National Park Service rustic
National Park Service rustic – sometimes colloquially called Parkitecture – is a style of architecture that developed in the early and middle 20th century in the United States National Park Service through its efforts to create buildings that harmonized with the natural environment. Since its founding in 1916, the NPS sought to design and build visitor facilities without visually interrupting the natural or historic surroundings. The early results were characterized by intensive use of hand labor and a rejection of the regularity and symmetry of the industrial world, reflecting connections with the Arts and Crafts movement and American Picturesque architecture.
Architects, landscape architects and engineers combined native wood and stone with convincingly native styles to create visually appealing structures that seemed to fit naturally within the majestic landscapes. Examples of the style can be found in numerous types of National Park structures, including entrance gateways, hotels and lodges, park roads and bridges, visitor centers, trail shelters, informational kiosks, and even mundane maintenance and support facilities. Many of these buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Development 1872–1916
The first national parks were a response to the romanticism that restructured the American concept of wilderness in the nineteenth century. As seen in the artistry of John James Audubon, James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Cole, George Catlin, William Cullen Bryant and others, the idea of wilderness developed during the course of the nineteenth century from an entity to be feared and conquered into a resource that should be preserved and treasured. The early wilderness preservation philosophies – expressed through painting, poetry, essays, and later photography – helped lay the foundations for the acceptance of the first national parks. Beginning with Yosemite in 1864 and Yellowstone in 1872, public lands were set aside as parks. Early administration of these reserves was haphazard. Yosemite fell prey to a politicized board of state commissions, while Yellowstone was given an unpaid superintendent and no appropriations.In 1883, because of extensive poaching and political scandal, the Army was authorized to protect Yellowstone although it was not called upon by the Secretary of the Interior to do so until 1886. The Army stayed in Yellowstone in an administrative capacity until 1916. After 1890, the Army also was called on to protect Sequoia, the General Grant tree, and Yosemite. In each of the Army parks, the War Department was compelled to erect basic facilities for its own use. Fort Yellowstone, Wyoming, was the most important of these complexes. The army buildings there were constructed to standard Army specifications. The Army had no direct interest in the landscape, and this was echoed in their architecture.
In those early parks where the Interior Department retained administrative responsibility, government buildings usually were limited to primitive, vernacular expressions of facility need. Crude frame shacks, log cabins, or tent frames usually sufficed. These early government facilities could be simple because responsibility for housing and transporting the park visitor was delegated to the park concessioners.
Image:OlympicNP-SoleducShelter.jpg|thumb|left|Trail shelter at Sol Duc Falls, Olympic National Park
The early park concessioners received little supervision. Their structures were typical makeshift frontier efforts. The railroads brought the first major developments to the parks. Not until after the completion of the northern transcontinental railroads in the 1890s, did more advanced concessioner facilities appear in Yellowstone, for example. Among the first of these was the Lake Hotel, constructed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1890. The formal classicism of this structure, with its ionic columns, three projecting porticos and symmetrical façade, made it clear that the building owed nothing to its setting. At the same time, as a part of this process, they also introduced their architectural and engineering expertise. The railroads' search for architectural styles suitable for park settings occurred at a time when landscape architecture was beginning to exert major influence on architectural design and theory. In 1842, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing had publicized his ideas on "picturesque" landscape and the importance of nature in architectural design in his widely distributed book Cottage Residences. Several decades later, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., a friend and pupil of Downing, working in conjunction with architects such as Henry Hobson Richardson, strengthened the connections between architecture and landscape architecture. Building forms responded to their sites, landscaping becoming an integral part of the design. While buildings generally were constructed of natural materials such as native stone, timbers, and shingles, few were intentionally "rustic." Early "rustic" examples were usually "follies" – gazebos and small pavilions. Larger buildings intentionally rustic in style appeared in the Adirondack Mountains in the 1870s, creating the style known as Adirondack Architecture. This influence began to appear in park architecture after 1900.
Policy
As the Park Service became more organized in the 1920s, it established a policy of rustic design. Promulgated primarily by landscape architect Thomas Chalmers Vint, with support from architect Herbert Maier, rustic design became entrenched as standard practice in the Park Service. During the 1930s, the Park Service administered Civilian Conservation Corps projects in state parks, and used the opportunity to promote rustic design on a widespread scale. However, in the post-World War II period, it became apparent that facilities could not be built in sufficient quantity to contend with a huge increase in automobile-borne park visitation. In the Mission 66 program, Vint and Maier consciously abandoned the rustic style in favor of a leaner and more expeditious modern style.Yosemite
In 1903, the Sierra Club erected LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite Valley. Designed to serve as the Club's summer headquarters, it contained a library and a club information center. Weathered native granite dominated the symmetrical Tudor Revival building, which bore the strong imprint of its architect, John White, in an exaggerated roofline which comprised more than half of the height of the structure, a huge granite fireplace, and its rough-finish exposed roof beams.Image:Yosemite - Ahwahnee Hotel.jpg|thumb|The Ahwahnee Hotel in December|left
The Yosemite Valley Railroad had constructed a depot in 1910 at El Portal near the park boundary, and a stage depot in Yosemite Valley. Although the railroad's operations were on a much smaller scale than those at the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, its buildings were significant expressions of local park architecture. Both structures were built in a rustic stick style reminiscent of nineteenth century Adirondack camp architecture. The wood-frame buildings were covered with panels of decorative boughs. The diagonal brackets of the depot were small logs, complete with protruding knots. The Yosemite Valley Stage Depot, which also served as a telegraph office, had a steeply gabled roof, which comprised more than half the height of the building, and diamond-shaped window panes. Both structures were representative of a local movement of "rustic" architecture that developed in Yosemite after 1900. Several buildings at nearby Camp Curry shared the style.
Glacier Point received a new hotel in 1917. Erected by the Desmond Park Company, the 2- and 3-story, shingle-covered structure had a distinctly Swiss Chalet design emphasis. The steeply pitched roofs, numerous roof gables and intricate balconies added detail to this alpine structure. Although situated so that it had views of the Yosemite high country, the hotel was sufficiently removed from Glacier Point proper to reduce its visual impact.
Parsons Memorial Lodge was constructed by the Sierra Club in 1915 at Tuolumne Meadows. Parsons Lodge was a wide building of low profile, whose walls appeared to be granite dry stone masonry. Actually, the architect had experimented with a new construction technique so that the battered stone walls had concrete cores. This philosophy of using new building methods in visual imitation of pioneer building techniques matured in the 1920s in structures like Yosemite's Ahwahnee Hotel. A contemporary architect stated: "The building seems to grow out of the ground naturally and to belong there just as much as the neighboring trees and rocks."
The Mariposa Grove Museum, located in the upper grove, is a historic log cabin that opened in 1931, replacing an earlier structure built by Galen Clark, the grove's discoverer. Clark’s original cabin, built in 1858, served as a shelter for early visitors and was known for its picturesque setting among the giant sequoias. Though designed to minimize the visual impact of human structures in nature, it has become an iconic image of Yosemite. The museum was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
Yellowstone
At Yellowstone National Park in 1903, the Northern Pacific Railroad constructed the Old Faithful Inn. This six-story resort was in the Swiss Chalet-Norway Villa tradition, but executed in a very western frontier manner. The exterior of the log frame structure was sheathed with shingles, and the building was heavily articulated with logwork piers and corners. Two stories of projecting dormers protruded from the enormous main gable, which was the dominant architectural feature. The combination of the logwork, shingles, and form resulted in a masterful structure. The Inn was designed by Robert Reamer, who is said to have "sketched the plans while coming shakily out of a monumental submersion in malt, and some authorities claim to be able to read that fact in its unique contours."A series of four "trailside museums" were designed for Yellowstone by Herbert Maier in the late 1920s at Madison, Norris Geyser Basin, Fishing Bridge and Old Faithful. Maier designed many park structures in the western national parks during his tenure as an active Park Service architect, and went on to become an influential administrator in the Park Service regional office.
In 1927 Bozeman architect Fred F. Willson designed a new, three-story structure for Eagle's Store on the site of the original store built in West Yellowstone in 1908. Willson donated his expertise in order to promote the National Park Service rustic style. The design was similar to that of Old Faithful Inn. Willson set fir logs measuring to long into a base of rhyolite and concrete. Buttresses were made of basalt.