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Presenting Nature
MENU
Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)
Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)
Western Field Office
(1927-1932)
Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)
State Parks
(1933-1942)
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Presenting Nature:
The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942 |
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II. ORIGINS OF A DESIGN ETHIC FOR NATURAL PARKS (continued)
SOURCES OF RUSTIC ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN (continued)
THE ARCHITECTURE OF PARK CONCESSIONAIRES
The earliest hotels in the national parks date from the era before the advent of the automobile, when the transcontinental railroads brought visitors to the parks. These buildings represented a fusion of picturesque European prototypes, the Adirondack style, and an imagery of form and detail suitable to the West. Built at the height of the American Arts and Crafts movement, these buildings integrated the concerns for setting, structure, and decorative arts into a single unified and harmonious form that suited the natural surroundings of the parks where they were located. The Old Faithful Inn (1903) in Yellowstone National Park is considered the first "rustic" hotel built in the national parks in a large-scale effort to harmonize construction with the natural surroundings. Although the Swiss-influenced Adirondack style was adopted for the Northern Pacific Railroad's hotel by architect Robert Reamer, the proportions of structural features such as the imposing gabled roof pierced by window dormers were exaggerated. Logs, wood shingles, and stone were fashioned into structural features. Gnarled and twisted logwork formed interior and exterior decorative details such as railings and brackets, giving it an exuberant decorative appeal and a feeling of the western frontier. On the interior were a multistoried lobby and a massive fireplace. [164]
The system of hotels and chalets built in Glacier National Park for the Great Northern Railway in 1913 is based on the European system of hostelries located within a day's hike or ride of each other. Swiss- influenced architectural themes—both the chalet form and details such as sawn-wood balconies and clipped or jerkinhead gables—were carried out in several lodges, mountain chalets, hotels, and a store, built in varying scales. Some of the buildings were built predominantly of log, while others were of local stone available at the higher elevations. A similar architectural theme was used in Glacier's Lake MacDonald Lodge (1913), built by proprietor John Lewis and considered to be one of the finest hotels built in the Swiss style in the United States. [165]
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| Located at the top of Bright Angel Trail on Grand Canyon's South Rim, the Lookout was designed in 1914 by Mary Elizabeth Jane colter for the Fred Harvey Company. Influenced by the indigenous architecture of the Native Americans of the Southwest as well as the Arts and crafts movement, colter created an ingenious solution to harmonizing construction with nature. The random character of the masonry walls, the irregular texture and lines of the rooftop, the outside terraces, and the curvilinear flow of a roughly textured parapets along the canyon walls would influence National Park Service designers for several generations. (National Park Service Historic Photography Collection) |
A synthesis of the style of Norwegian villas and the Swiss chalet form inspired the El Tovar Hotel (1905) built at the Grand Canyon for the Fred Harvey Company by Charles Whittlesey. In 1909, a rustic depot of massive log construction with Craftsman period details was built nearby as the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway and as a fitting gateway to the resort area that was taking form on the South Rim. [166]
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect and interior designer for the Fred Harvey Company at Grand Canyon, forged her own unique expression of the Arts and Crafts movement. Her work was a synthesis of West Coast and midwestern influences and her study of the indigenous architecture of the Southwest. She was particularly inspired by the pueblo constructions, cliff dwellings, and temples found in the Mesa Verde ruins and living Hopi communities such as Oraibi, Arizona.
Colter was one of the foremost designers to seek harmonious solutions for blending manmade structures into sites on precipitous canyon rims. Although Colter's Lookout House at Grand Canyon (1914) and Charles Greene's James House at Carmel (1918) differ in scale, an interesting similarity exists between them in the architectural problem of siting a building along a steep cliff and in the solution of using masonry of native rock in a plastic and irregular way to achieve a harmony of site, setting, and structure. Colter continued to explore the relationship of site and setting, drawing inspiration from indigenous architecture of Southwest cultures and likely Greene's masterful and expressive stonework at Carmel. Her work reached maturity in the Desert View Watchtower of 1932.
Colter's interest in the indigenous architecture of the Southwest led her to study and use pueblos such as those at Oraibi, Arizona, as models for her own work. Her interest extended to the distant past to the ruins of Mesa Verde and other prehistoric cliff dwellings and temples. Whereas Oraibi influenced her Hopi House, Mesa Verde's Temple to the Sun inspired her design for the Desert View Watchtower. She studied the ruins from aerial photographs and called her designs "recreations" that captured the idea and feeling of the prehistoric models but were built on a scale that served modern-day functions. Colter's work was a fusion of cultural influences of the Southwest that included Spanish Colonial and territorial heritage as well as the traditions of contemporary and prehistoric Native Americans. The Spanish influence was visible in details such as the entry wall and bell arch at Hermit's Rest, a stopping point along the Fred Harvey Company's tour route of the South Rim. Pioneer spirit abounded in her arrangement of historic and new buildings in the cabin cluster at the Bright Angel Lodge complex. Skilled in architecture, landscape design, and decorative arts, Colter was the quintessential practitioner of the Arts and Crafts movement. [167]
Colter's work—Hopi House (1913), Lookout House (1914), Phantom Ranch (1921), Hermit's Rest (1914), Desert View Watchtower (1932), and Bright Angel Lodge (1933-1935)—would have substantial influence on the design of national and state park structures for more than two decades. The first national park landscape engineers, Charles Punchard and Daniel Hull, both met with Colter on several occasions. They studied the architectural precedent set by the Fred Harvey Company in the El Tovar Hotel (1905) and the Santa Fe Railway Depot (1909) and Colter's Lookout House (1914) and determined that the buildings established an architectural theme to be followed by the park service as well as the concessionaire in future development. In his design for the first national park buildings at Grand Canyon, Hull followed Colter's treatment of stone and wood materials at Phantom Ranch on the canyon floor. Herbert Maier had special interest in Colter's ability to site buildings on the edge of natural canyons and to harmoniously blend masonry of native stone with the natural rock formations. A respect for Colter's work is suggested by his design for the observation station at Yavapai Point in Grand Canyon and the designs of structures such as the lodge at Palo Duro State Park in Texas, the refectory at Longhorn Caverns State Park in Texas, and the administration building at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona—all of which were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps under his direction in the 1930s. Maier's Grand Canyon Observation Station and the work of Colter would influence the design of Sinnott Memorial (1929) at Crater Lake, which was the first museum designed by the landscape architects of the National Park Service with funds appropriated by Congress. Colter's anthropological interest in the indigenous architecture of the Southwest Indians was shared by Mesa Verde's superintendent Jesse Nusbaum and his wife, Aileen, who designed the park's earliest National Park Service buildings in a style that complemented the Anasazi ruins and harmonized with the rugged topography of cliffs and mesas.
GUSTAV STICKLEY AND THE CRAFTSMAN
The greatest source of design and detail in the Arts and Crafts tradition were the writings of Gustav Stickley in his periodical, The Craftsman, and in his books, Craftsman Homes of 1909 and More Craftsman Homes of 1912, which were compilations of designs and essays drawn from The Craftsman and Country Life in America. Stickley frequently displayed the work of Greene and Greene and drew attention to the unity of site and setting displayed by the Edgar Camp House in the Sierra Madre. He showed many examples of homes that used rock as a building material and as a means of joining structures with the earth. Stickley brought together articles on landscape design, architecture, and interior design, many of which illustrated principles and practices that were compatible with the National Park Service's principles for preserving landscape and harmonizing development. The Craftsman would have an enduring influence on the park designers of the 1920s and 1930s and would serve as useful pattern books of details, interior and exterior, that could embellish the structures of national and state parks in the 1930s.
Stickley was in many ways a twentieth-century version of Downing in his promotion of diverse architectural styles and types and his insistence on unity of structure and setting. His books functioned much as Downing's Architecture of Country Houses had sixty years before. Stickley, however, recognized American influences such as California bungalows and the Prairie style. Moreover, he was the direct link between the Shingle style of Henry Hobson Richardson and twentieth-century bungalow design. Because of the Arts and Crafts movement and the preponderance of Shingle style design in park structures, Henry Hubbard proposed that the National Park Service adopt a Craftsman aesthetic in 1917. This interest in handcrafts would be refined and expanded during the next two decades in national park buildings and would be promoted in the design of state park structures built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration camps in the 1930s.
An article entitled "The Effective Use of Cobblestone as a Link Between the House and the Landscape," which was published first in The Craftsman in November 1908 and a year later in Craftsman Homes, drew national attention to the use of cobblestones in West Coast architecture. Featuring a California country home by architects Hunt and Eager and another by Greene and Greene, the article pointed out the interesting effects achieved by using cobblestones in chimneys, walls, walks, and foundations. The author noted that when big rough stones and cobbles were used with taste and discrimination, "they not only give greater interest to the construction but serve to connect the building very closely with the surrounding landscape." [168]
Such construction was particularly well suited for dwellings in rugged locations, the stone in its natural form being a harmonizing element that could closely connect landscape and building. Readers were told,
In the building of modern country homes there seems to be no end to the adaptability of cobblestones and boulders in connection with the sturdier kinds of building material, for, if rightly placed with regard to the structure and surroundings, they can be brought into harmony with nearly every style of architecture that has about it any semblance of ruggedness, especially if the surrounding country be hilly and uneven in contour and blessed—or cursed—with a plentiful crop of stones. [169]
Stickley attributed the popularity of cobblestone construction in California to the influence of Japanese architecture. He wrote, "In these buildings the use of stone in this form is as inevitable in its fitness as the grouping of rocks in a Japanese garden." He praised the way the stonework brought "the entire building into the closest relationship with its environment." The rounded, worn character of the cobbles in western homes was attributed to their edges having "worn off during the ages when they have rolled about in the mountain torrents." Wedged "helter-skelter among the irregular, roughly laid bricks of the walls, pillars and chimneys," they differed from the conventional use of stone in a Japanese garden and the typical walks and flower beds of American homes. Such a dwelling was in harmony with its site and surroundings. [170]
California designers explored the combination of bricks and cobbles and appreciated the picturesque qualities of moss- and lichen-covered boulders. Stickley described the results:
The effect of this is singularly interesting both in color and form, for the warm purplish brown of the brick contrasts delightfully with the varying tones of the boulders covered with moss and lichens, and the soft natural grays and browns of the more or less primitive wood construction that is almost invariably used in connection with cobbles gives the general effect of a structure that has almost grown out of the ground, so perfectly does it sink into the landscape around it. [171]
Cobblestone construction when applied to walls, piers, chimneys and terraces harmonized well with rough shingle and timber construction as well as the native trees of a woodland setting. Stickley pointed out how successfully the mountain house was linked to the surrounding landscape and how striking the effect was of native materials against the lacy foliage created by the surrounding trees that had been undisturbed by the construction.
The use of boulders for foundations and chimneys had wide application in the design and construction of park structures. It was commonly used for the foundations of pioneer homes and appeared over and over again in Shingle style dwellings and Adirondack cabins and lodges. Early on it had been used in the construction of Crater Lake Lodge in Oregon and Bear Mountain Inn in New York; it was adapted by Maier for the lower story of his museum at Yosemite and would appear in diverse variations in the construction of all types of park structures throughout the 1930s.
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| Gartz Court, constructed in 1910, is among the oldest bungalow courts in Pasadena, California. Attributed to architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, the one-story cottages exhibit characteristic Craftsman styling, including low-pitched roofs with large overhangs and exposed eaves, prominent stone chimneys projecting through the roof plane, and generous covered porches. Use of indigenous building materials, plantings, and stone-lined walkways further create a sense of harmony and integration between the structures and the site. (Pasadena Heritage) |
THE BUNGALOW CRAZE
The Arts and Crafts movement, particularly through the bungalow craze, forged an appreciation of architectural details influenced by the Shingle style, the Prairie style, the West Coast work of Greene and Greene, and the Adirondack style, as well as native or indigenous forms of architecture. Practitioners used native materials, seeking designs that harmoniously integrated site, structure, and setting. They followed nature, avoided artificial appearances, capitalized on scenic vistas, used picturesque details, and unified interior spaces with the out-of-doors through porches, terraces, and pergolas. Boundaries between inside and outside were softened by terraces, porches, pools, plantings, patios, and gardens. While the Shingle style brought architects and landscape architects in collaboration with each other, it was only after the Columbian Exposition in 1893 that architects readily adopted landscape features and devices in their architectural designs and collaborated routinely with their landscape counterparts. This was especially true of the work of the Prairie style architects and Greene and Greene. This integration was well suited to the Arts and Crafts philosophy, endeavoring to establish a unity of home and hearth, community and nation, and dwelling and land.
The bungalow movement seized upon a variety of styles and types that were part of the naturalistic, rustic tradition. Of the many bungalow guides and pattern books, Bungalows, Camps and Mountain Houses of 1915 by William Phillips Comstock and architect Clarence Eaton Schermerhorn, provides perhaps the most diverse collection of prototypes adapted to out-of-door living and natural settings. As an index of period design, the book illustrated prototypes that would be revived twenty years later in the design of buildings in state and national parks.
One example was the home of D. Knickerbacker Boyd at Robbins Point on Grindstone Island in the St. Lawrence River, New York, which emerged from a rocky shore on massive stone piers. The natural weathering of the shingles of the roof and walls, the rusticity of the porch railings, and the character of the porch posts fashioned from tree branches and trunks further added to the inconspicuous nature of the building. Comstock wrote, "The outside will weather to a natural gray which, combined with the natural effect of the porch and the rough stone, will cause the building to blend into the landscape as seen from the water, its only means of approach." [172]
Under the category of camps, lodges, and log cabins, Comstock illustrated with architects' plans and photographs modest four-bedroom log cabins in the woods. Featured in most detail were Stonecliff on the coast of Maine by Albert Winslow Cobb; the William A. Read Camp in the Adirondacks; and Minnewawa on Blue Mountain Lake, New York, by Clarence Eaton Schermerhorn, who wrote the introduction to the book. John Calvin Stevens, preeminent architect of summer homes in the Shingle style, provided designs for a modest log house that had a two-story living room with a massive stone fireplace and a sleeping loft. [173]
One prototypical West Coast bungalow was the Pitzer Bungalow (1910) at Pomona, California, by Robert H. Orr. It was distinctive for its rambling roof lines and projecting eaves supported on battered piers of cobblestone that rose to form arched openings. Cobblestone construction dominated the whole and characterized the flared walls of the foundation, porch walls, massive porch piers rising to form wide arches, and chimneys. The massive stones of the foundation were planted firmly in the ground and rose inward and upward with decreasing size to emphasize the relationship between the earth and the walls of natural stone. Its most innovative feature was an interior patio vaulted by an open lattice of beams forming a pergola and a framework for hanging protective canvas to keep out the midday sun. The walls surrounding the patio were made of cobblestone masonry, and a naturalistic assemblage of rocks sprang from the center of the patio. [174]
While national park designers Thomas Vint and Herbert Maier had firsthand knowledge of West Coast bungalows by Greene and Greene and others, many designers knew examples only through periodicals such as the Western Architect and publications by Stickley, Comstock and Schermerhorn, and others. The greatest manifestation of the bungalow craze was the unprecedented suburban growth and residential growth that occurred in California from 1900 to 1920. Bungalows lining suburban streets and arranged into bungalow courts provided a lucrative source of income for real estate developers and a slate for creative expression for architects and landscape architects inspired by Greene and Greene and others.
Many designers explored the characteristics promoted by the Arts and Crafts movement in this period. Splayed or flared cobblestone foundations and massive stone piers were characteristic of the Los Angeles work of Arthur S. Heineman. He incorporated these features in the Parsons House (1909) in Altadena, the Los Robles Court in Pasadena, and other works. These characteristics were an important unifying characteristic of Sylvanus Marston's St. Francis Court (1909) in Pasadena, believed to be the first bungalow court in America. Here rugged, battered rockwork appeared not only in the foundation walls of the court's eleven dwellings but also in the entry gate and enclosing stone walls.
The bungalows of Irving Gill, especially his Mission style bungalow courts, introduced a variation that abandoned the rustic stone construction and details in favor of smooth stuccoed surfaces inspired by the region's cultural heritage. His work influenced the construction of cabins in the Southwest, including the adobe Indian Lodge at Davis Mountains State Park in Texas, as park designers looked to cultural prototypes and pioneer and indigenous methods of construction. The work of Gill and Heineman may have inspired such massing of cabins interconnected with walks, parapets, stairways, terraces, and courtyards, to conform to the natural topography and to appear as a single continuous building. Such clusters offered an ideal medium for blending influences of the Mission style and the indigenous architecture of Southwest pueblos.
The ideas of America's Arts and Crafts movement had widespread applications in the development of the bungalow for vacation and suburban living. Followers of the movement shared Downing's concern for the unity of structure and landform, advocated the use of native materials such as log and stone, revived traditional and pioneering arts and crafts, and used naturalistic gardening. This movement carried forward the tenets of the Shingle style of the 1870s and 1880s that had been successfully used in buildings for public parks since the 1880s. The Arts and Crafts movement adapted English gardening practices to the grounds of the middle-class home, particularly Robinson's ideas for naturalizing the homesite with wild plants. It also assimilated Japanese building traditions that used rockwork and organic principles of design to integrate structure and site. Furthermore, it recognized diverse regional features of buildings and landscape that had emerged across the nation in efforts to unify buildings and sites, such as the Prairie style architecture of the Midwest, the open terraces and patios of the Southwest, and the log construction of the pioneers.
Landscape architect Thomas Vint and architect Herbert Maier, having studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and lived in California, were well acquainted with the works of these individuals and the profusion of variations on the bungalow theme that flourished in and around Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Vint himself worked for builders and architects of such homes during his high school and college years in Los Angeles and Pasadena, where the bungalow, inspired by the local work of Greene and Greene, would have its greatest flowering of expression in the 1910s and 1920s. At age 19, he worked for A. S. Falconer, who was developing a portfolio of bungalow styles for a Los Angeles real estate development firm.
By the 1920s when National Park Service landscape engineers were working out a program of landscape design for national parks, there existed a well-established philosophy for park design drawn from the practices and precedents in landscape architecture and architecture. Architectural forms and landscape treatments coalesced to provide ideas, examples, solutions, and a philosophy for the design of park structures. These trends merged most emphatically in the Arts and Crafts tradition spurred by California's development of the bungalow, the work of Greene and Greene, and the publications of Stickley and others. By 1919, when the National Park Service instituted its first program of landscape design, there existed a firmly rooted tradition of landscape gardening and rustic architecture and a philosophy for landscape protection and harmonization in the development of natural areas. There were established principles of composition, practices for informal and naturalistic designs, and an aesthetic appreciation and a horticultural knowledge of American wild plants, which would be explored in the work of national park designers in the next decade.
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Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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