The house, also known as Kualii (also spelled Kualiʻi), was built in 1911–1912 for Charles Montague Cooke Jr., and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

In 1911, Monty hired two prominent architects, Walter Emory and Marshall Webb, to build a large stone mansion in Tudor style on the hillside above the heiau.

[2] The name of the heiau (temple of ancient Hawaii), Kūkaʻōʻō, is composed of kū 'stand' + ka 'the' + ʻōʻō 'digging stick', and has several possible translations.

[2] The late Bernice P. Bishop Museum anthropologist Kenneth Emory estimated the heiau to be 1,000 years old.

Stonemason Billy Fields relied on survey drawings from the 1930s to rebuild the walls, using only rocks found on-site.