Fences and walls can stir strong feelings. Think of the Berlin Wall or the proposed wall between Mexico and the U.S. Through the centuries fences and walls have caused controversy, bloodshed, turmoil and conquest.

In Honolulu, a Letter to the Editor signed W.B.O. in an 1889 edition of the Daily Bulletin pushed for “immediate demolition of the wall around the (Iolani) palace grounds.” His letter was titled by the editors, “Take That Wall Down,” which seems like a line we’ve heard before uttered by an American president in a foreign country about 100 years later. Another excerpt from W.B.O.’s letter says, “It should come down at once, and be used for road material. Any hair-brained enthusiast with rabble at his heels can muster behind that relic of the middle ages.”

Maybe the rebels who did muster behind the wall during the Wilcox Rebellion in 1889 caused W.B.O. to pen the letter above. Wilcox and his henchmen invaded the palace grounds in an attempt to force King Kalakaua to reenact the 1864 Hawaiian Constitution that had been replaced by a later version in 1887. Because of Wilcox the existing 8-foot-high coral block wall surrounding the palace was lowered to 3½ feet, and in 1891, according to another article in the Daily Bulletin, “the contract for furnishing an iron fence to enclose the Palace yard has been awarded to the Pacific Hardware Company for $7,063.”

Nearly a century and a quarter later, the lower coral wall and the iron fence atop it have been restored nearly to perfection. The fact that the iron fencing has lasted that long is credit to the manufacturer, the Champion Iron Fence Co in Kenton, Ohio.

It was quite an occasion when the fence was sent to Hawaii in 1892. The Kenton Democrat said at the time, “The goods shipped consists of three box cars compactly filled with material, all ready to put together, to enclose the grounds and entrance to the Queen’s palace in Honolulu.”

The scope of the restoration was sizable since the fence around the entire palace is more than half a mile long. And with a cast iron fence as long as that and as old as the one around the palace, all kinds of things could go wrong. But architect Glenn Mason, FAIA, and Steve Baginski, the owner of Kaikor Construction, meshed their professional talents to accomplish a difficult and challenging project.

Baginski says Mason’s firm detailed the project so well that the only glitch was in restoring the coral block wall under the iron fence along the Richards Street side of the palace. The problem there was the drawings called for replacing the binder material between the coral blocks with hot coral/lime cement developed in Hawaii in the 1800s, and instead, the subcontractor used regular cement for the current job. That work had to be redone, which extended the project by one month beyond the allotted nine-month contract.

Mason’s work plan called for removing each section of the fence and galvanizing every one of the 7,000 pickets. More than that, to be historically accurate, each picket had to go back where it was originally to maintain the integrity of the overall palace restoration.

Imagine removing thousands of old cast-iron pickets, dipping them in hot acid, then a galvanizing tank, then coating each of them with a special epoxy paint – and finally putting them all back exactly as they were 124 years ago. Baginski says his company had to devise its own identification method. “You can’t just mark each one with a Sharpie. What we did was make a metal tag for every picket and welded a number on it. And that worked very well because the tags survived some pretty rough stuff — the acid, the galvanizing and the painting.”

The four pairs of 600-pound gates were meticulously restored as well, with a local artist hand-painting the colorful state seal on each gate. A few of the finials, the gold-tipped points atop each picket, had to be replaced, which required sending a sample to the mainland where new cast iron replacements were fabricated.

To the credit of everyone involved, the Iolani Palace fence is beautifully back in place protecting the palace as it has for a century and a quarter. Gone is the ugly rust, the faded green paint, the few missing finials atop each picket.

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Keep Hawaii Hawaii is a monthly column on island architecture and urban planning. David Cheever, owner of David Cheever Marketing, has served on the boards of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and the Hawaii Architectural Foundation. Send comments to keephawaii hawaii@staradvertiser.com.