HONOLULU, Hawaii — The venerable Moana Hotel has seen the rise of Waikiki from a stretch of sand backed by swamps where the water buffalo grazed to become arguably the most famous beach in the world.

Along the way, the hotel has seen a lot of history and had its fair share of scandals and even a murder as it wined and dined princes and potentates, movie stars and business tycoons.

Today, it’s sandwiched between high-rise hotels, but when it opened it had all the space in the world. There were only a few cottages on Waikiki when spirit merchant Walter C. Peacock decided to build a hotel on the site of his summer house. That was in 1901.

For many years it was the only hotel on Waikiki and it established a reputation for understated elegance, a reputation that it cultivates to this day.

For instance, afternoon tea with scones and pastries and clotted cream is served on the back lanai while on the front porch guests cool themselves with sandalwood fans as they watch the passing parade from rocking chairs.

Sit in the lanai, close your eyes and let your mind wander and it’s not hard to visualize the heady days of the 1920s and ’30s when the liners out of San Francisco disgorged the likes of Errol Flynn and Bing Crosby, England’s Prince of Wales (later, briefly, King Edward VIII) and heiress Doris Duke, the woman the newspapers called “the richest girl in the world.”

Here, the people who in a later era would be called jet-setters discovered the charms of the ukulele, the lei, the hula, the aloha shirt and the muumuu.

Those days are recalled in a little museum on the second floor. There’s a video of early footage shot by an honoured guest, one Thomas Alva Edison.

Clippings and pictures recount the last days of Jane Stanford, the wealthy widow of the founder of California’s Stanford University, who died from strychnine poisoning in the Moana in 1905. Suspicion swirled around her secretary, who got $100,000 from the heiress’s will, but no one was charged.

Waikiki-born Duke Kahanamoku, who popularized the new sport of surfing around the world, was a close friend of the aforementioned Doris Duke,.

When it opened, the Moana — now officially the Sheraton Moana Surfrider — rented rooms for $1.50 a night.

Today, an oceanfront room goes for about $450 to $600. But you don’t have to pay to peep, for unlike some other “period” hotels the Moana welcomes non-guests, either on their own or on free guided tours.

Everyone wants to see the huge banyan tree on the hotel’s beachfront, for this has a place in musical history. For 40 years Hawaiian songs were broadcast across the United States and into Canada from its shade on the radio program Hawaii Calls, which ran from 1935 to 1975.

Access

For more information on Hawaii, visit the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau website at www.gohawaii.com.

For information on the Sheraton Moana Surfrider Hotel, visit its website at www.moana-surfrider.com.