International Market Place

This guide to the banyan tree at Honolulu's International Market Place follows Ernest "Donn Beach" Gantt, the tiki impresario who built a private treehouse office in its branches during the 1950s, staging Tahitian dances and a radio studio beneath it. It traces the marketplace's decades as a nightlife draw for performers like Martin Denny and Don Ho, through its decline and closure at the end of 2013. The banyan itself was already old when Donn climbed into it, planted by settler Harry Macfarlane around the 1850s.