Reverend Dwight Baldwin, a missionary doctor, built this house in 1834–35, making it the oldest surviving Western-style building in Lahaina. It served as both his home and the community’s first medical clinic. The coral-and-rock walls are a hefty 24in thick, which keeps the house cool year-round. The exterior walls have been plastered over, but you can get a sense of how they originally appeared next door at the Masters’ Reading Room , which now houses an art gallery.
It took the Baldwins 161 days to get here from their native Connecticut, sailing around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Dr Baldwin’s passport and representative period furniture are on display. A doctor’s ‘scale of fees’ states that $50 was the price for treating a ‘very great sickness’, while a ‘very small sickness’ cost $10. It’s only a cold, Doc, I swear.
