsulates this maxim. Every detail in the home is meticulously planned and designed with elegant yet purposeful subtlety that elevates its mountain location. The architecture of the home directs your eyes to the surrounding views and allows for continuous airflow that brings cool breezes and the scent of Eucalyptus trees, but it goes beyond just being an “umbrella.” Ossipoff and the Liljestrands succeeded in creating a cohesive home that has stood the test of time and served as a familial gathering place, location of photoshoots, architectural marvel, and educational tool.

With the mission of preserving the Liljestrand House, its site and archives, and making that preservation beneficial to the global community, the Liljestrand Foundation was created in 2007. After nearly 8 years of estate settlement challenges, ownership of Liljestrand House was transferred to the Foundation in December 2015. The family retains no ownership of the property, the house or the contents. The Liljestrand House received a Preservation Award from the Historic Hawaii Foundation which called it “one of the most, if not the most, intact historic structures in the state.” The Liljestrand House is open to public tours and often hosts speakers and events centered around architecture and art in Hawaii.

The Liljestrand House is listed on the Hawaii State and the United States National Registers of Historic Places.