Wailuku Town

Market Street is four short blocks of two-storey plantation-era commercial buildings, and it has aged into the most interesting browsing on Maui. Antique shops carry Hawaiiana, aloha shirts, old sheet music, koa furniture and plantation-era bottles. There are vintage clothing stores, a record shop or two, artist studios and a handful of small kitchens doing Filipino, Japanese and local food at prices that have nothing to do with Wailea.

The thing to time your visit around is Wailuku First Friday. On the first Friday of the month the street closes to traffic between roughly six and nine in the evening for a block party — live music, food vendors, local art, a beer garden and a crowd that is mostly island residents rather than visitors. It is the best free evening on this side of Maui and it is nothing like a hotel luau.

The rest of the month, Market Street is a daytime proposition. Shops keep short hours, several close Sundays and Mondays, and things wind down early. Come mid-morning to mid-afternoon on a weekday or a Saturday.

The ʻĪao Theater at the top of the street is worth a look from the pavement even if nothing is on; Dickey's 1928 facade and the restored marquee are the best pieces of architecture in central Maui.

The house was built in 1833, in stone and lime plaster, as part of the Wailuku Female Seminary, on ground that had been the royal compound of Kahekili — the chief who ruled Maui before Kamehameha took it. Edward Bailey, who ran the seminary and later the sugar plantation, lived here for decades.

What is inside is two museums in one building. The Hawaiian collection holds the largest group of pre-contact objects in Maui County — kapa, stone and shell tools, fishing gear, wooden bowls, weapons — much of it collected in the nineteenth century and not reproducible today. The missionary-era rooms hold furniture, quilts and Bailey's landscape paintings, which have real documentary value because they show Central Maui before sugar rewrote it.

It is run by the Maui Historical Society, which is a small non-profit rather than an institution with deep pockets. Hours have been limited — recent schedules put it at weekday mornings and early afternoons only, closed at weekends — so check the current opening before making a special trip. Admission is modest, and members and Hawaiʻi residents often pay less.

Allow an hour. The garden of Hawaiian plants behind the house, and the view down over the isthmus from the lānai, are part of the ticket and most visitors miss them.