National ParkService Maps, handscaping, Architectos National Parks and the American Landscape PUBLISHED FOR THE NATIONAL COLLECTION OF FINE ARTS BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS CITY OF WASHINGTON, 1972 Contents 7 FOREWORD Joshua C. Taylor 9 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 11 NATIONAL PARKS' CENTENNIAL YEAR Rogers C. B. Morton 13 NATIONAL PARKS AND THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE William H. Truettner and Robin Bolton-Smith 35 CATALOG OF EXHIBITION Acadia National Park Mesa Verde National Park Canyon de Chelly National Monument Mount Rainier National Park Devils Tower National Monument Pipestone National Monument Glacier Bay National Monument Rocky Mountain National Park Glacier National Park Scotts Bluff National Monument Grand Canyon National Park Yellowstone National Park Grand Teton National Park Yosemite National Park Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Zion National Park Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks Memorabilia 137 BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 INDEX OF ARTISTS Bibliography The American Heritage Book of Natural Wonders. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1963. America's Wonderlands. Washington, D.C.: The National Geographic Society, 1959. The Art Institute of Chicago. The Hudson River School, February 15-March 25, 1945. Bartlett, Richard A. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. Baur, John I. H., editor. The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge 1820-1910. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Benjamin, S. G. W. "Pioneers of the Palette." Magazine of Art, vol. 5, February 1882, PP. 89-93. Billington, Ray A. The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Row, 1956. Brewster, Sir David. The Stereoscope, its History, Theory, and Construction. London: John Murray, 1856. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844. California Art Research. WPA Project 2874. San Francisco, 1937. Catlin, George. The Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. 2 vols. London: Egyptian Hall, 1841. The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell. Geological Survey Professional Paper 669. Washing- ton, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1969. The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: The Modern Library, 1950. Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. New York: The New American Library, 1963. Cornelius, Fidelis. Keith, Old Master of California. New York: G.1 P. Putnam's Sons, 1942. De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts. Fitz Hugh Lane. March 20-April 17, 1966. Dickason, David H. The Daring Young Men. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953. Downing, A. J. A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. New York: George P. Putnam, 1849. Ewers, John C. Artists of the Old West. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965. Fryxell, Fritiof. Home-Thoughts, from Afar. East Hampton, New York: East Hampton Free Library, 1967. . Thomas Moran, Explorer in Search of Beauty. East Hampton, New York: East Hampton Free Library, 1958. Godwin, Parke. A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, with Extracts from His Private Correspondence. New York: D. Appleton, 1883. 137 Gordon-Cumming, Constance F. Granite Crags. London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1884, T O Harris, Neil. The Artist in American Society. New York: George Braziller, 1966. N Haverstock, Mary S. "Round Trip to Paradise." Art in America, vol. 54, March-April 1966, PP. 65-71. VC Hendricks, Gordon. "The First Three Western Journeys of Albert Bierstadt." The Art Bulletin, vol. 46, September 1964, PP. 333-365. The Home Book of the Picturesque. New York: George P. Putnam, 1852. Huntington, David C. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church. New York: George Braziller, 1966. T Pc Hussey, Christopher. The Picturesque. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1967. ic. Huth, Hans. Nature and the American. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. R. "Yosemite: The Story of an Idea." Reprinted from the Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 33, March 1948, "F by the Yosemite Natural History Association. III Jackson, Clarence S. Picture Maker of the Old West: William H. Jackson. New York: Charles Scribner's 18 Sons, 1947. Ri Jackson, William H. The Pioneer Photographer. Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book, 1929. Rc . Time Exposure. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940. Sa Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 10 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909-1914. be King, Clarence. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963. Sh Langford, Nathaniel P. "The Wonders of the Yellowstone." Scribner's Monthly, vol. 2, May 1871, PP. Sr. 1-17; June 1871, PP. 113-128. Sn Lindquist-Cock, Elizabeth. "The Influence of Photography on American Landscape Painting, 1839-1880." R Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1968. "Stereoscopic Photography and the Western Paintings of Albert Bierstadt." The Art Quarterly, So vol. 33, Winter 1970, PP. 360-78. At M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors and Drawings 1800-1875. Boston: Museum of Ste Fine Arts, 1962. Stc McCoubrey, John W. American Art 1700-1960. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965. H: Memorial Art Galley of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. Thomas Cole, February 14- Th March 23, 1969. Merritt, Howard S. "A Wild Scene, Genesis of a Painting." Annual II. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum Tr vei of Art, 1967. Tr Miller, Perry, Nature's Nation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1967. Montana Historical Society, Helena. An Art Perspective of the Historic Pacific Northwest from the Collec- Th ber tion of Dr. and Mrs. Franz Stenzel, August 1963. Ve Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey. A. B. Durand 1796-1886, October 24-November 28, 1971. W Muir, John. Our National Parks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. 19 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York. Worthington Whittredge 1820-1910, October 12- W November 16, 1969. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Frederic Edwin Church, W February 12-March 13, 1966. Ph 138 The National Endowment for the Arts and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Wilderness, October 9-November 14, 1971. Novak, Barbara. "American Landscape: The Nationalist Garden and the Holy Book." Art in America, vol. 60, January-February 1972, PP. 46-57. . American Painting of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969. . "Grand Opera and the Small Still Voice." Art in America, vol. 59, March-April 1971, PP. 64-73. The Picture Gallery, University of California, Riverside. Thomas Moran 1837-1926, April 17-June 7, 1963. Poesch, Jessie. Titian Ramsay Peale and His Journals of The Wilkes Expedition. Philadelphia: The Amer- ican Philosophical Society, 1961. Rathbone, Perry T. Westward the W ay. St. Louis: City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1954. "Report of Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane upon the so-called Yellowstone expedition of 1870." The Execu- tive Documents of the Senate of the United States, Third Session, Forty-First Congress, vol. 1, no. 51, 1870-1871, PP. 1-40. Ringe, Donald A. "Kindred Spirits: Bryant and Cole." American Quarterly, vol. 6, Fall 1954, PP. 233-244. Ross, Marvin C. The West of Alfred Jacob Miller. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California. Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902, August 5-Septem- ber 13, 1964. Sheldon, G. W. American Painters. New York: D. Appleton, 1881. Shepard, Paul. Man in the Landscape. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Smith, Henry Nash. "American Emotional and Imaginative Attitudes toward the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains 1803-1850." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1940. . Virgin Land. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970. Soby, James Thrall and Dorothy C. Miller. Romantic Painting in America. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1943. Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954. Stein, Roger B. John Ruskin and Aesthetic Thought in America, 1840-1900. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967. Thoreau, Henry David. "Chesuncook." Atlantic Monthly, vol. 2, 1858. Trump, Richard S. "Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Uni- versity, 1963. Tuckerman, Henry T. Book of the Artists. New York: James F. Carr, 1966. The University of Texas Art Museum, Austin. Sanford Robinson Gifford 1823-1880, October 25-Decem- ber 13, 1970. Verplanck, Gulian C. Address delivered before the American Academy of Fine Arts. New York: 1824. Wilkins, Thurman. Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1865. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1964. . A History of American Marine Painting. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. Wilson, James B. "The Significance of Thomas Moran as an American Landscape Painter." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1955. 139 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks Page 1 of 3 National Park Service MENU Architecture in the Parks Contents Excerpts from a Introductory Essay National Historic Landmark Theme Study The Wawona Hotel and Thomas Hill Studio Yosemite Bathhouse Row Hot Springs Old Faithful Inn Yellowstone LeConte Memorial Lodge Yosemite El Tovar Grand Canyon M.E.J. Colter Buildings Grand Canyon Grand Canyon Depot Grand Canyon Great Northern Railway Buildings The Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park Glacier (Photo by L.S. Harrison) Lake McDonald Lodge Glacier Laura Soullière Harrison National Park Service Parsons Memorial Lodge Department of the Interior Yosemite November 1986 Paradise Inn Mount Rainier Rangers' Club Yosemite Mesa Verde Administrative District Mesa Verde Bryce Canyon Lodge Bryce Canyon The Ahwahnee Yosemite http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/ 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 1 of 13 Architecture in the Parks A National Historic Landmark Theme Study INTRODUCTORY ESSAY the is ***** ******** Expirations Them Story INTRODUCTION Concessioners, private individuals, and the National Park Service constructed a variety of buildings in park areas over the past 110 years. Some of these buildings fell into the mainstreams Cover Page of American architecture; the architects of these buildings pulled their ideas out of prevailing stylistic tendencies. Other architects looked toward nature and allowed the surrounding landscape to influence their designs. The high point in the development of this "rustic" design ethic occurred MENU in the late 'twenties and spread throughout the nation during the work-relief programs of the Depression. Other outstanding examples of American architecture came into the National Park System as new areas were added or when new facilities were built. This study explored all of Contents those categories and sought out those with potential national significance in architecture. Introductory Essay Besides meeting the criteria for national significance in architecture, all buildings or districts recommended in this study were: The Wawona Hotel and Thomas Hill Studio Yosemite -within the boundaries of an area of the National Park System; Bathhouse Row -constructed for visitor-use, interpretive, or administrative purposes. Hot Springs HISTORY Old Faithful Inn Yellowstone The Early Years. The earliest post-settlement buildings in national park settings, or in areas that LeConte Memorial Lodge later became national parks, for the most part possessed architecture built without strong concern Yosemite for the surrounding natural resources. When the U.S. Army began their occupation of Yellowstone in 1886, for instance, they constructed Fort Yellowstone with building plans and details similar to El Tovar those in their other military facilities. At the turn of the century the floor of the Yosemite Valley Grand Canyon was cluttered with a haphazard village development that had sprung up to serve the needs of its residents and the hearty visitors who made it to the park. Unfortunately, the village development M.E.J. Colter Buildings had been built without concern for the scenic qualities of the area or its natural resources. The Grand Canyon Wawona Hotel in the foothills to the southwest of the Yosemite Valley fared somewhat better as it gradually expanded with a sense of formal design and order in its architecture and planning. The Grand Canyon Depot development of Bathhouse Row at Hot Springs National Park (then a Reservation) followed a Grand Canyon formal, linear pattern established by the area's topography and geology and strongly enhanced by the formal landscape work completed by the Department of the Interior. The bathhouses themselves tended to follow architectural styles in vogue at the time they were built. None of Great Northern Railway Buildings these efforts put concern for the sensitive park landscapes ahead of staid nineteenth-century Glacier architecture. Lake McDonald Lodge Some precedents in architectural theory existed that considered harmony of a building with the Glacier landscape. The most important of those ideas came from horticulturalist and landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing. He thoughtfully investigated the place of architecture on the landscape Parsons Memorial Lodge during the mid-nineteenth century, but he based his architectural solutions on a romantic and Yosemite picturesque view of nature. He felt that architecture and landscape should promote harmony, beauty, and "moral significance" in peoples' lives. Yet his proposed architectural solutions Paradise Inn remained steeped in the nineteenth century. Mount Rainier In short, people built what they knew. They built what was culturally comfortable, technically Rangers' Club possible, and, in most cases, pleasing to their formal Victorian sensibilities. The concept of http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 2 of 13 Yosemite national parks was brand new, and concern for the aesthetic well-being of these places set aside for their special features had yet to develop. Mesa Verde Administrative District Big Business and Other Interests. The railroads began the first major concession developments Mesa Verde in national park areas. The railroads, all hoping to increase passenger traffic on their main lines, provided adequately comfortable lodgings at their park destinations; but in the very early years Bryce Canyon Lodge they provided little other than haphazard accommodations such as tent cabins, or hotels designed Bryce Canyon out of the mainstreams of American architecture-Queen Anne or Stick Style buildings that could have "fit" into a variety of urban or rural settings. The big change occurred when the Northern The Ahwahnee Pacific Railroad constructed Old Faithful Inn (1903-4) at Yellowstone National Park. Yosemite Old Faithful Inn, built near the geyser from which Grand Canyon Power it took its name, was the first of the railroad- House Grand Canyon funded hotels to provide an exceptionally distinct architectural character. The building, with its soaring rustic lobby and gnarled log balconies, Longmire Buildings Mount Rainier was unlike any hotel that had come before. Hotels in park areas had been constructed, up until this time, in relatively common nineteenth-century Grand Canyon Lodge styles. Old Faithful Inn, on the other hand, Grand Canyon possessed a wild, frontier feeling created by the architect's extravagant use of logs. Visitors Grand Canyon Park revelled in the variety of rustic spatial experiences Operations Building Grand Canyon the lobby presented-spaces as intriguing and on as grand a scale as the surrounding landscape. Truly Old Faithful Inn was a building worthy of Norris, Madison, and its awesome natural setting; and in the eyes of its Fishing Bridge Museums Yellowstone guests it was worth writing home about. Yakima Park Stockade Not to be outdone, the Atchison, Topeka, and Group Santa Fe Railway also realized the enormous Mount Rainier potential for using architecture as a marketing Old Faithful Inn lobby, strategy. After all, Old Faithful Inn had created a Yellowstone National Park Crater Lake special ambience unique to Yellowstone. The Superintendent's Residence Santa Fe set its sights on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, not yet a national park, but a Crater Lake marvelous scenic wonder close to the main line of the Santa Fe. The Santa Fe and its concessioner the Fred Harvey Company accommodated the visitor use pattern of lengthy stays at the Grand Bandelier C.C.C. Historic Canyon by building their grand hotel, El Tovar (1905), and a replication of a Hopi pueblo adjacent District to it. Bandelier The guests could amuse themselves by Oregon Caves Chateau watching the Indian dances and craft Oregon Caves demonstrations at Hopi House (1905), and at the same time learn about the exotic cultures Northeast Entrance Station by studying the rich interior design and Yellowstone architectural detail that architect Mary Colter provided. After arriving by train at the log Region III Headquarters depot (1909), visitors could get established at Building El Tovar and then travel by stage and later by Santa Fe, NM touring car east and west along the rim and enjoy Colter's medieval-feeling Hermit's Rest Tumacacori Museum (1914), the Lookout (1914) that seemed a Tumacacori part of the surrounding rim geology, and in Lookout Studio, in Grand Canyon National later years the mystical Indian Watchtower at Park, Painted Desert Inn Desert View (1931). designed by Mary Colter Petrified Forest (Photography by Linda McClelland) In northern Montana just below the Canadian border, the Great Northern Railway completed a Aquatic Park series of Swiss-inspired hotels and chalets (ca. 1913) at Glacier National Park to promote the Golden Gate "American Alps." Using a single architectural style, the Railway created a rugged alpine image for their structures. The builders of Lake McDonald Lodge, also within the park boundary, copied the Gateway Arch Chalet style, which helped its absorption into the Great Northern system when it was bought out Jefferson National in the 1930s. Expansion The special silvery quality of the weathered wood of Paradise Inn (1916) at Mount Rainier created http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 3 of 13 its outstanding character. Financed by a group of local businessmen who lacked the seemingly unlimited funds of the powerful railroads, this Inn was constructed on a smaller scale than most of the others, but with a subtle yet powerful architectural presence that fulfilled its purpose as the hub alpine climbing and one of the earliest ski resorts in the country. The quieter presence of the Sierra Club in Yosemite National Park in the beginning of this century brought with it two equally subtle structures. Based on a more intellectual approach to architecture fostered by Bernard Maybeck, both LeConte Memorial Lodge (1903, rebuilt 1919) and Parsons Memorial Lodge (1915) began with simple, native materials and distinctive building sites from which the architects determined the designs. While some overtones of European architecture filtered into the buildings, the underlying approach of allowing the site and materials to determine the designs remained dominant architectural forces. A metamorphosis in architectural thought was beginning. Railroad architects at first worked from the mainstreams of American architecture. As the railroads pushed to develop these natural areas they hired creative geniuses like Robert Reamer and Mary Colter who were masters in making architectural spaces create the image and sense of place that, from the railroads' points of view, sold more passenger tickets to these exotic places. The architects became extremely creative in drawing influences from romantic, nostalgic styles and had the railroads' money to experiment in their work. Yet the strength of the natural landscape was having an overwhelming effect on the shape, form, and style of the architecture, as noted in the Sierra Club buildings constructed with donated funds. The concept that the land could shape the architecture was taking hold. The New National Park Service. The legislation establishing the park service required both preservation and visitor use of the park lands, which of course meant buildings to support the administrative and visitor-use functions. Early directors Stephen T. Mather and Horace Albright also knew that higher visitation in these remote areas increased popular support for the parks. At the same time they recognized the effects of unbridled development in these scenic areas. The difficult task for establishing soine aesthetic guidelines for park architecture and development lay ahead. Two organizations that had lobbied for the formation of a bureau of parks had strong effects on the physical development of park areas after the creation of the Service in 1916. These were the American Civic Association and the American Society of Landscape Architects. Due to their interest and strong concern for the aesthetics of the landscapes in these natural areas, the first "Statement of Policy" issued by the Service called for harmonizing improvements such as roads, trails, and buildings, with the landscape. The statement also called for the employment of trained "engineers who either possess a knowledge of landscape architecture or have a proper appreciation of the aesthetic value of park lands," and for the completion of comprehensive plans for development of park lands. This statement of policy laid the groundwork for all architectural design in national parks until World War II. The new agency also had review authority over all developments-private and public-in park lands. While some existing developments within park boundaries possessed quality design, most were transient and informal in character. The staff of the new agency took their review authority seriously. Neither they, nor the railroads wanted to repeat the devastation of these scenic areas for the sake of development that they had seen at Niagara Falls during the nineteenth century. The railroads had economic reasons-they wanted special places with special images and senses of place to sell tickets. The park service approached it from aesthetic concerns tempered with idealism. Both the monied private developers and the new federal agency realized that keeping these awesome scenic areas special through appropriate development was in their best interests. Director Stephen T. Mather felt so strongly about having architecture built in harmony with the landscape in his national parks that he contributed a substantial sum to the service for the construction of the Rangers' Club (1920) in Yosemite Valley. Although its style was not emulated in later rustic buildings, its materials, finishes, dark, woodsy feeling, and steeply pitched roofs helped it fit with its setting. Archeologist Jesse Nusbaum took a different approach with the buildings he and his wife Aileen designed for Mesa Verde National Park (1921+). Both were involved with the preservation movement in the southwest, centered in Santa Fe. Nusbaum's pre-occupation with the archeological aspects of his park led him to design structures that were in harmony with the prehistoric cultural setting of his park. His choice of a pueblo style based on the surrounding http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 4 of 13 Anasazi structures guided all of the development of the park. Nusbaum used the indigenous building materials, as the Anasazi did, which served almost as a protective coloration in harmonizing the structures with their setting. During the mid-1920s a Los Angeles architect named Gilbert Stanley Underwood took these concepts of rustic architecture that had developed and created entire village developments at Bryce (1925), Zion, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon (1927+) for the Union Pacific Railroad and the Utah Parks Company. For materials he used logs and log slabs, and rough, angular stones with steel and concrete hidden beneath. He also expanded the concepts into megalithic proportions in the Bryce Canyon Lodge, Ahwahnee (1925) at Yosemite, where he Bryce Canyon National Park toned and formed exposed concrete to imitate wood. Underwood's rustic structures added new dimension to the term "rustic." Another important architectural product constructed by a concessioner during this era was the Grand Canyon Power House (1926) on the south rim. Built to provide power to all of the facilities on the south rim, this building housed enormous industrial equipment. To diminish the size of the building necessary to contain the equipment, the architect (as yet unknown) used familiar architectural elements of the chalet style and nearly doubled their size. This technique cut the perceived size of the building in half. Thus, besides experimenting with natural materials, the concessioner architects began to experiment with scale and perception. During the mid-1920s landscape architect Thomas C. Vint assembled a small group of highly creative young men to work for him in the National Park Service Landscape Division, later the Branch of Plans and Design. Vint hired people willing to seek out those design elements in their work which made the buildings necessary for park development as unobtrusive and harmonious as possible in their park settings. Vint's team of architects and landscape architects experimented with materials such as stone and logs, and with ways of shaping those materials into structures that "belonged" in the often awesome natural surroundings. The designers and onsite construction supervisors carefully studied the natural materials in the surrounding landscape-the color, scale, massing, and texture-and incorporated what they could into their designs. Building on the traditions of an environmental architecture set down by architects such as Mary Jane Colter and Bernard Maybeck, the park service architects and landscape architects tailored each master plan and each building in the plan to the specific park site and its individual needs. In Longmire village at Mount Rainier landscape architect Ernest A. Davidson chose the rounded, glacial boulders and large logs as the exterior materials on his administration, community, and service-station buildings (1927+). While the boulders and logs were oversized compared to those used in typical building construction, they were the same large scale as the boulders and logs of the surrounding landscape. The 1929 Park Operations Building at Grand Canyon followed the same design philosophy. The big chunks of rubble masonry laid in courses mimicked the local geologic strata, and the log detailing had sizes identical to the trunks of the surrounding forest. Perhaps the most ambitious rustic development of this period was in the Munson Valley district of Crater Lake National Park. Although most of the structures of that development have been altered over time, the Superintendent's Residence (1930) illustrated the classic elements of the design ethic. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 5 of 13 FLOOR DLAN Scale Floor Plan of Superintendent's Residence, Crater Lake National Park At Yellowstone National Park architect Herbert Maier designed three museums (1929+) donated to the park by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation and the American Association of Museums. Maier's museums were unusual. The buildings had a few elements common to bungalow structures of the period-battered stonework, clipped gables, and low, horizontal emphases-but Maier left many of the materials in a more natural conditions that reflected the scale and roughness of the surrounding landscape. His buildings responded to their sites in their low shapes and appropriately fit the contours of the site. Maier's buildings were perfect solutions for an architecture appropriate to the outdoors: informal, through their use of natural materials and horizontal lines, but loaded with a strength of design and heavy-handed expression that subconsciously suggested the smallness of man in relation to nature. Back at Mount Rainier in 1930 landscape architect Davidson designed log blockhouses and a stockade for the Yakima Park (Sunrise) area. Davidson wanted to emphasize the historic use of the sub-alpine meadow as an Indian summer rendez-vous point, SO he sought a cultural theme for the area's development. Finding no suitable permanent structure from local Indian architectural traditions, he turned to a nostalgic, frontier theme in his blockhouses and stockade. Colter and Nusbaum had successfully used cultural themes in their structures at Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde; harmonizing a development with its cultural setting, Davidson theorized, was another way of having a structure belong in its environment. The strides in park architecture were enormous from the turn-of-the-century through the 'twenties. Concessioners had money to hire creative architects and give them large budgets to design image through the device of architecture. They could experiment with applied decoration, vast interior spaces, and architectural fantasies-and they did. The tiny budgets allotted for park service buildings only reinforced the new tendency park service architects and landscape architects already had-to look toward nature. These special natural areas each needed special architecture which would maintain the areas' uniqueness. They needed buildings that harmonized with their natural settings so well that they seemed to grow out of them. As one park service landscape architect of the period pointed out, none of the staff had any background in this type of design. They had been taught to build structures which stood out in the landscape but under the direction of Tom Vint the architects and landscape architects re-learned their approaches to architecture and instead designed buildings that belonged in their environments. This simpler architecture, too, projected image-the image of an agency with roots in the preservation of America's natural heritage. The Depression: Work-Relief Programs and the National Park Service. In 1933 the National Park Service was designated to supervise the development in state, county, and metropolitan recreation areas under the Emergency Conservation Work Act. Taking on this new responsibility in addition to the agency's own commitment to development meant expanding the staff to design and supervise construction of these new facilities. The design ethic for park architecture was SO well-developed by 1935 and the need for examples to follow so pressing that the National Park Service published Park and Recreation Structures. This single volume, followed in 1938 with a three-volume version entitled Park Structures and Facilities, served as a training tool for new architects and landscape architects designing developments in parks. Complete with photographs and plans of successful buildings, the book summarized the basic philosophy of architecture and design appropriate to park lands. Often referred to as the "Rustic Style," even though not all of the structures built could be classified under one "style" category, this type of park architecture followed certain precepts. As described by its practitioners: Successfully handled, [rustic] is a style which, through the use of native materials in proper scale, and through the avoidance of rigid, straight lines, and oversophistication, gives the feeling of having been executed by pioneer craftsmen with limited hand tools. It thus achieves sympathy with natural surroundings and with the past. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002 National Park Service: Architecture in the Parks (Introductory Essay: Phase I) Page 6 of 13 Bandelier National Monument had its entire development designed following this philosophy. Beginning in 1933 architect Lyle Bennett and landscape architect Charles Richey designed the administrative, maintenance, residential, and tourist facilities based on the layout and architectural style of a small New Mexican pueblo. The simple stone structures, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, formed a cohesive village fabric around a plaza. The architects and landscape architects out of Vint's Branch of Plans and Design repeated southwestern cultural themes in the Region III Headquarters Building in Santa Fe (1937), the Tumacacori Museum (1937) at Tumacacori National Monument in southern Arizona, and the Painted Desert Inn (1937) at Petrified Forest. In Yellowstone the architects chose logs as the material for the Northeast Entrance Station (1935). This handsome building, with its highly expressive use of logs, served as the definite entrance to the park that would help the visitor realize that he was entering a special place. The entrance station, like so many others of its kind, subconsciously reinforced the visitor's sense of the western frontier and the wilderness he was about to enter. One remarkable development of this period was at Oregon Caves National Monument. The main Chateau (1934), built across a small gorge and with a stream running through its lower floors, was constructed by the monument's concessioner, while the surrounding site design was designed by park service landscape architects and executed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. All followed the design philosophy laid out by Vint and his staff. While construction in national parks in the Oregon Caves Chateau, 1930s stressed the precepts set forth in Park Oregon Caves National Monument and Recreation Structures, urban areas used the boon of federal monies for different pursuits more appropriate for urban environments. The city of San Francisco used Works Progress Administration funding to construct Aquatic Park near Fishermen's Wharf. The Streamlined-Moderne style development featured a bathhouse, concessions stands, municipal pier, and other facilities all possessing the smooth, arced lines of the style. Even the landscape's crescent shape fit with the style. Toward the end of the 1930s rustic architecture was falling out of favor for buildings in national parks. New materials and building techniques, and the cleaner lines of the International Style beckoned the architects who felt that most rustic buildings had too much of a Hansel-and-Gretel feeling to them. Funding for the work-relief programs diminished as the nation drew closer to World War II, and consequently the abundant supply of men to peel logs and haul boulders decreased. The labor-intensive aspects of rustic construction were all the more reason to look toward cheaper methods of building in the future. When the war came the design ethic of rustic architecture had seen its heyday. After World War II. Virtually all construction within the parks came to a halt during the War, and when it ended Gateway Arch, funds for park development were meager. The first major Jefferson National Expansion park development after the war was at Jefferson National Memorial Expansion Memorial National Historic Site in St. Louis. Private funds raised by local citizens financed a design competition in 1947 for a suitable structure to represent St. Louis' place as the Gateway to the West. Architect Eero Saarinen won the competition with his monumental and highly expressive stainless-steel arch. Although construction was not completed on the Arch until 21 years later this avant-garde design fit its urban setting. The new age of architecture in new types of park areas began. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/harrison/harrison0.htm 8/14/2002