Continental Building

Continental Building
2022

Designed by architect Edwin Bauer and completed in 1955, the six-story office building arrived during a period when Honolulu was beginning its transition from a predominantly low-rise city toward the increasingly vertical skyline that would define the following decades. The building is recognized as an example of Hawaiʻi’s midcentury modern architecture.

Its design combines long bands of aluminum-framed windows with natural lava rock, tropical awnings, and a prominent vertical element bearing the CONTINENTAL name above the entrance. These distinctly local adaptations soften the geometry of the modern office building and give it a character rooted in midcentury Honolulu.

Rendered in a restrained lavender, cream, and yellow palette, Solario’s portrait isolates the building from the surrounding city, preserving the optimism and tropical modernism of postwar Honolulu.

Continental Building
South King Street · Honolulu, Hawaiʻi · Built 1955
2022

Museum-quality giclée print on archival velvet fine art paper, presented with a pure white mat and individually hand-signed by Solario.