AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS CA-2830-C Yosemite HABS CA-2830-C 1 Ahwahnee Drive Yosemite Yosemite Village Mariposa County

PHOTOGRAPHS

WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA

FIELD RECORDS

HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW , DC 20240-0001 HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE

HABS No. CA-2830-C

Location: 1 Ahwahnee Drive, , Mariposa County, California The cottages are located southeast of the Ahwahnee Hotel main building, on the south side of Ahwahnee Drive.

USGS Quadrangle Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinates: llS 273361mE 4180758mN

Present Owner Owner: National Park Service (NPS) and Occupant: Concessionaire: Delaware North Companies, Inc. (DNC)

Present Use: Hotel

Significance: Situated in a spacious meadow at the foot of the Royal Arches formation at the eastern end of is the Ahwahnee Hotel Complex. While the main hotel building is one of the most recognized and iconic grand lodges in the National Park system, the eight cottages that sit in the and oak groves immediately southeast of the monumental hotel building are less well­ known. These cottages, designed by architect Eldridge "Ted" Spencer in 1928, contain twenty-four guest rooms and comprise an integral part of the Ahwahnee Hotel's historical and architectural significance. The inclusion of cottages (commonly referred to at the time as "bungalows") in the Ahwahnee Hotel Complex was an essential component of the plan for the hotel to function as a resort hotel for wealthy visitors to Yosemite National Park.

Recognized as nationally significant for architectural merit (National Register Criterion C), the Ahwahnee Hotel was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and achieved National Historic Landmark status in 1987. However, the cottages were not formally recognized in either of these nominations. Although the 1977 National Register nomination included the cottages in its geographic delineation, it listed the period of significance as 1925-1927, excluding the cottages constructed in 1928. The 1987 National Historic Landmark nomination completely excluded the cottages from its geographic boundaries. However, both the cottages and the main hotel building are listed as contributing buildings in the Yosemite Valley Historic District, which was nominated to the National Register in 2006. The Yosemite Valley Historic District nomination lists the Ahwahnee developed area as significant for both architectural merit (Criterion C) and association with significant events (Criterion A). AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 2)

The fourplex cottage is one of three different types of cottages in the Ahwahnee Complex; the other two types are duplex units and fourplex units with connecting living rooms. The cottages are significant both historically and architecturally, as their construction represents larger trends in the development of “bungalow hotel” resorts in California in the 1920s. Additionally, the cottages are also representative of the practice of including auxiliary cabins/cottages as guest rooms associated with grand lodges throughout the national park system in the early twentieth century. Differing considerably from the monumental rustic style of the main hotel building, the cottages are also significant for their embodiment of a combination of architectural styles, blending elements of California Bungalow, Colonial Revival, Rustic, and Transitional/Early Ranch styles in a fusion of traditional and modern architectural designs.

Historians: Primary Author, Researcher: Lindsay Kozub, NPS Historian Project Manager, Editor: Gabrielle Harlan, NPS Historical Architect Researcher: Adela Park, NCPE Intern

Project This project was completed by the History, Architecture, and Landscapes Information: Branch of Resources Management and Science at Yosemite National Park. The photo documentation was completed in 2010-2011 by Stephen Schafer of Schaf Photo Studios. Historical and architectural research was conducted by National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) interns Adela Park and Lindsay Kozub in the summer of 2013. The historical and architectural documentation was written by Lindsay Kozub, Historian at Yosemite National Park, in 2014. The project was supervised and edited by Gabrielle Harlan, Historical Architect at Yosemite National Park.

PART I. HISTORICAL INFORMATION

A. Physical History

1. Date of erection: 1928

2. Architect and Designers:

Eldridge “Ted” Spencer, Architect (1893 – 1978)

The youngest of twelve children, Eldridge Ballard Spencer was born in 1893 in the small town of Volcano, California in the foothills. Spencer attended the University of California at Berkeley and served as a pilot in the Signal Corps of the Army from 1917-1919 during World War I. When he enrolled in the Army, Spencer adopted the name Ted in admiration of former , and he was subsequently known as Ted for the remainder of his life.1

1 Jeannette Dyer Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect (Unpublished, 1983), 5-7. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 3)

Spencer was honorably discharged in 1919 and returned to Berkeley, where he entered into architecture school and married fellow architecture student, Jeannette Dyer, in 1920.2 Both Ted and Jeannette received Master’s Degrees in Architecture in that same year and moved to New York, where Ted worked in the office of architect Grosvenor Atterbury.3 The Spencers moved to Paris in 1921, where Ted studied architecture at the École des Beaux Arts and Jeannette studied stained glass design at the École du Louvre.4 Both Spencers received diplomas from their respective institutions in 1925 and returned to California, where Ted established an office in Oakland. His first commission was to design the City Library building in Saratoga in 1927.5

Also in 1927, Jeannette Dyer Spencer was invited to design ten stained glass panels for the windows in Yosemite National Park’s new luxury hotel, the Ahwahnee, which was designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood and was under construction at the time. Phyllis Ackerman, a former classmate and sorority sister of Jeannette, was working as interior designer of the Ahwahnee along with her husband, Arthur Upham Pope, and sought Jeannette’s design expertise as an emergency remedy for the architect’s original window designs, which Ackerman deemed “execrable.”6 Jeannette’s successful completion of the intricate stained glass designs for the windows in the Ahwahnee’s Great Lounge commenced a relationship between the Spencers and the Ahwahnee’s owners, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company (YP&C Co.), which lasted for nearly fifty years. After a series of disputes with Underwood during the construction of the Ahwahnee Hotel, YP&C Co. president was looking to hire a new company architect. In 1928, Tresidder dismissed Underwood and hired Ted Spencer as YP&C Co. architect. Spencer’s first commission for the company would be the design of the eight Ahwahnee Cottages. Both Ted and Jeannette Spencer continued their design and consulting work for the YP&C Co. in Yosemite National Park until 1972, during which time Ted also designed the Ahwahnee Gate Lodge (1929), Camp Curry Dining Pavilion and Cafeteria (1929-1930), Curry Ice Rink (1929), Snow Creek Ski Cabin (1929), tent frames and water heating system at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp (1930s), Big Trees Lodge (1932), Chinquapin Gas Station and Ski Lounge (1933), Badger Pass Ski Lodge (1935), Yosemite Lodge (1956), YP&C Co. Office and Administration Building (1955-1959), Yosemite Village Store and Service Station (1955-59), Ahwahnee Swimming Pool (1964), and the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center and Auditorium (1967).7

2 Jeannette Dyer Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 1, 10. 3 Ibid., 2, 11. 4 Ibid., 15, 21; Jeannette Dyer Spencer, Letter to Beth Resseger, Case Western Alumni Relations, May 27, 1975, Case Western Reserve University Archives 5 Ibid., 69-70; Beth Wyman, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Saratoga Village Library, January 17, 2007. 6 Ackerman, Phyllis, Letter to P.M. Lansdale, , California, March 16, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 1, Folder 238. 7 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 80, 95-104, 107, 111-112, 118, 121-123, 159, 162-163, 169, 172; See also Jennifer Self, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Snow Creek Ski Hut, 2011; AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 4)

Typical of many marriages throughout the twentieth century in which both partners were trained in the art of architecture, Ted and Jeannette often collaborated with one another on building projects. Also typical of many of these partnerships, the roles that they each played reflected the gendered nature of the profession in which men were believed to have innate skills more suited to the design of the exterior building envelope and women to possess skills more appropriate to interior design. The first major design work the Spencers completed as a partnership was at the Ahwahnee, where Ted’s exterior cottage designs were completed by Jeannette’s hand-painted stencils, interior design work, and furnishings. Jeannette also contributed significantly to the interiors of the main Ahwahnee Hotel building, painting the Basket Mural over the fireplace in the elevator lobby and creating unique hand-painted stencil designs for the guest rooms, hallways, and the massive ceiling beams in the Great Lounge.8

The Spencers’ careers with the YP&C Co. spanned multiple movements in NPS architectural history, from the proliferation of the NPS Rustic style in the 1920s through the era of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), culminating during the “Mission 66” program. Ted Spencer has been acknowledged as having “designed what were probably the first clearly modernist buildings in a national park” in the 1940s, and his designs remain prominent throughout Yosemite National Park.9 In addition to his work in Yosemite, Spencer also designed Colter Bay Village and additions to Jenny Lake Lodge and Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park in the 1950s. Spencer’s residential designs included cabins for the Laurence Rockefeller ranch in Wyoming (early 1960s), the Carmel, California home of his close friend, (1965), and several housing developments in the San Francisco Bay area.10

After World War II, Ted Spencer was hired as Architect and Director of Planning for , working under President Don Tresidder, his friend and employer at the YP&C Co. Spencer taught architecture courses at the university and also designed several buildings on the Stanford Campus, including the Tresidder Memorial Student Union Building (1962).11 In the 1960s, the Spencers’ association

Linda Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Denver: National Park Service, 1987), 895, 913; Shirley Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers: The Story of a Great Park and Its Chief Concessionaires (Yosemite: Ponderosa Press, 2000), 95, 101, 107; Page & Turnbull, Determination of Eligibility for , August 13, 2009, 72; Clare Sandy and Ann DuBarton, Cultural Landscape Inventory for Chinquapin Developed Area, 2007, 26. 8 Ansel Easton Adams, Ahwahnee Interior Description, January 1931, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187; Jeannette Dyer Spencer, “Proposal for Departmental Control of Decoration, Furnishing, and Costuming,” September 24, 1934, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 7, Folder 378; See HABS CA-2830A for further information on Ahwahnee Hotel interiors. 9 Ethan Carr, Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 133-134. 10 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 245-255; Constance Glenn, “Ansel Adams: Recalling the Renowned Photographer on the Big Sur Coast,” Architectural Digest (December 2002), http://www.architecturaldigest.com/decor/archive/adams_article_122002. 11 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 177-188. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 5) with the Rockefeller family led to Ted receiving a commission to work as the architect for Colonial Williamsburg, where he worked for five years and designed the Colonial Williamsburg Conference Center. Spencer also maintained his architecture practice in San Francisco from 1927 to 1972. During this time period, he partnered with architects William C. Ambrose, Alton S. Lee, William H. Busse, and Jan Stypula, and his firm operated under the names Spencer & Ambrose; Spencer & Lee; Spencer, Lee, & Busse; and Spencer, Lee, Busse, & Stypula. Currently called Spencer Associates, the firm continues to operate out of Palo Alto, California. Ted Spencer retired from practice at age eighty in 1972 and passed away in 1978.

Phyllis Ackerman, Interior Designer (1893-1977)

Born in Oakland, California in 1893, Phyllis Ackerman was an author, educator, editor, and expert in Middle Eastern art, Gothic European textiles, Chinese bronzes, and iconography. Ackerman served as interior designer for the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages along with her husband, Arthur Upham Pope. As a student in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, Ackerman was recognized for her academic abilities. However, she changed her major to philosophy and aesthetics after taking courses from professor Arthur Upham Pope, who would later become Ackerman’s husband in 1920. After completing her Ph.D. in 1917, Ackerman authored and contributed to several academic books, including Tapestry: The Mirror of Civilization; Wallpaper: Its History, Design, and Use; and The First Goddesses. However, her most well-known contribution was as assistant editor of A Survey of Persian Art, a six-volume, 2800-page publication with more than seventy contributing authors, for which Pope served as editor. Between 1930-1953, Ackerman worked as an instructor of iconography and interpretation at the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology (later called the Asia Institute of New York), a post- graduate school established by Pope in 1928. During this time, Ackerman and Pope also bought and sold works of art to collectors and museums in order to fund the Institute, their writing projects, art exhibits, and expeditions to the Middle East. Ackerman collaborated with her husband in organizing four different International Congresses on Oriental Art, including the exhibition on Persian art for the U.S. Sesquicentennial Celebration and World’s Fair in Philadelphia in 1926. Later that year, Pope and Ackerman were commissioned to design the interiors of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. The interior design of the Ahwahnee Hotel was an atypical job for Ackerman and Pope, since they did not typically work as interior designers; however, they did work as decorating consultants for private residences of several of their wealthy clients.

Throughout her life Ackerman was known as “a formidable woman,” and was a politically involved feminist who taught courses on the significance of masculine and feminine symbolism in art. In 1930, while in Cairo, Ackerman contracted a rare type of polio and lost her ability to walk. Despite an unpromising diagnosis, she taught herself to walk again at the age of 36. Throughout their lives, Pope and Ackerman maintained a close relationship with the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and both moved AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 6)

to Shiraz in 1966. After her husband passed away in 1969, Ackerman remained in Iran until her death in 1977, living on a pension granted by the Persian government. Both Ackerman and Pope are buried in a mausoleum near Isfahan, Iran.12

Arthur Upham Pope, Interior Designer (1881-1969)

Arthur Upham Pope was a professor, editor, author, and art consultant who specialized in Persian art and advocated for the study of Middle Eastern art and culture throughout his life. Pope served as interior designer for the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages along with his wife, Phyllis Ackerman. Born in Rhode Island in 1881, Pope studied philosophy at Brown University, where he received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. There, Pope also met his first wife, Bertha Clark. After teaching for five years at Brown, Pope accepted a position in 1911 at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught aesthetics. At Berkeley, Pope met Phyllis Ackerman, a student who worked with him in cataloguing an exhibition of Persian rugs for the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. In 1917, the University discovered that the married Pope was having an affair with his student, Ackerman, and he subsequently lost his teaching job. Pope and Ackerman married in 1920 and moved to , where Pope worked as a consultant and advisor in Persian art for the Pennsylvania Museum and the Art Institute. During this time, he also published several articles on Asian and Middle Eastern carpets. Pope also bought and sold artifacts and works of art to wealthy collectors in order to fund his endeavors. In 1925, Pope made his first trip to Iran, where he met Shah Reza Pahlavi. Pope convinced the Shah of the benefits of restoring Persia’s historic architecture. Pope developed a life-long relationship with the Shah, a connection which enabled him to become the first non-Muslim to be granted permission to enter Muslim mosques to study and photograph their architecture.13 Pope organized four different International Congresses on Oriental Art, including the exhibition on Persian Art for the U.S. Sesquicentennial Celebration and World’s Fair in Philadelphia in 1926. Later that year, Pope and Ackerman were commissioned to design the interiors of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite.14

Pope’s most well-known accomplishments were the 1928 establishment of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology (later called the Asia Institute of New York), and the 1938 publication of A Survey of Persian Art. The Survey was a six-volume, 2800-page publication with more than seventy contributing authors, for

12 Cornelia Montgomery, “Ackerman, Phyllis,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ackerman-phyllis, accessed July, 2013; Jonathan Bloom, “Review: Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman,” Iranian Studies 31, No. 1 (Winter 1998), 100-102; Noel Siver, “Pope, Arthur Upham,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pope-arthur-upham (July 20, 2005), accessed July, 2013. 13 Noel Siver, “Pope, Arthur Upham,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/ articles/pope-arthur-upham (July 20, 2005), accessed July, 2013; Jonathan Bloom, “Review: Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman,” Iranian Studies 31, No. 1 (Winter 1998), 100-102. 14 Ibid. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 7)

which Pope served as editor and Ackerman as assistant editor. Pope also conducted several architectural surveys and archaeological excavations in the Middle East, and was a principal organizer of the International Exhibition of Persian Art at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1931. Pope continued to organize exhibits on Persian art throughout the 1930s and 1940s; however, in 1949 an article in Life magazine identified Pope along with several others as members of the Communist Left, and he was summoned to testify before the United States Subversive Activities Control Board led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The ensuing loss of support for the Institute for Persian Art led to its demise in the United States; however, the Institute was revived in 1964 in Iran as part of the Pahlavi University in Shiraz. Pope moved to Shiraz in 1966, and passed away in 1969. He was buried in a mausoleum near Isfahan, where Ackerman was also subsequently interred after her death in 1977.15

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Consulting Landscape Architect (1870-1957)

A prominent landscape architect of the early twentieth century, Olmsted, Jr. played an important role in developing design standards for Yosemite National Park and for the National Park Service as a whole. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was born in New York in 1870 to famed landscape architect and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted and his wife, Mary Cleveland Olmsted. The senior Olmsted had been an advocate for the creation of Yosemite National Park, and had served briefly as a commissioner to manage the Yosemite Grant in 1864. Olmsted, Jr. graduated from Harvard University in 1894, then became an apprentice to his father. As a principal of the Olmsted Brothers firm, Olmsted, Jr. contributed to thousands of landscape design projects throughout the United States, including the National Mall, Jefferson Memorial, White House Grounds, and Cornell University Grounds. Olmsted, Jr. was a founding member and president of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He also was instrumental in developing the concept of city planning in the United States, founding the American City Planning Institute in 1917. A dedicated conservationist, Olmsted Jr. devoted much of his life to contributing to the National Park system in the United States. He is credited with the well-known phrasing of the 1916 NPS Organic Act, “To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”16 As a consulting landscape designer for the YP&C Co., Olmsted, Jr. contributed significantly to the design and planning of the Ahwahnee grounds, including consulting on the wildflower preserve, reflecting pond, and approach drive.

15 Noel Siver, “Pope, Arthur Upham,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/ articles/pope-arthur-upham (July 20, 2005), accessed July, 2013; Jonathan Bloom, “Review: Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman,” Iranian Studies 31, No. 1 (Winter 1998), 100-102. 16 Susan Klaus, “Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.: Landscape Architect, Planner Educator, Conservationist,” National Association for Olmsted Parks, http://www.olmsted.org/the-olmsted-legacy/frederick-law-olmsted-jr, accessed September 2014; see also Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson, ed., Pioneers of American Landscape Design (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2000). AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 8)

Willem (Bill) Kat, Carpenter and Craftsman (1875-1972)

Bill Kat was a craftsman and carpenter who was involved in several construction and design projects at the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages, including the installation of wood floors at the cottages, cabinetry in the sixth floor apartment, the construction of the gate lodge, and the remodeling of the El Dorado Diggins Bar. Kat also carved the frieze of music notes around one of the sleeping porches in the cottages, and designed a wooden screen for the women’s restroom that was hand-carved with scenes from Yosemite.

Born in Holland in 1875, Kat immigrated to the United States in 1910, eventually settling in Oakland, California with his wife and five children.17 While working as a carpenter in Berkeley in the mid-1920s, Kat met Ted Spencer, the architect who would later design the Ahwahnee Cottages. When Ted and Jeannette Spencer were hired by the YP&C Co. in 1927, Ted invited Kat to work with him in Yosemite, and Kat subsequently spent approximately twenty years working as a carpenter in the park.18 In addition to the craftsmanship he contributed to the Ahwahnee and other Yosemite buildings, Kat also left a legacy as an early pioneer of rock climbing and mountaineering in Yosemite. Kat Pinnacle, a rock formation along the north wall of Yosemite Valley, was named in honor of Bill Kat. After retiring in 1946, Kat remained active as a climber in Yosemite, completing his twentieth ascent of Mount Starr King when he was eighty-eight years old.19 Kat passed away in Oakland in 1972 at the age of ninety-seven.

3. Original and subsequent owners, occupants, uses:

1925: The Yosemite Park & Curry Company was formed through a merger between Yosemite’s two competing concessionaires, the Curry Camping Company and Yosemite National Park Company. The merger, advocated by NPS director Stephen T. Mather and Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, called for the construction of a new luxury hotel with “bungalows” to attract higher-income visitors. Donald Tresidder was appointed as the first YP&C Co. president. Tresidder was the husband of Mary Curry Tresidder, whose family had operated the Curry Camping Company in Yosemite since 1900.20

17 "United States Census, 1920," William Kat, Oakland, Alameda, California, United States; sheet 14B, family 387, NARA microfilm publication T625, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.; FHL microfilm 1820091, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MH3H-CQY, accessed November 2014; “Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island),” Willem Kat, April 11, 1910, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org/ ark:/61903/1:1:JJFF-CJ4, accessed November 2014. 18 Spencer, The Life of Ted Spencer, Architect, 78. 19 Shirley Sargent, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite’s Classic Hotel (Yosemite: Yosemite Park & Curry Company, 1977), 34. 20 Shirley Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers: The Story of a Great Park and Its Chief Concessionaires (Yosemite: Ponderosa Press, 2000), 12-13. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 9)

1927: The Ahwahnee Hotel was constructed; YP&C Co. retained ownership and management.

1928: The Ahwahnee Cottages were constructed; YP&C Co. retained ownership and management.

1943-1945: The Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages were leased by the during World War II for use as a hospital. Commissioned as the U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital on June 25, 1943, the hospital was renamed as the U.S. Naval Special Hospital in 1945. The hospital was decommissioned on December 15, 1945 and returned to use as a hotel under ownership and management of the YP&C Co.

1946: After extensive rehabilitation, the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages reopened for visitor accommodations. The cottages opened for business in August; the main hotel building opened in December.

1970: Shasta Telecasting Corporation purchased the YP&C Co., acquiring ownership of the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages.

1971: U.S. Natural Resources purchased the YP&C Co., acquiring ownership of the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages.

1973: The Music Corporation of America (MCA) purchased the YP&C Co., acquiring ownership of the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages.

1990: Matsushita Electrical Industrial Company, a Japanese corporation, purchased MCA. This provoked concerns about foreign ownership of National Park buildings and concessions.

1991: In an agreement sponsored by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, the National Park Foundation purchased the YP&C Co. and arranged to donate all buildings owned by the YP&C Co. to the National Park Service effective upon the expiration of MCA’s contract in 1993. This agreement would transfer ownership to the American people.

1993: Marking a significant change in concessions management and ownership of hospitality properties in Yosemite, the National Park Service acquired ownership of the Ahwahnee Hotel and all facilities previously owned by the YP&C Co. A concessions management contract was awarded to Delaware North Companies (DNC).

4. Builder, contractor, suppliers: Unknown

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 10)

5. Original plans and construction:

Although the eight Ahwahnee Cottages were constructed one year after the main hotel building, plans to construct cottages, or “bungalows,” were in place from the initial conception of the Ahwahnee Hotel complex. In late 1927, Ted Spencer prepared floor plan and elevation drawings for three different types of cottages at the Ahwahnee. The duplex plans were labeled as “Type A” cottages, the fourplex plans were labeled as “Type B” cottages, and the fourplex with living room plans were labeled as “Type D” cottages.21 The cottage plans were approved by the YP&C Co. in November after Tresidder and Mather conferred with consulting landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.22 Construction commenced in the spring of 1928, and all eight cottages were completed and ready for occupancy by late summer of 1928.23

6. Alterations and additions:

The cottages have undergone several minor to moderate alterations since initial construction, and retain a medium to high level of integrity. On the exteriors, the original stained wood siding is now painted dark gray-green, and several of the six- lite, glazed double entry doors have been replaced with ten-lite single entry doors with sidelights.24 The original wood-framed windows have also been replaced with aluminum-framed windows.25 During and after the Navy’s occupation, the interior spaces were repainted, partially obscuring some of the hand-painted stencils on the walls. The cottage bathrooms were remodeled in 1964-66 and again in 2007-08, and the flagstone and concrete patios were replaced in 1990.26

21 At an unknown date after the “Type D” drawing was completed, the drawing was altered to read “Cottages 33 & 34” instead of “Type D.” However, measured drawings from February-March 1928 refer to the fourplex with living room units as “Type D.” See Part III for Cottage Drawings. 22 , Letter to Thomas Vint, Chief Landscape Engineer, Stockton, California, October 27, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 7, Subseries 2, Box 28, Folder 58; Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, November 2, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 23 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, November 18, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 24 Dates for painting and door replacement are unknown. See Part III for early views of the cottages. 25 Although the window replacement date is unknown, it is highly likely that these windows were replaced in 1979, when all windows in the main hotel building were replaced. Edward Hardy, “The Ahwahnee Hotel,” 1980, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 8, Subseries 1, Box 1, Folder 28. 26 Although construction records indicate that patios were “replaced in kind,” the current cottage patios are a mix of flagstone, exposed aggregate concrete, and brick. “Construction and Remodeling Information, 1989-1993,” Yosemite National Park Archives, Concessions Management Office Records, Series 3, Subseries A, Boxes 6-10, Folders 42-46 and 78-79; Architectural Resources Group, The Ahwahnee Historic Structures Report (San Francisco: ARG, 2011), C-37. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 11)

B. Historical Background and Context

Early History

For at least seven thousand years before European Americans first entered Yosemite Valley in the mid-nineteenth century, the area was visited and seasonally occupied by several groups of Native Americans, including the , Yokuts, Maidus, Mono Paiutes, and Monaches.27 The Central and Southern Sierra Miwoks were the primary inhabitants of the Yosemite area during late prehistoric to early historic times. By the eighteenth century, a band of Southern Sierra Miwoks had settled permanently in Yosemite Valley, naming the valley Ahwahnee, which translates as “deep, grassy valley” or “gaping mouth.”28 These inhabitants called themselves the Ahwahneechees. Around 1800, an epidemic of disease struck the valley, in which the majority of the Ahwahneechee people were killed, and the remainder scattered to live with neighboring groups of people. After a period of several years during which the valley was unoccupied, a local Ahwahneechee leader named moved back into the valley with a band of followers. Although Tenaya was a descendant of the Ahwahneechees who had lived in Yosemite Valley before the epidemic, the members of Tenaya’s band were comprised of a combination of Central and Southern Sierra Miwoks, Mono Paiutes, and possibly other groups.29

In 1851, John Savage, a trader from the Mariposa area, formed a local militia called the Mariposa Battalion in order to retaliate against Native Americans who had allegedly attacked Savage’s trading posts along the Merced and Fresno Rivers. On March 27, 1851, the Mariposa Battalion entered Yosemite Valley, gaining credit as the first European Americans to “discover” the valley. However, accounts from miners and traders in the area show that other local residents had seen Yosemite Valley in the 1840s.30 , a member of the Mariposa Battalion, published an account of the discovery in 1880, entitled Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851. Although reports of the grandeur of Yosemite Valley initially spread slowly, a tourist expedition led by magazine publisher James Mason Hutchings in 1855 circulated accounts that quickly spread to the Eastern United States, contributing to rapid growth of tourism to the area.31 By 1864, an emerging national trend toward scenic preservation, spurred by concerns about the exploitation of natural resources in California and throughout the country, prompted a group of Californians to petition senator John Conness to present a bill to Congress to preserve the Yosemite Valley area along with the of Sequoias. On June 30, 1864, Abraham signed the Yosemite Grant Act, a

27 Francis Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 11. 28 Linda Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Denver: National Park Service, 1987), 1. 29 The account of disease, dispersion, and return to the valley was part of an oral history dictated by Tenaya to Lafayette Bunnell in an interview conducted in the mid-1850s; Lafayette Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 (New York: F.H. Revell Co., 1880), Chapter 4, http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/ discovery_of_the_yosemite/04.html; Greene, Yosemite, 3. 30 Greene, Yosemite, 17-23; Alfred Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 10. 31 Greene, Yosemite, 32-35. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 12)

pioneering act that provided for the first federal protection of “wild land” in the United States.32 Yosemite Valley was managed by the State of California until 1890, when President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill to establish Yosemite National Park on October 1, 1890.33

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several privately-owned lodging facilities were operated in the park. Within Yosemite Valley, early accommodations included the Lower Hotel (later Black’s Hotel) (1857), Upper Hotel (later Hutchings’s Hotel) (1859), Leidig’s Hotel (1869), Sentinel Hotel (1876), Stoneman House (1886), Camp Curry (1899), Camp Yosemite (1901), Camp Ahwahnee (1908), and Yosemite Lodge (1915). 34 Hotels constructed outside of Yosemite Valley included La Casa Nevada (1870), which stood at the base of Nevada Falls; Mountain View House (1869), located along the Point Road; (1878); and the Hotel (1917).35 Multiple small, informal campgrounds were also scattered throughout the park.

As visitation to the national parks increased in the early twentieth century, concessioners and railroad companies began constructing “great lodges” in several western national parks, including Yellowstone, Grand , and Glacier National Parks; however, Yosemite did not yet have its own grand hotel. After the National Park Service was created in 1916, the first NPS Director, Stephen T. Mather, began efforts to arrange for the construction of a luxury hotel in Yosemite Valley. A native Californian, Mather was particularly fond of Yosemite, and planned to use the park as a model for development of other national parks.36 Mather sponsored the formation of the Desmond Park Service Company, which began construction on a large hotel in Yosemite Valley in 1917; however, the company exhausted its funds after digging the basement and creating a stone foundation for the building.37 Despite this setback, Mather continued to advocate for a luxury hotel in Yosemite Valley to attract wealthy and influential visitors to the park. Mather also promoted the idea that park concessions should be run by a monopoly, instead of competing concessionaires.38 David and Jennie Curry, the owners of the Curry Camping Company that had operated in Yosemite since 1899, protested against the idea of a concessionaire monopoly in the park, and continued to compete against the Desmond Company.39 After Desmond declared bankruptcy in 1918, the Desmond Park Service Company became known as the Yosemite National Park Company. The two competing concessionaires sustained an intense rivalry in the following years; however, Mather was persistent in his belief that a monopoly would provide the only means to generate

32 Greene, Yosemite, 51-54. 33 Ibid., 304. 34 Ibid., 115-144; Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 2-41; Alice Van Ommeren, Yosemite’s Historic Hotels and Camps (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2013), 67. 35 Greene, Yosemite, 126-138, 618. 36 Horace Albright and Marian Albright Schenck, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 54. 37 Ibid., 56; Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 37, 50-51. 38 Albright and Schenck, Creating the National Park Service, 55. 39 Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 37-45. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 13)

sufficient earnings to undertake the expense that would be necessary to construct a grand hotel in Yosemite Valley.40

The Rise of Automobile Travel and Demand for a “Modern Hotel” in Yosemite Valley

In the early 1920s, Americans purchased automobiles in steadily increasing numbers, and automobile travel throughout the United States expanded rapidly. The growth in popularity of motor travel contributed to an increase in the need for roadside accommodations and also sparked widespread interest in touring America’s national parks by automobile. In 1924, Congress voted unanimously to approve a national park roads bill, appropriating $7.5 million to construct and improve roads in national parks. $1.5 million of this sum was awarded to Yosemite National Park.41 Although existing stagecoach roads allowed access to Yosemite Valley via automobile in the warmer months, Yosemite superintendent W.B. Lewis lamented that “the pioneer motorist found [the roads] steep, narrow, and tortuous. Today they are entirely inadequate to serve as automobile roads.”42 As the NPS commenced efforts at repaving and improving roads within the park, the state of California also began constructing a new “All-Year Highway” from Merced to Yosemite Valley in 1924.43 While motor travel into Yosemite during the winter months had previously been difficult or impossible, the construction of the All-Year Highway meant that visitors could more easily travel into the park in winter, necessitating construction of lodging facilities that were sufficient for cold-weather accommodation. Even before construction on the highway began, Motor Land, the magazine of the California State Automobile Association, announced that “one of the first projects to be undertaken will probably be the erection of a large hotel, which, as occasion demands, may be extended by the construction around it of bungalow units.”44

As the development of automobile touring altered visitation trends in Yosemite National Park, the management of concessions in the park was also undergoing a significant transformation. In 1924, NPS Director Mather worked with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work to push Yosemite’s two competing concessioners, the Curry Camping Company and the Yosemite National Park Company, to merge into a single company. Negotiations for a merger began in late 1924, and by the spring of 1925, a new company was formed: the Yosemite Park and Curry Company (YP&C Co.).45 Included in the merger contract was a clause that required the new concessions company to construct a

40 Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 59-60. 41 W.B. Lewis, “Seven Hundred Men to Work on Yosemite Roads,” Stockton Record, April 19, 1924, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 2. 42 Ibid. 43 “Yosemite All-Year Road is Making Progress,” Stockton Record, June 14, 1924, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 2. 44 “New Plans for Yosemite,” Motor Land, 1924, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 1. 45 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, May 30, 1925, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 14)

luxury hotel in Yosemite Valley.46 Donald Tresidder was selected as president of the new company, and planning began immediately for the construction of the new hotel.

The board of directors of the newly-formed YP&C Co. consisted of several influential California businessmen, as well as members who had long associations with Yosemite National Park. The original board of directors included the following individuals: Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times; A.B.C. (“Alphabet”) Dohrmann, former president of the Yosemite National Park Company and Chief Executive of the Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company; John S. Drum, co-founder and former president of the ; Alfred Esberg, tobacco company executive; M.H. Sherman, Los Angeles land developer; Jennie (“Mother”) Curry, co-founder of the Curry Camping Company; Robert Williams, husband of Marjorie Curry Williams of the Curry Camping Company; Rufus L. Green, Stanford professor and cousin of Jennie Curry; Robert W. Cross; L.H. Harris; and P.M. Lansdale, president of the Bank of Burlingame.47

In addition to fulfilling the need for a year-round hostelry in Yosemite, the new hotel was also planned to be a modern structure designed to attract wealthy visitors, whose patronage Mather believed would benefit the NPS. Since several lodging facilities in Yosemite had been lost to structure fires, Mather and the YP&C Co. specified that the new hotel be not only modern, but fireproof as well. For years, Mather and park administrators had received complaints about Yosemite’s lack of “modern tourist hotels of the highest class” to accommodate the “large class that will not go [to the park] at all unless assured of the same hotel comforts to be found in a metropolitan city.”48 Having “long cherished the dream of a resort hotel” in his favorite national park, Mather finally began to see his vision taking shape in Yosemite Valley.49

The Ahwahnee Hotel and Plans for “Bungalows”

The merger that formed the YP&C Co. was finalized in March of 1925, and by April, the site of the new Yosemite Valley hotel and cottages had already been selected. Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work had the honor of driving the stake to mark the location.50 For the new hotel and cottages, the NPS and YP&C Co. directors had chosen a site “amid the scattering and oaks” at Kenneyville, a stables operation near the eastern end of Yosemite Valley.51 Situated in a meadow on the sunny side of the valley below the Royal

46 Donald Tresidder, “Memorandum on the Ahwahnee Development,” November 12, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187. 47 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, May 30, 1925, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 48 “National Parks in California: When They Are Equipped to Handle Every Class of Visitors They Will Be Profiatable Assets,” Unknown Newspaper, 1921, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 1. 49 Dorothy Ellis, Jeannette Dyer Spencer, and Phyllis Ackerman, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite National Park, California (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park & Curry Company, 1942), 3, Yosemite National Park Archives, Shirley Sargent Collection, Series 1, Box 9, Folder 137. 50 “Memorandum for Records of the Department,” Yosemite National Park, April 15, 1925, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 69. 51 Ibid. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 15)

Arches, the site offered optimal views of Half Dome, , and Glacier Point, and was relatively isolated from the developed area of Yosemite Village. The Kenneyville site had been occupied since the 1860s, when James Lamon constructed a homestead and fruit orchard in the area. After Lamon’s death in 1876, the State of California took over ownership of the land, pursuant to the 1864 Yosemite Grant, and subsequently issued a 10-year lease to Aaron Harris to operate Royal Arch Farms.52 Harris operated a dairy farm at the site, raised hay in the Ahwahnee meadow, and eventually opened a campground and campers’ store, which he operated until 1887. The site was then leased to George Kenney and William Coffman, who opened Kenneyville Stables.53 By 1925, the Kenneyville site consisted of several barns, corrals, blacksmith and wagon shops, and other auxiliary structures, all of which were razed when the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages were constructed.54 The decision to place the new, modern hotel on the site of the stables epitomized the ushering in of a new era in transportation. As the automobile became more and more widely accepted as the dominant method of touring, NPS and YP&C Co. officials saw the days of horse and stagecoach travel waning into obsolescence. In a 1926 press release regarding the razing of structures at the Kenneyville site, Yosemite Information Ranger James Lloyd remarked that “today, we find these old structures giving way for the new hotel. It is a spring cleaning that has long been needed in the valley, where the historic must give way to the modern needs, to accommodate the vast number of visitors that are annually visiting the charming vernal valley of towering cliffs and lofty .”55 Tresidder considered the location and seclusion of the site to be ideal both for the setting of the main hotel building as well as for the construction of “300 bungalows in the pine and cedar grove surrounding the hotel site.”56 The main hotel building was intended to contain eighty to one hundred rooms, and it was anticipated that “bungalow units of various sizes” would “make possible a housecount of 500.” 57

To design the Ahwahnee Hotel, Tresidder and the YP&C Co. board of directors selected Gilbert Stanley Underwood, a Los Angeles architect who shared office space with NPS Chief Landscape Engineer Daniel Hull. Hull was a close friend of Underwood’s, and had recommended the young architect to the NPS in 1923 to design the post office building in the newly relocated Yosemite Village.58 In July of 1925, YP&C Co. board member Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, recommended Underwood to design the

52 Greene, Yosemite, 37-45; AECOM and Architectural Resources Group, Inc., The Ahwahnee: Cultural Landscape Report (San Francisco: National Park Service, 2011), I-4 – I-5. 53 Ibid., 145. 54 Sargent, The Ahwahnee, 7. 55 James V. Lloyd, “Yosemite News Notes,” Stockton Record, April 3, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, Shirley Sargent Collection, Series 1, Box 9, Folder 130. 56 James V. Lloyd, Information Ranger, Press Release from Yosemite National Park, July 31, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, Linda Greene Cultural Resource Records, Building Data, Part 2, Folder 8. 57 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, January 25, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 58 Joyce Zaitlin, Gilbert Stanley Underwood: His Rustic, , and Federal Architecture (Malibu: Pangloss Press, 1989), 24-27. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 16)

new hotel in Yosemite Valley.59 At the time he was hired to design the Ahwahnee, Underwood had recently completed grand lodges in Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.60

On August 1, 1926, a ceremony was held to lay the cornerstone of the new, fireproof Ahwahnee Hotel and to celebrate the opening of the All-Year Highway. California Governor Friend Richardson officiated the ceremony.61 To the assembled audience, Tresidder promised “the finest hotel service possible on the part of the traveling public,” assuring that the new hotel would epitomize “the last word in modern equipment.”62 While the publicity surrounding the proposed hotel celebrated its “modernity,” the antiquity of the site was acknowledged in the name that was chosen for the hotel. Yosemite Superintendent Lewis notified Tresidder that he strongly advocated the name “Ahwahnee,” proclaiming, “it is euphonious and appropriate and an original Indian name that I think should be perpetuated and I know of no better way than by connecting it with the new hotel.”63 Construction of the bungalows on the site was scheduled to commence immediately following completion of the main hotel building in December 1926.64 However, delays in construction would push this date back by several months, postponing cottage construction until the following year.

Constructed by James L. McLaughlin Company of San Francisco, the Ahwahnee Hotel cost over $1.2 million to build (more than double the amount of $525,000 that was guaranteed in the initial building contract), and took seven months longer than anticipated to complete.65 Instead of opening in December 1926 as planned, the hotel opened on July 14, 1927 at a ceremony presided over by Mather.66 Despite lasting tensions between architect, builder, and the YP&C Co. over the cost and duration of the hotel’s construction, the Ahwahnee’s grand opening was a celebrated event. Superintendent Lewis praised the hotel as “a lovely thing, appropriate, and harmonious, and an institution in which Yosemite may take the fullest pride for all time to come. Without doubt it is one

59 “Minutes of Meeting of the Executive Committee-Elect of the Yosemite Park & Curry Company,” Yosemite National Park, July 18, 1925, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 60 Ibid., 32-42; Architectural Resources Group, The Ahwahnee Historic Structures Report (San Francisco: ARG, 2011), 2. 61 “New Structure to Fulfill Hopes of Ten Years; 100 Rooms Planned,” August 1, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 7. 62 James V. Lloyd, Information Ranger, Press Release from Yosemite National Park, July 31, 1926. 63 E.P. Leavitt, Letter to Don Tresidder, September 11, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 69. 64 “New Hotel in Yosemite to Cost Huge Sum,” July 30, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 7. 65 For more detailed information on the construction of the main hotel building, see HABS No. CA-2830: Ahwahnee Hotel (main building report). 66 James L. McLaughlin Co., “Articles of Agreement”, June 2, 1926, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 10, Box 1, Folder 686; YP&C Co., “Ahwahnee Cost Summary,” July 31, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 1, Folder 238; W.B. Lewis, “Memorandum for the Record,” July 18, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 70. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 17)

of the finest hotels in the country.”67 Constructed of massive, rough-cut native granite boulders and steel-framed concrete stained to create the appearance of wood, the Ahwahnee was classified by Underwood as “environmental” in style due to its use of native materials and design that evoked a sense of “blending” with the surrounding granite cliffs. Today, the hotel building is commonly categorized as “monumental rustic.” Built in the developing tradition of the Rustic style but unique in its design, massive scale, and unconventional use of materials, the Ahwahnee Hotel embodies a style of its own.68

While the imposing, seven-story exterior of the Y-shaped building is dwarfed by the surrounding granite cliffs, the Ahwahnee Hotel’s interior spaces are also uniquely defined by noticeable contrast between spacious public rooms and small, intricate design details. The interior designers, Dr. Phyllis Ackerman and her husband Arthur Upham Pope, were well-known experts in Persian art, and created an eclectic interior design scheme for the Ahwahnee Hotel. Ackerman and Pope used California Indian basketry as their design inspiration, combining Colonial, Rustic, and Art Deco design elements with a mix of furnishings and artifacts gathered from every continent of the world.69 The imposing size and scale of the grand interior spaces of the Great Lounge and dining room were created with the intent to serve a large number of guests, most of whom were anticipated to stay in the multitude of cottages planned for the hotel.

Ackerman and Pope also involved several colleagues and acquaintances from the San Francisco Bay Area to contribute to the Ahwahnee interior design process. Commissioned to design the intricate stained glass panels in the windows of the hotel’s Great Lounge was Jeannette Dyer Spencer, a former UC Berkeley classmate and sorority sister of Phyllis Ackerman.70 Ackerman had contacted Spencer after determining that Underwood’s original window designs for the Ahwahnee’s monumental Great Lounge were “seriously unsatisfactory” to an extent that “the quality of the rooms is irreparably damaged.”71 In addition to her successful design of ten stained glass panels to remedy the potential catastrophe of the Ahwahnee Hotel windows, Jeannette Dyer Spencer also introduced her husband, architect Eldridge “Ted” Spencer, to YP&C Co. president Don Tresidder. Ted Spencer had recently opened an office in Oakland, and, after meeting Tresidder a handful of times, was appointed company architect for the YP&C Co. Spencer replaced Underwood, who had been dismissed by the company after a long conflict over the cost, delays, and communication problems surrounding the construction of the Ahwahnee Hotel.72 The fortuitous timing of the Spencers’ arrival into the

67 W.B. Lewis, “Memorandum for the Record,” July 18, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 70. 68 For further information on the Ahwahnee Hotel main building, see Ahwahnee HABS Report CA-2830A (Main Hotel Report). 69 Phyllis Ackerman, “Notes on Ahwahnee Decorations,” 1927, Yosemite Research Library. 70 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 39, 74-75. 71 Phyllis Ackerman, “Preliminary Report on Furnishings and Decorating Expense,” Letter to YP&C Co. Board Member P.M. Lansdale, San Francisco, California, March 16, 1927, 1, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 1, Folder 238. 72 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 39, 69, 73, 75. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 18)

Ahwahnee design process led to an architecture career in Yosemite that would last for nearly fifty years. Ted Spencer’s first major project with the YP&C Co. was to design eight cottages to be constructed at the Ahwahnee in 1928. In the late 1970s, many decades after the Spencers first came to work in Yosemite, Jeannette Dyer Spencer wrote a biography about her husband that described within it much of their work as a husband- wife team over their fifty-eight years spent together. In it, she related that both she and Ted “fully realized and appreciated the fact that the primroses strewn so early on the path of their careers had been dropped there by the Popes.”73

Bungalow Hotel Trends in California

The Ahwahnee cottages were constructed during an era when “bungalow hotels” had gained popularity as the premier type of resort hotel in California. While the California Bungalow had been embraced as a residential housing style throughout the United States by the early twentieth century, the idea of the bungalow hotel was conceived in the 1910s by “Hotel Wizard” Daniel M. Linnard, the president of the California Hotel Company.74 Linnard envisaged a hotel landscape comprised of many individual bungalow rental units, or what he called a “Bungalowland,” rather than a single hotel building that encompassed several guest rooms, the prototype upon which hotels of the late nineteenth century were typically modeled. This idea sprang from Linnard’s encounters with vacationers who stayed at California’s luxurious grand resorts and subsequently purchased bungalows there as vacation homes in order to enjoy a more private setting than that of a hotel.75 Aiming to create a residential atmosphere for long-term hotel patrons, Linnard constructed “Golf Heaven,” a group of bungalows connected with his three Pasadena hotels: the Maryland, the Huntington, and the Green.76 Following Linnard’s example and the increasing popularity in the early twentieth century of the California Bungalow across the nation, many hoteliers throughout California created bungalow resort hotels in the 1910s and 1920s. For example, the Biltmore Hotel and the El Mirasol in Santa Barbara had bungalow developments associated with them, as did the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, and several resorts in Palm Springs.

The YP&C Company’s intent to promote the Ahwahnee as a resort hotel comparable to the most exclusive resorts in California, and to develop the property based upon the bungalow hotel prototype, is evidenced in memo that Tresidder wrote in 1927 to landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. In the memo, Tresidder remarked that:

So-called bungalow hotels have become increasingly popular both in California and Florida, until it has reached the point where many wealthy travelers will not remain for long in a place unless they can be in cottages... the cottages will have to offer the same high-class facilities that are found in

73 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 79. 74 L.M. George, “Linnard, Hotel Wizard,” The World’s Work XXXIV (May-October 1917). 75 Thirtieth Street Architects, Inc., HABS CA-2184-F: Vista Del Arroyo Hotel Complex, Bungalow 3 (San Francisco: National Park Service, 1992), 3. 76 L.M. George, “Linnard, Hotel Wizard,” The World’s Work XXXIV (May-October 1917). AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 19)

similar hotels elsewhere in California: for example, the Del Monte Hotel, El Mirasol, Huntington Hotel and others.77

Tresidder noted the importance of catering to the “California resort business”—clients who stayed in the park for weeks or months—in order to maintain sufficient income for the YP&C Co. in the winter months. Projecting that the resort clientele would be responsible for seventy-five percent of the Ahwahnee Hotel’s business, while short-term “sightseeing travelers” would comprise only twenty-five percent, Tresidder visited several California hotels with “outstanding bungalow developments” in order to ascertain the particular qualities that made them successful. His conclusion was that “privacy is the prime consideration affecting the desirability of cottages.”78 Tresidder, however, was not the only one who conceived of the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottage development as catering to the clientele of the California resort business. In a 1930 report on proposed future development for the Ahwahnee site, Ted Spencer noted that the Ahwahnee’s principal competition for the “resort or vacationist class” were the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, the Tahoe Tavern in Tahoe City, the Santa Barbara Biltmore, and resorts at Palm Springs.79 While the Ahwahnee cottages are unique in their design and setting, they also represent a much larger movement of bungalow hotel construction that occurred in California in the first decades of the twentieth century, as hoteliers catered to elite vacationers’ desires for privacy and seclusion in their accommodations.

The Ahwahnee Cottages and National Park Grand Lodges

The Ahwahnee cottages were constructed not only within the context of bungalow resort hotels in California, but also as units of lodging associated with “Grand Lodges” within the national parks. Built during an era when the National Park Service and concessionaires were responding to increased automobile travel and public interest in the outdoors, the Ahwahnee Hotel complex was one of several national park lodges that contained associated cottages or cabins. The in , designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood in 1924-25, also consisted of a main lodge around which cottages were built shortly after completion of the main building. Completed in 1927-29, these cottages were typically referred to either as “western cabins” or “deluxe cabins.”80 Although designed in a different style than the Ahwahnee cottages, the Zion Lodge cabins have a similar floor plan arrangement in that they consist of both duplex and fourplex units. They also feature open beam ceilings and stone fireplaces similar to those found in the Ahwahnee cottages.81 In early correspondence regarding the development of the Ahwahnee Hotel, park and YP&C Co. representatives regularly referred to the

77 Donald Tresidder, “Memorandum on the Ahwahnee Development,” November 12, 1927, p. 5, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187. 78 Ibid. 79 Eldridge T. Spencer, “A Report on A Program for the Development of the Buildings, Equipment, and Grounds of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company,” February 17, 1930, Yosemite Research Library. 80 Mary Shivers Culpin, National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Zion Lodge Historic District, June 7, 1982. 81 Photos of Zion Lodge Cabin interiors can be found at “The Zion Lodge, Zion National Park, Utah,” Historic Hotels & Lodges, http://www.historic-hotels-lodges.com/utah/zion-lodge/zion-lodge-tour-1.htm. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 20)

Ahwahnee cottages by a variety of terms such as “cabins,” “de luxe cottages,” or “de luxe bungalows,” suggesting that the Ahwahnee cottages were perceived as serving a similar function as other cabins or cottages associated with National Park lodges. 82 Similarly, the Bryce Canyon and Lodges, which were also designed by Underwood, had several cabins associated with them. Like at Zion Lodge and the Ahwahnee Hotel, these cabins were constructed in both duplex and fourplex floorplan arrangements. Auxiliary cabins connected to grand lodge developments were also common in several other parks, including Yellowstone, Glacier, and Olympic National Parks. Thus, the construction of cottages as part of the Ahwahnee Hotel was representative of a broader trend in the architecture of lodging facilities within the national parks during the 1920s- 1930s.

Design and Construction of the Ahwahnee Cottages

In the fall of 1927, Ted Spencer prepared drawings of “Type A” and “Type B” cottages for the Ahwahnee. The drawings for the “Type A” described a typical duplex unit, while the drawings for the “Type B” delineated the form of a fourplex unit. An additional undated drawing that is in the same format as the other drawings and likely dates to the same period, depicts the floorplan for “Type D” cottages (also labeled as “Cottages #33 & 34),” which were fourplex units centered around a shared living room space.83 In November of 1927, both Stephen Mather and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. approved the cottage drawings. In addition, the executive committee of the YP&C Co. recommended that “Mr. Spencer should be retained as architect for the Company.”84 By January 1, 1928, Spencer had signed a contract with the YP&C Co. to “study planning and architectural problems for the Company including the making of surveys, plans, drawings, suggestions, etc. in accordance with the direction of the Company” while continuing to maintain office space in San Francisco with hired draftsmen to assist him.85 In the spring of 1928, construction commenced on the cottages. At the time, the intent was to construct seventeen cottages and to supplement them with the construction of additional cottages in the future. It was anticipated that as many as 300 cottages eventually would be built. However, for reasons unknown, only eight of the seventeen cottages were constructed and additional cottage construction never ensued. Financial difficulties faced by the YP&C Co. at the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 likely deterred any new construction. Today, these eight cottages remain the only ones ever constructed on the property.

82 E.P. Leavitt, Letter to Director of the National Park Service, January 23, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 72; Ansel Hall, Letter to Carl Russell, April 24, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 72; Don Tresidder, “Memorandum on the Ahwahnee Development,” November 12, 1927; F.L. Olmsted, Letter to Don Tresidder, December 13, 1927. 83 See Appendix for Cottage Drawings. 84 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, Nov 18, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 534. 85 “Memorandum of Agreement between Eldridge T. Spencer and Yosemite Park and Curry Co.,” January 1, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 7, Folder 378. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 21)

Architectural Style Influences

The design of the Ahwahnee cottages does not exhibit one single, specific architectural style. Instead, Ted Spencer designed the cottages as an amalgamation of several different architectural styles. In their design, the cottages reflect elements of the Colonial Revival style, the California Bungalow style, the Transitional Ranch style, and the Rustic style. The monumental hotel building already constructed on the site had the potential to provide Spencer with a strong precedent for the design of the cottages; however, as noted by others at the time, he chose to make the design of the cottages a point of departure from the Ahwahnee Hotel instead. On January 23, 1928, E.P. Leavitt, the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park wrote a letter to Stephen Mather in which Leavitt acknowledged the contrasting design of the cottages:

It will be noted that the type of cottage adopted does not conform to the main Ahwhanee building, but it has been generally conceded that it would be impossible to build these cabins along the same lines as the Ahwahnee Hotel and that, as long as they had to be different, something totally different would be just as acceptable from a landscape point of view.86

Correspondence and descriptions of the cottage designs from 1928 provide some indication that the Colonial Revival style was initially proposed to provide the primary design cue for the cottages, but that Spencer did not adopt it fully. In Superintendent Leavitt’s correspondence with Mather, Leavitt noted that “Mr. Olmsted did suggest that the Early Colonial type of building be adopted, and, while this [the cottage design] is not strictly Early Colonial, it has many of the characteristics of that type…”87 Although the shape and form of the cottages do not embody the Colonial style, several details, including the use of varnished wood to emphasize projecting oriel windows, are reminiscent of the Colonial Revival style, which was popular from the late 1920s through the early 1940s.88 During this time period, Colonial style elements were commonly incorporated into different architectural designs, including the Colonial Bungalow and the Rambling Colonial, a precursor to the Ranch House.89

Although Spencer designed the Ahwahnee cottages utilizing elements of several different architectural styles, the influence of the Craftsman Bungalow style is apparent in both the design and descriptions from the time period. Constructed in 1928 during the later years of the California Bungalow movement, the cottages were frequently referred to as “bungalows.” In the United States, bungalows were initially adopted in the late nineteenth century as vacation or summer homes after England derived the single-story

86 E.P. Leavitt, Letter to Director of the National Park Service, January 23, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 74, Folder 72. 87 Ibid. 88 Robert Schweitzer and Michael Davis, America’s Favorite Homes: Mail Order Catalogues as a Guide to Popular Early Twentieth Century Housing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 190. 89 Ibid., 191-192. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 22)

style from India’s thatched-roof bangala.90 However, the California Bungalow that emerged at the turn of the century was a new residential style that represented both the American Arts and Crafts Movement and also the romantic image of California as a land of “fresh air, mild winters, and orange blossoms… health, simplicity, and informality.”91 While the American Arts & Crafts Movement developed as a celebration of the skilled craftsman in the face of industrialization and mass production, the detached, single- family California Bungalow also represented a suburbanized lifestyle made possible by advancements in transportation.92 Celebrated as “the ideal home for the lover of out-of- doors,” the California Bungalow was meant to embrace simplicity of construction and clean lines as an antidote to the perceived extravagance of the overworked, elaborate construction of the nineteenth-century Victorian home.93 Utilizing shapes and color palettes to reflect the natural environment, Craftsman houses often also exhibited Native American designs and collections of Native American artifacts displayed in the interior spaces.94

In designing the cottages, Spencer incorporated several aspects of the California Bungalow style, including sleeping porches in the fourplex unit, an architectural phenomenon that emphasized outdoor living and the health benefits of fresh air.95 Additionally, the cottages demonstrate the Arts and Crafts ethic of emphasizing simple lines, earth tones, and Native American motifs, as well as promoting a sense of inclusion in the surrounding outdoor environment.

In addition to including several characteristics of the California Bungalow style in his design of the cottages, Spencer also incorporated elements of the Rustic style, a type that grew out of the American Arts and Crafts Movement and thus incorporated similar approaches, ethics, and functions of the Craftsman style. A product of national efforts to protect natural spaces in the United States in the early twentieth century and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, Rustic Style architecture includes a variety of styles and shapes, but is generally defined by the desire to create buildings and structures that harmonize with the surrounding environment without detracting from or intruding upon natural landscapes. Thus, the Rustic ideal falls within the American Arts and Crafts Movement’s emphasis on outdoor living and the aim for architecture to blend with its surrounding environment. In “Rustic Architecture: The National Park Style,” Historical Architect Merrill Ann Wilson described Rustic Style as:

90 John Mack Faragher, “Bungalow and Ranch House: The Architectural Backwash of California,” Western Historical Quarterly 32, No. 2 (Summer 2001), 151. 91 Ibid., 157. 92 Patricia Poore, “The Bungalow: A Short History,” in Arts & Crafts Homes, December 12, 2011, http://artsandcraftshomes.com/the-bungalow-a-short-history/, Accessed June 23, 2014; Anthony King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 141-142. 93 Faragher, “Bungalow and Ranch House: The Architectural Backwash of California,” 150. 94 Monica Obniski, "The Arts and Crafts Movement in America" Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 2008), http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acam/hd_acam.htm, Accessed July 1, 2014. 95 King, The Bungalow, 136-147. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 23)

…a natural outgrowth of a new romanticism about nature, about our country's western frontiers...The conservation ethic slowly took hold in this atmosphere of romanticism.... Early pioneer and regional building techniques were revived because it was thought that a structure employing native materials blended best with the environment...96

Combining elements from a variety of architectural styles, Spencer’s cottage designs emphasized contrast in their details, patterns, and textures. In 1942, Ted Spencer’s wife, Jeannette Dyer Spencer, collaborated with Dorothy Ellis to produce a promotional booklet entitled The Ahwahnee: Yosemite. While the pamphlet focused primarily on the eclectic design scheme of the main hotel building, it also contained a brief description of the Ahwahnee cottages that revealed that they were intended to be just as eclectic in their design as the main hotel building, if executed in a more subdued manner. The intentional emphasis on contrast between architectural styles, lines, textures, and materials is evident in Spencer and Ellis’s cottage descriptions:

The cottages are horizontal, contrasting with the vertical trunks of the pines. Interesting texture pattern and play of light due to rich bloom on stained clapboards, polished surface of varnished window and door frames, and rough texture of hand-split shakes. Blue and green Indian motifs painted around the doors harmonize with the brown wood tones… Simple Colonial furniture is used and Colonial wood paneled walls… Bright colored Indian, or in some cases Colonial, patterns are painted on the plaster walls as a frieze.97

The Ahwahnee cottages also show characteristics of Transitional/Early Ranch style architecture in both their massing and form. Although Ranch style architecture is typically associated with the post-World War II period, the style began to emerge in the late 1920s, and was especially popular in California. Characteristics of the cottages that resemble the Transitional/Early Ranch style include a low horizontal form, low-pitched roofs, variation of wall materials including board-and-batten, variation in ornamental details, and patios replacing porches.98 The H-shape of the fourplex cottages with central living rooms is also representative of the Ranch style, which utilized low, rambling forms and partially-enclosed outdoor spaces to emphasize outdoor living and the informality of the California lifestyle that had been embraced decades earlier with the California Bungalow.99 Drawing upon a variety of architectural style influences in his design of the

96 William Tweed, Laura Soulliere, and Henry Law, National Park Service Rustic Architecture: 1916 – 1942 (San Francisco: National Park Service February, 1977), http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/ rusticarch/introduction.htm, Accessed July 1, 2014. 97 Ellis, Spencer, and Ackerman, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite, 30. 98 Consuela Olimpia Sanz Salla, The Protection of Historic Properties: A Comparative Study of Administrative Policies (Billerica, MA.: WIT Press, 2009), 91. See also “Introduction to Postwar Modern Housing Architectural Styles,” Scottsdale Historic Preservation Program, http://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Asset7432.aspx. 99 Faragher, “Bungalow and Ranch House: The Architectural Backwash of California,” 164. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 24)

cottages, Ted Spencer combined traditional elements with modern forms to create designs that were centered around details and contrast.

World War II and the U.S. Naval Special Hospital

Since their initial construction, the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages have been used exclusively as hotel units, with the exception of the period between June 1943 and December 1945. During this two-and-a-half-year period, the hotel was commissioned by the United States Navy for use as a hospital during World War II. The idea of using the hotel as a “rest and convalescent camp” for returning Navy veterans was first proposed in November of 1942. By April of 1943, a lease was negotiated, and the Navy took possession of the Ahwahnee Hotel on June 7, 1943.100 Initially called the U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital, the facility housed neuropsychiatric patients. However, administrators soon found that the isolation, lack of diversions, and the enclosed setting of Yosemite Valley—with its high vertical cliff faces that approximated the appearance of fortified walls—contributed to several cases of claustrophobia and to detrimental psychological and mental effects for residents. Thus, the hospital changed its operations to a general medical and surgical facility, and the facility was renamed the U.S. Naval Special Hospital in 1945.101

During the time that the Navy leased the hotel, several modifications were made to the Ahwahnee property that included the repurposing of interior spaces and the installation of several temporary buildings on the property. A recreation hall and large washroom were constructed near the hotel in 1943, and an enclosed passageway connected these new spaces to the hotel solarium. A building for medical storage and galley quarters was also erected in the former parking area, and a fence and guard house were constructed at the entrance to the hotel. The Navy subsequently installed a garage, service store, bowling alley, pool hall, physical training building, and rehabilitation center on the 37-acre Ahwahnee grounds. Several of these structures were created by combining together multiple Army temporary buildings brought in from outside of the park.102 While the spaces in the main hotel building were repurposed for use as wards, labs, officers’ quarters, and administrative offices, the cottages were transformed into hospital corps quarters and wards.103 Although little documentation exists specifically on the uses of the cottages, the transformation of the hotel and grounds was significant, with up to 850 patients housed at a time, in comparison with the 250-guest maximum occupancy of the hotel.104

On December 15, 1945, the Navy decommissioned the U.S. Naval Special Hospital, and the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages were returned to the YP&C Co. to prepare for guest

100 History of the United States Naval Special Hospital, Yosemite National Park, California (Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1946), 7. 101 Ibid., 8-10, 16. 102 Ibid., 28-39, 57. 103 Ibid., 10-12. 104 Ibid., 17. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 25)

accommodation. In total, 6,752 patients were treated at the hospital between June of 1943 and December of 1945.105

Changes after World War II

After the YP&C Co. regained management of the Ahwahnee in December of 1945, the hotel underwent extensive rehabilitation for a full year before it would again open its doors for visitor accommodations. During this time, the YP&C Co. engaged in a lawsuit against the Navy for rental and restoration costs. Judgment in the lawsuit would be delivered in March of 1948, with the YP&C Co. awarded payment in the amount of $301,667 for rent due and $170,235 for restoration.106 It was a judgment that the YP&C Co. directors deemed “satisfactory to the Company.”107 In the period before the judgment was rendered, however, the company had already commenced with rehabilitation of the property. Ted and Jeannette Dyer Spencer, working in partnership under the company name of “Spencer & Spencer,” were awarded the contract for overseeing exterior and interior rehabilitation of the property.108 Hedahl-Martin General Contractors of San Francisco managed the construction, demolition, and general labor.109 The restoration of the hotel property, which Spencer & Spencer estimated at a cost of $380,000, involved removing several temporary buildings, extensive repainting, replacing carpets and drapery, repairing stucco and glasswork, reupholstering and refinishing furniture, repairing walkways, and restoring the hotel grounds. In addition, many of the hotel’s original furnishings had been damaged or lost during the hotel’s use as a hospital. When the Navy had initially leased of the Ahwahnee, the majority of the hotel’s furnishings had been packed up for transport via train to a storage facility in Oakland. However, en route to the facility, seven of the train cars derailed and plunged into the , severely damaging much of the Ahwahnee’s furniture.110

The interiors of both the cottages and the main hotel building had been repainted by the Navy, in some cases covering the intricate stencil designs that Jeannette Dyer Spencer had hand-painted around doorways, at the top of walls, and on the sides and bottoms of ceiling beams. In the cottages, several of the stencils along the tops of the walls were partially painted over so that the original stencil designs were somewhat obscured. However, damages to the cottages were less extensive and generally simpler to repair than those affecting the main hotel building, allowing for the cottage rehabilitation to be completed four months earlier than the main hotel building. The cottages reopened for

105 History of the United States Naval Special Hospital, Yosemite National Park, California (Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1946), 7, 16. 106 Yosemite Park and Curry Company, “President’s Report to Stockholders,” November 19, 1948, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 546. 107 Ibid. 108 Hil Oehlmann, Letter to Ted Spencer, May 21, 1946, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 190. 109 Hedahl-Martin Company, Letter to Yosemite Park & Curry Company, San Francisco, California, June 6, 1946, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 10, Box 5, Folder 765. 110 Shirley Sargent, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite’s Classic Hotel (Yosemite: Yosemite Park & Curry Company, 1977), 40. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 26)

guest accommodation in early August of 1946, while the main hotel building reopened its doors on December 20, 1946.111 Although hotel operations had resumed in 1946, more changes were on the horizon for the management of the Ahwahnee and the YP&C Co. In 1943, Donald Tresidder had been named president of Stanford University; however he also retained his duties as president of the YP&C Co. throughout the war, appointing Hil Oehlmann as General Manager. In 1945, Tresidder hired Ted Spencer as the University Architect and Director of Planning for Stanford, although Spencer also continued to be closely involved with the YP&C Co. and the Ahwahnee.112 Just over a year after the Ahwahnee reopened its doors, Tresidder suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 52 while traveling in New York. Having spent most of his life in Yosemite, and nearly twenty years living in an apartment on the sixth floor of the Ahwahnee Hotel, Tresidder was an integral figure in the development of the YP&C Co. and of the Ahwahnee property. Tresidder had exemplified the close personal work environment at the Ahwahnee, and after his death, Jeannette Dyer Spencer recalled that she and Ted “had known Tresidder in Yosemite as an idealistic, far sighted business administrator, and at Stanford, surrounded by men of genius, had seen him stand out as a leader of men.”113 Tresidder’s wife, Mary Curry Tresidder, whose family had been involved with management of Yosemite concessions since 1900, took over as president of the YP&C Co. in February of 1948. She continued to reside in the Ahwahnee sixth-floor apartment and oversee YP&C Co. operations until her death in 1970.114

1950s to Present

Through the end of the twentieth century, the YP&C Co. and subsequent management companies maintained a system of continuous updates and maintenance for the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages; however, no major physical alterations or additions were made to the fabric of the cottages. In 1964-66, Ted and Jeannette Spencer oversaw the remodeling and refurnishing of the Ahwahnee Cottage interiors, including installing new heating units, refinishing floors and adding carpet, and installing combined bathtub/ shower units in the bathrooms.115

111 Hil Oehlmann, “Memorandum to the Board of Directors,” August 7, 1946, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 8, Folder 404; Hil Oehlmann, “Memorandum to the Board of Directors,” January 10, 1947, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 8, Folder 404. 112 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 177; Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 123-124. 113 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 189. 114 Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 138, 155. 115 YP&C CO. Board of Directors, “Program for Directors’ Meeting,” August 15, 1964, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 540; Hil Oehlmann, Letter to Jeannette D. Spencer, February 14, 1964, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 4, Box 1, Folder 470; Mr. Warren, Memorandum to Stuart Cross on Remodeling Ahwahnee Bungalows, August 24, 1966; Stuart Cross, Letter to Mr. Maynard Regarding Refurnishing Ahwahnee Cottages, November 25, 1966; Jeannette Dyer Spencer, Letter to Stuart Cross, November 21, 1966. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 27)

In June of 1971, the YP&C Co. proposed that “the Ahwahnee should be changed to be a core, a center of a large vacation complex on the sunny side of the Valley.”116 As part of this proposal, the company commissioned David Jay Flood and Associates to design additional cottages at the Ahwahnee. 117 The impetus for the proposed expansion was the loss of lodging facilities within the park after the was destroyed by a fire in 1969, for which the YP&C Co. received a $600,000 insurance settlement to construct replacement facilities the following year. 118 Flood’s plan, which proposed seventy-five new cottages arranged in eleven clusters located adjacent to the existing cottages, was designed to accommodate 200-250 guests. 119 However, the proposed project for additional cottages never proceeded past the design development stage. The exact reasons for the cancellation of the project are not known; however, in June of 1971, the NPS superintendent had issued a mandate that no new lodging facilities could be constructed in Yosemite. Although the YP&C Co. initially assumed that “this roadblock can be overcome because the new units would be replacement and not additional construction,” the company eventually abandoned the project.120

The 1970s also brought significant changes to the Ahwahnee Hotel complex in terms of its management. The death of Mary Curry Tresidder in 1970 marked the end of the Curry family’s management of Yosemite concessions after more than seven decades in the park. Between 1970 and 1973, the YP&C Co. was purchased and sold by both Shasta Telecasting Corporation and U.S. Natural Resources before the Music Corporation of America (MCA) purchased the company in 1973.121 This time period also marked a transition in architectural development in Yosemite, as Ted Spencer retired in 1972 after 45 years of working with the YP&C Co.

In 1977, as the hotel approached the fiftieth anniversary of its construction, the YP&C Co., under MCA management, began plans for both interior and exterior renovations to the main hotel building and the cottages. In February of 1977, the hotel complex was also accorded official recognition as a significant cultural resource to the nation in its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. In the five-year period between 1976-1981, the main hotel underwent a $1.5 million dollar restoration project that included repairing roofing materials, re-staining the stamped concrete paving on the

116 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, June 26, 1971, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 551. 117 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, June 26, 1971, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 551. 118 Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 155; David Jay Flood & Associates, “Progress Report on Planning and Architectural Services for Yosemite Park and Curry Co.,” June 30, 1971, 1, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 3, Box 1, Folder 244; Meeting minutes from July 15 of 1971 also refer to “the Internal Revenue requirement that the Glacier Point fire settlement money has to be invested in something functionally the same as the Glacier Point Hotel and by September 30.” 119 Meeting Minutes, Executive Committee of Yosemite Park & Curry Company, June 26, 1971, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 4, Subseries 6, Box 2, Folder 551. 120 Ibid. 121 Sargent, Yosemite’s Innkeepers, 156; Keith Walklet, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite’s Grand Hotel (Yosemite: DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, 2004), 51. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 28)

building’s exterior, replacing wood-framed windows with aluminum-framed windows, and installing fiberglass caps on the ends of the massive concrete beams that projected from the building’s exterior in order to prevent further deterioration due to freeze-thaw cycles.122 While the cottages likely received new aluminum windows at the same time, the cottage renovations did not include additional exterior work, and were generally focused on interior spaces.123

The restoration of the Ahwahnee also involved an extensive interior renovation and redecorating project that was undertaken in 1979-80. Marian Vantress, a San Jose-based interior designer, directed a design plan that aimed to “restore [the hotel] to its original splendor.”124 Vantress reinstated the original “Ahwahnee Indian theme,” and she coordinated the interior design effort with the intent to complement the original stencil designs painted throughout the hotel and cottages. Additionally, California Indian baskets and khilim rugs from the original hotel décor were brought out of storage and placed in frames and display cases in the guest rooms and public spaces of the hotel and cottages. Cottage interiors, which received new paint, furniture, and window treatments, were “designed for a more rustic setting,” with décor and furnishings chosen to correspond with the original Native American stencil designs.125

In 1987, the Ahwahnee Hotel’s status as a nationally significant property was bolstered by its nomination as a National Historic Landmark, only the fifth property within Yosemite National Park to achieve this status. However, the cottages were excluded from the boundaries of this nomination.

In recent decades, additional building projects have resulted in minor alterations to the Ahwahnee Cottages. In 1990, the original slate patios outside of the cottages were replaced, and in 2007-08, the cottage bathrooms were remodeled.126

The early 1990s brought a significant transformation in the ownership and management of the Ahwahnee and all other concessions buildings in the park. Up until this time, the YP&C Co. and other concessionaires had owned the buildings that housed their

122 Thomas Mulhern, Jr., Memorandum to Associate Regional Director of Resource Management and Planning, Western Region, Re: Proposed Exterior Restoration of the Ahwahnee Hotel, September 1, 1976, Yosemite National Park Museum Files, Collection 1026: Ahwahnee Hotel, 1976-85; “Welcome to the Ahwahnee,” Public Announcement regarding restoration/refurbishment, 1979, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 8, Subseries 1, Box 1, Folder 29. 123 A promotional pamphlet produced in 1980 to provide a brief history and description of recent renovations at the Ahwahnee notes that “all windows were replaced” at the Ahwahnee during the restoration effort. Although the cottages are not specifically mentioned, it is likely that the aluminum windows in the cottages were installed at the same time as the ones throughout the main hotel building. Edward Hardy, “The Ahwahnee Hotel,” 1980. 124 Marian Vantress, “Ahwahnee Interior Restoration Launched,” Yosemite Sentinel, July 1979, 4. 125 Ibid.; Edward Hardy, Letter to Leslie Arnberger, May 17, 1979, Yosemite National Park Archives, Resource Management Records, Series 2, Box 25, Folder 515. 126 YP&C Co. Concessions Management Records, 1989-1993; Architectural Resources Group, The Ahwahnee Historic Structures Report (San Francisco: ARG, 2011), C-37. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 29)

hospitality facilities in Yosemite. However, after MCA was purchased in 1990 by Matsushita Electrical Industrial Company, a Japanese corporation, many Americans reacted negatively to the idea of foreign ownership of National Park buildings.127 The U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Lujan Jr., decried Japanese ownership of buildings in Yosemite National Park and pressured MCA to sell the YP&C Co. In 1991, MCA agreed to sell the YP&C Co. to the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit organization, effective upon the expiration of MCA’s contract in 1993. After acquiring ownership of the properties, the National Park Foundation subsequently donated all buildings previously owned by the YP&C Co. to the NPS, effectively transferring ownership to the American people.128 In 1993, a concessions management contract was awarded to Delaware North Companies (DNC) to manage hospitality facilities in Yosemite National Park, including the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages. This contract is set to expire on January 31, 2015.129

In 2006, the Ahwahnee Hotel developed area was included in the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Yosemite Valley Historic District. Both the main hotel building and the cottages, as well as the designed landscape, were deemed as contributing to the district’s significance.130

The cottages continue to operate as guest rooms in the Ahwahnee Hotel complex, fulfilling the same intent for which they were originally constructed. Despite multiple proposals to construct additional cottages on the Ahwahnee grounds, the original eight cottages constructed in 1928 remain the only cottages on the property, and all cottage guest rooms are still in use today. Many of Ted and Jeannette Spencer’s design details are still prominent today, and the emphasis on visually contrasting textures, lines, shapes, and forms is evident in the projecting oriel windows, angled siding edges, notched rafter tails, and painted geometric stencil designs. Originally conceived of in the 1920s as accommodations for guests seeking privacy and seclusion, the cottages remain popular for the same reason. Although small in stature and inconspicuous in comparison with the monumental Ahwahnee Hotel main building, the cottages exhibit a unique style with subtle details that demonstrate distinctive character that is still evident today.

127 Maura Dolan, “Foundation to Buy Yosemite Concession,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1991, http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-09/news/mn-7227_1_national-park-foundation, accessed August 5, 2014; See also “Merger Decision—Matsushita/MCA,” Case No. IV/M.037, Article 6(1)(b), October 1, 1991, http://www.naderlibrary.com/merger.mca.htm, accessed August 5, 2014. 128 Ibid. 129 Walklet, The Ahwahnee, 59; National Park Service, “Yosemite National Park Continues Concession Contract for Visitor Services,” September 28, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/yose/parknews/dncextended911.htm, accessed July 1, 2014. 130 Ethan Carr et al., National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Yosemite Valley Historic District, Yosemite National Park, California, 2006, 42-46. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 30)

PART II. ARCHITECTURAL INFORMATION

A. General Statement

1. Architectural character:

Located in the wooded area just southeast of the Ahwahnee Hotel main building, the eight cottages are reached via a paved footpath that connects to the rear exit of the hotel lobby. The five duplexes, one fourplex, and two fourplexes with central living rooms are all one-story buildings with low, horizontal forms. In contrast with the monumental stature of the Ahwahnee Hotel main building, the cottages sit under the cover of pine, cedar, and dogwood trees and are not visible from the main hotel building. In an early promotional description of the cottages published by the YP&C Co., Jeannette Dyer Spencer and Dorothy Ellis emphasized that this contrast was likely quite intentional, as they characterized the cottages’ location and massing as not only “horizontal, contrasting with the vertical trunks of the pines,” but also as appropriate to their surroundings as they “grace their forest setting with complete fitness.”131 The utilization of earth tones, low forms, and irregular orientation patterns demonstrate that the cottages were constructed to harmonize with their surrounding environment, reflecting the ideals of simplicity and outdoor living promoted by the American Arts & Crafts Movement and the Rustic style that evolved from it. The cottages also exhibit several elements of the California Bungalow style, including handcrafted finishes, central fireplaces, and sleeping porches in some units. Subtle refined design details like the curved, smooth finishes of oriel window surrounds demonstrate the influence of the Colonial Revival style, while the low, rambling building forms and partially-enclosed patios are indicative of the Transitional/Early Ranch style. The sense of privacy created by the wooded and secluded setting of the cottages is still prevalent today, as the cottages are still reached only via footpath, and are not directly accessible by automobile.

Only one of the eight cottages is configured in the fourplex form, where four bedrooms (two of which were originally referred to as sleeping porches) and four bathrooms are contained within a wide, T-shaped building. On the exterior of the fourplex cottage, the most prominent character-defining features are the large corner oriel windows with wide, stained, polished wood trim, which occupy nearly the entire expanse of two walls of each sleeping porch unit. Additional character-defining features include smaller oriel windows on the west elevation; contrasting vertical and horizontal siding with emphasis on angled edges; wooden panels with hand-painted geometric stencil designs above the entry doors; decorative wood grilles underneath the gables; and hand-planed, notched rafter tails. On the interiors, character-defining features include contrasting wood-paneled and painted walls; a unique hand-carved frieze of music notes in one of the sleeping porches; and hand-painted stencil designs along the tops of the walls in one of the guest rooms. Architect Ted Spencer’s design

131 Dorothy Ellis, Jeannette Dyer Spencer, and Phyllis Ackerman, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite National Park, California (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park & Curry Company, 1942), 21, 30. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 31)

approach of combining elements of multiple architectural styles and creating visual interest through interplay of contrasting patterns, textures, and shapes is still evident today.

Jeannette Dyer Spencer’s biography of the life and work of her husband, Ted Spencer, contains descriptions of the cottages and provides some insight into the original design intentions for the buildings. The following excerpt demonstrates the intentional orientation and subtle emphasis on contrasting rustic and refined details:

The Ahwahnee cottages are almost hidden across a little creek and quite apart from the hotel. Ted sited the small buildings so that a guest sitting outside his cottage was scarcely aware of his neighbors. Seven [sic] in all the little structures are built with wide wood clapboards, have low pitched roofs of shakes and seem to hug the ground. Around the doorways here and there the clapboards are interrupted by vertical boarding often painted with an Indian design. The larger cabins have corner bay windows. Under these, instead of brackets, Ted used a series of rich overlapping moldings brightly varnished to contrast with the rough weathered finish of the clapboards. Two cottages have living rooms with hand chamfered exposed wooden trusses and stone faced fireplaces. The living rooms are simple rectangles but not static in feeling as their finishing varies in texture and tone and their glazing in scale. To make his bedrooms interesting, in the majority Ted combined Colonial wood paneling and off white plaster, actually wallboard with a heavy compote paint…The cozy little cottages look quite simple so their variety and many unusual details are always a pleasant surprise to the guests.132

Today, the cottages retain most of their original character-defining features, and their secluded setting and relationship with the surrounding environment are still the principal attractants that draw Ahwahnee guests to stay in the cottages. Their low, horizontal massing is indicative of the Transitional Ranch style, while handcrafted and rustic Craftsman-style design elements contrast against refined surfaces of the Colonial Revival style. In addition, it is apparent that the cottages were constructed specifically to relate to the surrounding natural environment, demonstrating the influence of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

2. Condition of fabric:

The fourplex cottage retains a medium to high level of integrity, with minimal to moderate alterations to the fabric. The exterior walls, doors, and windows are in fair to good condition; however the doors and windows are modified somewhat from their original appearance. The building still retains its original fenestration pattern to a large extent, but single entry doors with wood side panels and glazed sidelights have

132 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 77-78. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 32)

replaced the original double French doors, and aluminum windows have replaced the original wood-framed windows. There is also some minor modification to the appearance of the exterior siding. Originally, it was simply stained to reveal the natural finish of the wood; however, at an unknown date a dark gray-green paint was applied to the siding. The wood shingle roof is in fair condition. The interiors are in good condition, but have undergone several modifications and updates. While the fourplex cottage was originally configured with two bedrooms and two adjoining sleeping porches, the sleeping porches have since been converted to function as individual guest rooms. In the guest rooms, carpeting now covers the original wood floors, and a light wood stain now coats the wood paneled walls. Bathroom remodeling included the installation of new tile floors and new fixtures. In one of the guest rooms, the original hand-painted stencil design at the top of the walls has been completely painted over and is no longer visible.

B. Description of Exterior

1. Overall dimensions:

The fourplex cottage is arranged in a wide T-shaped floor plan and measures approximately 29’-10”wide by 51’-6” long, including the wings. Only one of the eight cottages is arranged in this manner, and it sits just north of the other seven cottages. Instead of aligning the cottages in a uniform pattern, Ted Spencer sited them so that the surrounding natural environment determined the orientation of each cottage, creating a seemingly random pattern of orientation. The environmental orientation of the cottages is also emphasized by the fact that visitors enter the cottage area only by foot.

2. Foundations:

The cottage sits on a concrete slab-on-grade foundation.

3. Walls:

The wood-framed walls are sheathed in wood siding. The siding consists of a combination of horizontal clapboard and vertical inverted board-and-batten, which is today painted a dark gray-green color. However, early photos indicate that the siding was originally stained to emphasize the natural texture of the wood. The combination of vertical board-and-batten with horizontal clapboard siding creates visual interest through the subtle interplay of contrasting lines and textures, and is a feature that is evident on all of the three different cottage types. Additionally, both the horizontal clapboard and the vertical board-and-batten siding are comprised of boards of differing widths arranged in irregular patterns. The use of random-width boards not only contributes to the emphasis on visual contrast on the cottage exteriors, but it also gives the cottages a handcrafted appearance. Contrasting against the rougher texture of the wall siding, the window surrounds and wall accents on each of the cottages are AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 33)

constructed of dark, stained and polished wood that creates a much more refined appearance.

Underneath the gable roofs on the ends of the building and also on each wing are decorative wood grilles constructed from narrow strips of painted wood. These unique grilles are each arranged in geometric patterns with vertical, horizontal, and diagonal parallel lines. Often resembling stylized feather shapes, tapering upward toward the center of the gable, the designs evoke a sense of a Native American Thunderbird motif. Two of the four grilles are configured in three vertical sections, while the other two are comprised of five vertical sections. The wood grilles are painted the same color as the exterior wood siding, and their design reflects both the Native American décor theme of the Ahwahnee Hotel as well as the handcrafted Arts & Crafts aesthetic evident throughout the cottages. While all of the cottages have decorative wood grilles, the designs differ slightly for each type of cottage.

4. Structural system, framing:

The cottage is wood-framed with 2x4 studs spaced at sixteen inches.

5. Porches, stoops, balconies, porticoes, bulkheads:

The fourplex cottage has two small entry patios located on the north and south ends of the building; each patio is shared by two guest rooms. The patios are constructed of exposed aggregate concrete, and although the shape and form of the patios are original, the materials have been replaced and are not original.

6. Chimneys: N/A

7. Openings:

a. Doorways and doors:

The fourplex cottage has four exterior entry doorways in two different types of configurations. Two of the entry doors are single, wood-framed, inward-opening doors with outward-opening screen doors set in a wood surround. These doors are glazed with a single lite and have two fixed lites beside them, each of which is the same size as the entry door. This creates an appearance of a triple-door entry despite the fact that only one of the glazed sections is an entry door. The screen door has a wide wood frame and a large single screen with two horizontal wooden braces across the center. Along both sides of the doorway, the corners of the clapboard siding protrude beyond the door frame, emphasizing the angled corners. This method of highlighting the zigzag-shaped angles of the clapboards and emphasizing contrast between vertical and horizontal lines is a character-defining feature that is prevalent in different ways on the three different types of cottages.

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 34)

The other two entry doors are single, wood-framed, inward-opening doors that are each glazed with ten lites. These doorways also have outward-opening, wood- framed screen doors with a single screen, single wooden brace across the center, and a metal-framed panel of expanded wire mesh overlapping the bottom half of the door. The doors are flanked by a pair of recessed wooden side panels painted a medium brown. Historical photos and drawings indicate that the main entry doors are not original to the building, but were modified at an unknown date. Originally, each entry contained a pair of glazed double doors with six divided lites each. The recessed wooden side panels were installed when the doors were converted from their original configurations.

Above one of the exterior doorways is a decorative wooden panel cut in a geometric shape with a geometric design painted on it shades of green. Similar to the wooden panels above each of the doorways in the duplex cottages, the shape and geometric design on the panel conveys a Native American design motif that corresponds with the stencil designs painted on the interior walls and in the main hotel building. It is unknown whether this decorative panel is original to the cottage, or if it was mounted at a later date. b. Windows and shutters:

The fourplex cottage has a total of seventeen windows. The northeast- and southeast-facing corners of the building each contain a large corner oriel window formation comprised of six windows each. The west-facing elevation has two large, single oriel windows and one small sash window, while the east elevation contains two additional small sash windows. The projecting oriel windows are a unique character-defining feature of the cottages, and the fourplex cottage contains the largest and most distinct of these oriel windows in the guest rooms that were originally designed to be sleeping porches. Each set of corner oriel windows is comprised of six adjacent windows (three on each elevation) that come together at the corner of the building to form a single projecting oriel formation. Two large sliding aluminum windows are each flanked by two narrow aluminum sash windows with one over one lites. Each of the oriel windows is surrounded by a wide, decorative molding that exhibits a more refined appearance, as it is constructed of dark-stained, varnished wood reminiscent of both the Colonial Revival and Victorian styles. The window surround does not extend across the top of the window; instead, the casing on each side of the window extends up to the roofline. At the bottom of the window surrounds, beneath the sill, triangular knee brace supports frame a rounded base that wraps the corner of the building. The supports also flank and emphasize a smaller rounded decorative molding at the corner. The highly finished wood window surrounds provide a visual counterpoint to the rougher texture of the wood siding that sheaths the adjacent wall surfaces. Historical photos and drawings indicate that originally, these large corner oriel window formations were comprised of ten narrow windows with six lites each. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 35)

Along the west-facing elevation of the fourplex cottage are two additional oriel windows that are constructed in a similar style as the corner windows. These two windows are both large, aluminum sliding windows with wide, stained, varnished wood surrounds and curved moldings underneath the sills. Additionally, two windows on the east wall and one window on the west wall are all small, single- hung aluminum sash windows with one over one lites and stained wood sills. The small window on the west wall is surrounded by the projecting angled corners of the clapboard siding.

8. Roof:

a. Shape, covering:

The T-shaped building has a front gabled roof, and each wing also has a gable roof that extends from below the main roof on the gable end. The roof is low in pitch and is clad in wood shingles.

b. Cornice, eaves:

The eaves project approximately eighteen inches from the walls over exposed rafters. The ends of the rafter tails are painted the same shade of gray-green as the exterior siding and are hand-planed at an angle with two decorative grooves carved into the ends. A decorative wood cornice connects the underside of the eave with the wall. The cornice is stained a dark redwood color, and is varnished with smooth rounded edges that contrast against the rough texture of the adjacent siding. The color and texture of the cornice correspond with the Colonial style of the oriel window surrounds. Underneath each of the four gabled ends of the building, an exposed center beam with hand-chamfered edges projects from below the gable.

c. Dormers, cupolas, towers: N/A

C. Description of Interior

1. Floor plans:

The fourplex cottage is arranged in a wide, T-shaped floor plan with two rectangular guest rooms (approximately 16’-8” x 16’-2”), two rectangular sleeping porches that are now converted into guest rooms (approximately 13’-8” x 12’-8”), and four bathrooms. In each of the two original guest rooms, the entry door opens into the main bedroom, with an interior door connecting to the bathroom along the opposite wall from the entry. In the sleeping porches, the entry door opens into the bedroom area, and a small corridor connects this area to the bathroom. Connecting doors between the two sleeping porches make it possible for guests to utilize these two rooms as adjoining units. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 36)

2. Stairways: N/A

3. Flooring:

Floors in the bedroom area of each guest room are covered in brown loop pile carpeting with a geometric pattern of chevrons and lines in light and dark shades of brown. In the bathrooms, floors are covered in 1-inch white hexagonal tile. Original plans show that the bedrooms and sleeping porches initially had pine floors and the bathrooms had pine floors finished with linoleum.

4. Wall and ceiling finish:

The interior walls of the cottage, like the exterior walls, exhibit contrasting colors, textures, materials, and patterns. Walls painted light beige contrast with accent walls constructed of wide wood vertical paneling that is stained light gray. Jeannette Dyer Spencer’s description of the cottages lends some insight into Ted Spencer’s intentions in utilizing contrasting materials for the interior walls. Her assertions that he worked “to make his bedrooms interesting” by varying finishes, textures, and materials demonstrates that Ted Spencer carefully planned the cottages to exhibit conspicuous visual contrast between refined and more rustic, handcrafted components.133 In each of the two bedrooms, three of the walls are constructed of gypsum wallboard with a light beige painted finish, while a single wood-paneled wall on the interior side of the bedroom serves as an accent wall. In contrast, in each of the two guest rooms that were originally designed as sleeping porches, all four walls are sheathed in vertical wood paneling that is stained light gray, contributing to a more rustic feeling in these rooms.

The two sleeping porches are unique among all twenty-four of the cottage guest rooms due to their large windows and wood-paneled walls. In addition, while most of the guest rooms in the cottages contain hand-painted stenciling along the tops of the walls in the guest rooms, one of the sleeping porches instead contains a hand-carved frieze of music notes. The frieze was created by Bill Kat, a talented carpenter who Spencer brought to the Ahwahnee from Berkeley, and who continued to work in Yosemite for decades, also constructing the wood floors in the cottages and the gate lodge at the Ahwahnee entrance.134 The other sleeping porch does not contain a frieze.

Only one of the two bedrooms in the fourplex contains hand-painted stenciling along the tops of the walls. This unique stencil was designed by Jeannette Dyer Spencer, who also designed the stencils in the other cottages and throughout the main Ahwahnee hotel building. In contrast with the geometric, Native American themed

133 Spencer, The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect, 77. 134 Ibid., 78; Sargent, The Ahwahnee, 23-24; Architectural Resources Group, The Ahwahnee: Historic Structures Report, I-22. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 37)

stencils in the main hotel, the stencil in the fourplex cottage is a colorful bird and flower design that Spencer described as “Colonial.”135

In the bathrooms, the upper half of the walls are white painted gypsum wallboard, and the lower portions of the walls are finished with a white ceramic tile wainscot of rectangular tiles set in a brickwork pattern. A decorative white ceramic molding tops the wainscot, except at the location of the shower wall, where the ceramic tiles extend nearly to the ceiling. Behind the sink area in each of the sleeping porch bathrooms is an accent wall of dark red painted wallboard. The cottage bathrooms were remodeled in 2007-08, and do not retain any original wall finishes.

5. Openings:

a. Doorways and doors:

The main entry door in each of the two sleeping porches is a glazed, wood-frame door that has ten lites and is painted white on the interior. Side panels on either side of the door contain a wood inlay design of three diamonds in light-colored wood set in darker wood with a light-colored wood border. Although the wood inlay design corresponds with the geometric shapes of the California Indian theme, these panels are not original, and were installed at an unknown date after the double-door entries were converted to single doors. In each of the other two guest bedrooms, the three-section entryway consists of a single glazed door with one lite and two additional door-sized sidelights that create the appearance of a triple-door entry. This doorway is wood-framed and is painted white on the interior.

In addition to the single entry door in each guest room, the fourplex cottage has six interior doorways. Each sleeping porch has a wood door connecting to the bathroom and an additional wood door that connects to the adjoining sleeping porch room. The additional guest rooms each have only one door that leads into the bathroom. All interior doors (except for two of the bathroom doors) are constructed of solid wood of the same color and with the same grooved pattern as the vertical wood paneling on the walls of the rooms. A distinctive decorative feature on the doors is the use of wide, wrought iron strap hinges with zigzag edges and a hand-cut appearance that is characteristic of the Arts & Crafts Style.136 The doors leading to the bathrooms also have a grooved pattern that matches that of the wood paneled surfaces within the rooms; however, these doors are hollow and are painted white.

135 Dorothy Ellis, Jeannette Dyer Spencer, and Phyllis Ackerman, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite National Park, California (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park & Curry Company, 1942), 30. 136 See Section 7: Hardware for descriptions of the wrought iron door hinges. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 38)

b. Windows:

The interior appearance of the windows in the cottage is understated relative to the decorative treatment accorded to them on the building’s exterior. Each of the sleeping porches in the fourplex cottage contains seven total windows—six windows that comprise an extended oriel window, and one small sash window. The two additional guest rooms each have one single oriel window and one small sash window.

In each of the two sleeping porches, two large aluminum sliding windows on adjacent walls are each flanked by pairs of tall, narrow aluminum sash windows. These two sets of three windows meet at the corner of the bedroom, and are set in the wood paneled walls, with stained wood sills. Each additional guest bedroom contains a single oriel window comprised of one large, aluminum-framed sliding window. This window is set back from the wall so that it forms a deep windowsill. The sill is wood and is painted white.

Each of the bathrooms in the fourplex cottage has a small, aluminum-framed, single-hung sash window. This window is surrounded by a molding that is recessed from the wall surface and painted white.

6. Decorative features and trim:

The principal decorative features on the interior of the fourplex cottage include the hand-carved wooden frieze of music notes and the hand-painted stencils along the tops of the walls, as well as the wide, wrought iron strap hinges on the interior doors.

7. Hardware:

Each of the interior wood-paneled doors in the cottage is attached to the door frame with two wide, decorative wrought iron strap hinges. Contributing to the rustic and handcrafted appearance of the cottages, these hinges are cut in a zigzag pattern that indistinctly resembles an American Southwestern motif and references the stylized Native American theme present throughout the cottages and the main hotel building. The shape of the door hinges also corresponds with the contrasting angles that are evident in both the hand-painted stencil designs and the projecting clapboard siding on the exterior of the cottages.

Several original door knobs are still in use in the cottages, including round metal knobs and curved lever handles. The original lever handles are decorative, curving downward into a swirl design. These handles were originally painted black to match the wrought iron hinges; however the paint has since worn off to reveal the silver metal finish.

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 39)

8. Mechanical equipment:

a. Heating, air conditioning, ventilation:

Each of the cottage guest rooms contains a gas wall heater that is located within the bedroom.

The rooms also have wall-mounted air conditioning units located in the bedrooms that are controlled via digital thermostats. These air conditioning units were installed in 2009. Ceiling fans located in each of the four rooms also provide additional air circulation.

b. Lighting:

The guest rooms in the fourplex cottage do not retain any of the original light fixtures. Currently, the light fixtures in the cottage include rustic-style wall and floor lamps dating from the 1990s or newer, as well as several basic, circular, contemporary glass ceiling fixtures.

c. Plumbing:

Domestic water is fed from a four-inch loop that surrounds the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottage area. Hot water is generated via individual electric water heaters in each of the cottage guest rooms. The water heaters have historically been replaced on an as-needed basis. The plumbing fixtures and trim throughout the cottages have also been replaced on a regular basis. The current plumbing fixtures were installed in 2007-08 when all of the cottage bathrooms were remodeled. These fixtures consist of contemporary chrome faucets and white ceramic sink basins, bathtubs, and toilets.

9. Original Furnishings

The interiors of the Ahwahnee Cottages were designed by Phyllis Ackerman and Arthur Upham Pope, who had completed the interior design of the main hotel building the previous year. Jeannette Dyer Spencer also collaborated with Pope and Ackerman on the design and furnishings of the cottages. The décor scheme that Ackerman and Pope developed for the cottages maintained the same California Indian basket inspiration and similar motifs as the main hotel building; however, the cottages were decorated and furnished in a more understated manner than the grand public spaces of the hotel, reflecting their residential character. Like the interiors of the main hotel building, the cottages were furnished with Colonial Revival style furnishings, hand-crafted items in the Arts & Crafts style, rugs and tapestries from Persia and the Middle East, and handmade linens from the Appalachian region.137 While California

137 Descriptions of furnishings in the Ahwahnee Hotel main building can be found in the 2011 Ahwahnee Historic Furnishings Report, or in HABS No. CA-2830 (Main Hotel Building Report). AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 40)

Indian basketry served as the inspiration for the geometric stencil designs painted on the walls, the cottage interiors did not contain baskets on display like the main hotel building did. In the 1942 promotional booklet written about the hotel and cottages, Dorothy Ellis and Jeannette Dyer Spencer described the cottage furnishings as “simple Colonial furniture,” and noted that brightly colored textiles were chosen to correspond with the colors of the hand-painted stencil designs.138 Ellis and Spencer further described the cottage furnishings as follows:

Colonial influence asserts itself in the old hook pattern against the end wall, the rush-bottomed rocker, and the andirons in the simple fireplace. A modern crayon landscape, an East Indian embroidered hanging over the long console table, and gay curtains complete the rooms… As in the hotel bedrooms, bright colored Indian, or in some cases Colonial, patterns are painted on the plaster walls as a frieze. The colors are repeated in the basket weave rugs scattered on the dark wood floors, the bright colored spreads from the Rosemount Looms in Virginia, the chair coverings, and the gay plaids and stripes of the curtains.139

Furnishings throughout the hotel and cottages have been updated, replaced, and refinished throughout the years. In addition, when the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages were leased to the Navy for use as a Special Hospital from 1943-1945, many of the hotel’s furnishings were placed in storage, where some items sustained damages in the process of packing and transport. A number of furnishings were also lost in a train accident that occurred as items were being hauled to storage in 1943. Despite the loss of some furnishings during the Navy era, the leasing of the hotel provided the impetus for the YP&C Co. to undertake a comprehensive inventory of all of the hotel’s furnishings. This 1943 inventory has proved to be an invaluable source for researching and documenting the Ahwahnee’s historic furnishings, and has informed the current inventory system. Numerous examples of the Ahwahnee’s original furnishings are still in use in the hotel today, including chairs, tables, desks, basketry, and textiles. However, while the public spaces in the main hotel building showcase several examples of historic furnishings, the cottages retain fewer original furnishings than the main building.

Historic furnishings at the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages are managed as “Reserved Property,” pursuant to the Concession Contract maintained between the NPS and the current concessioner, DNC. While fixtures and furnishings that are attached to the hotel, such as light fixtures, are owned by the NPS, removable furnishings are the property of the concessioner. However, these furnishings are required to stay within the hotel property, and are prohibited from being “removed from public use or from

138 Ellis, Spencer, and Ackerman, The Ahwahnee: Yosemite, 23, 30. 139 Ibid., 30. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 41)

the park without the written approval of the Superintendent.”140 The Concession Contract defines Reserved Property as follows:

Certain personal property owned by the concessioner is intrinsic to the historic and cultural values of the area and related concession operations. Some items are, in themselves, valuable, artistic, historic or cultural artifices. For the purposes of this contract, this property shall be known as Reserved Property. The concessioner shall retain ownership of such property and, to the greatest extent possible, maintain such property in service… and available to the public.141

The concessioner maintains a Reserved Property List of historic furnishings and conducts quarterly inventories, which are reported to the NPS Concessions Management Office. The list of Reserved Property was initially compiled in 1993, and was updated in 1997 and in 2008. Items on this list are categorized as furniture, baskets, textiles, or art. The current collection of Reserved Property includes more than one hundred items, several of which are still in use throughout the hotel.

Within the cottages, very few original furnishings remain. For each of the two central living room units, the 1943 inventory listed the following furnishings: floral upholstered “overstuffed” chairs, Provincial style tables and arm chairs, ladderback desk chairs, armed rocking chairs with rush seats, spindle-backed desk chairs, upholstered sofas, small desks, wrought iron candlesticks and wood boxes, Batik table covers, and Persian vases.142 Today, only the small oval Provincial style tables, console tables, and wrought iron wood boxes remain in the living rooms. In the cottage bedrooms, none of the furnishings from the 1943 inventory remain in the rooms. The historic furnishings in the bedrooms included wood bed frames, 3-drawer chests with mirrors, oval bed tables, writing desks, “tavern type” arm chairs, ladderback chairs with rush seats, upholstered chairs, dressing tables, Persian patterned chintzes, woven bedspreads, and wrought iron and brass lamps.143 Although the cottage bedrooms do not retain their historic furnishings, several of the original wooden ladderback chairs from the hotel Dining Room are now in use in the cottage guest rooms. While the chairs have been reupholstered, they still retain the original stencil patterns painted on the backs.

Originally, hand-woven Middle Eastern rugs were used as floor coverings in both the main hotel building and the cottages; thus, they underwent significant wear over time. While many of the original rugs and wall hangings have been lost throughout the decades, a wide selection of pieces is still in the possession of the hotel. However, these rugs are no longer used as floor coverings, but are hung on walls and framed in

140 Concession Contract CC-YOSE004-93, Hotel Services, Section 18(a)(7), 28; “The Ahwahnee: Historic Furnishings Report,” 12. 141 Concession Contract CC-YOSE004-93, Hotel Services, Section 18(a)(1), 27. 142 Architectural Resources Group, The Ahwahnee: Historic Furnishings Report, Appendix 1-A, 37-39. 143 Ibid. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 42)

glass display cases both in the main hotel building and in the cottage living rooms. The repurposing of the Ahwahnee’s original rugs was part of the 1979 interior restoration effort led by Marian Vantress, which called for the “fine old killim[sic] rugs [to be] brought out of closets, then cleaned, repaired and installed permanently on the walls.”144 Small fragments of rugs that were torn or deteriorated were salvaged and placed into glass display frames throughout the hotel. Today, several of these rugs and tapestries are still exhibited in the Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages, and represent the only collection created by Pope and Ackerman that is on display in the United States.145

D. Site

1. Historic landscape design:

The Ahwahnee Hotel and Cottages were constructed during an era when park officials and concessioners debated over the economic benefits of developing Yosemite Valley for tourist recreation versus the value of maintaining unimpaired natural spaces. Despite the ideal held by the National Park Service that architecture in the national parks should blend into the natural landscape, the YP&C Co. exerted extensive efforts to develop the Ahwahnee grounds in a manner that would provide recreation opportunities for elite vacationers. Landscape design projects included the installation of a twenty-five-acre wildflower garden with more than one million native Yosemite flowers (1928); bridle paths for horseback riding (1928); tennis courts (1929); a nine-hole golf course (1930); a reflecting pond designed as a replica of a high alpine lake (1934); an outdoor dancing pavilion (1940); and an outdoor swimming pool (1964).146 However, while landscaping efforts at the Ahwahnee property were extensive, the cottage area remained somewhat secluded from the rest of the grounds. Even before the construction of the cottages and the wildflower garden, correspondence between Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Don Tresidder noted the importance of keeping the cottage area separate from that of the main hotel, as “intrusions on the privacy of the cottages would be certain to occur if the general public were invited into a wild-flower preserve in their immediate vicinity.”147 The landscaping of the cottage area and orientation of the cottages were planned with the

144 Marian Vantress, “Ahwahnee Interior Restoration Launched,” Yosemite Sentinel (July 1979), 4. 145 George O’Bannon, “The Grand Gesture: The Ahwahnee, Phyllis Ackerman, and Arthur Upham Pope,” Oriental Rug Review 8, No. 3 (February-March 1988), 14. 146 Robert Hunter, Jr., “Golf Data,” c. 1930, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187; Hil Oehlmann, Letter to L.C. Merriam, May 6, 1940, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 10, Subseries 1, Box 73, Folder 67; Doris Schmiedell, “A Transplanted Glacial Lake,” House and Garden, April 11, 1934; John Wosky, Letter to Thomas Vint, March 5, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, Old Central Files Collection, Series 7, Subseries 2, Box 28, Folder 58; “Million Wild Flowers Will Grace Yosemite,” Vallejo Times Herald, September 12, 1928, Yosemite National Park Archives, Historic Newspaper Collection, Box 8. 147 Frederick Law Olmsted, Letter to Don Tresidder, Palos Verdes, California, December 13, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 43)

idea to ensure the “privacy which the users of such cottages will generally demand.”148

The historic landscape design of the cottages, along with the Ahwahnee Hotel grounds as a whole, was created within the context of the Picturesque Movement in landscape architecture in the United States, and within national parks in particular. Although conceived in the eighteenth century, the ideals of the Picturesque Movement, as applied to the national parks in the 1920s, involved “the interpretation of geographic features into landscape scenes…imply[ing] a broad cultural basis and aesthetic tradition for understanding places as pictures, and seeing land as landscape.”149 The landscaping around the cottages exemplifies a space that was deliberately planned to look as if it were completely natural, rather than designed, in an effort to convey an impression that the space was not subject to human intervention. Picturesque elements of the landscape design include the seemingly haphazard orientation of the cottages, the way that the cottages appear nestled within a leafy bower of deciduous understory trees and shrubs, and the gently winding paths that lead to each of the cottage buildings. The landscaping was also intended to encourage “preservation through picturesque interpretation” by fostering an ethic within park visitors to preserve “natural” landscapes by interpreting them via designed spaces. The ideals and objectives of the Picturesque Movement were evident in landscape design throughout Yosemite Valley, where designed spaces were created to convey the idea that the natural world could be not only sublime—as exemplified in Yosemite’s towering cliffs—but also benevolent and gentle.150

A series of interconnecting pathways (originally flagstone; now asphalt) among the cottages connects to a small, wooden footbridge to reach the main hotel. A unique design by Ted Spencer and Bill Kat, the span of the bridge is interrupted in the middle by two reclining benches that face each other from opposite sides of the bridge. Each wooden bench is designed with a decorative edge comprised of a series of stepped angles. This zigzag design reflects the emphasis on angles and geometric shapes that is evident in the Native American design motifs in the cottages.

2. Outbuildings:

Just north of the eight cottages is a small rectangular transformer house that is currently used as a maintenance and linen storage shed. This structure was constructed at the same time as the cottages, and although it was built to accommodate a utilitarian function, Spencer designed it in the same architectural style as the cottages. The transformer house sits on a concrete slab-on-grade foundation. The exterior walls are sheathed in both horizontal clapboard and vertical board-and-

148 Frederick Law Olmsted, Letter to Don Tresidder, Palos Verdes, California, December 13, 1927, Yosemite National Park Archives, YPCC Collection, Series 7, Subseries 4.2, Box 1, Folder 187. 149 Ethan Carr, Wilderness By Design: Landscape Architecture & the National Park Service (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 11. 150 Ibid., 25-26. AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 44) batten siding that is painted the same dark gray-green color as the cottages. Like the design of the cottages, the combination of two different types of siding creates visual interest though the interplay of contrasting patterns. Also contributing to this effect are the angled edges of the horizontal clapboard siding at the corners of the building and at door and window openings. The structure has four small, narrow windows, all of which have been boarded over from the interior.

A unique feature of the transformer house is the set of double doors at the entry. These doors are constructed from solid wood in a board-and-batten configuration where diagonal boards on each door meet at the center at perpendicular angles, forming an inverted “V” shape. The entrance to the transformer house is covered by a small tin shed roof supported by square wooden posts.

Like the cottages, the transformer house has a wood-shingled, front gable roof with exposed rafter tails. The ends of the rafter tails are each carved with three decorative parallel grooves. It is evident that the transformer house was deliberately designed as part of the cottage area, as it exhibits a similar design aesthetic. However, the transformer house is also partially screened from view of the cottages, as it sits behind a massive boulder that is located to the northwest of the fourplex cottage.

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 45)

PART III. SOURCES OF INFORMATION

A. Selected Architectural Drawings: * Note: The architectural drawings included in this report are located in the Yosemite National Park archives. To the author’s best knowledge, the drawings are owned by the NPS and are in the public domain; however, some drawings may have unclear copyright status. Please contact the Yosemite National Park archives before making any reproductions.

Floor plan and elevation of “Type A” (Duplex) cottage, Ted Spencer, 1927 Yosemite National Park Archives AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 46)

Floor plan and elevation of “Type B” (Fourplex) cottage, Ted Spencer, 1927 Yosemite National Park Archives

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 47)

Floor plan and elevation of “Cottages #33 & 34” or “Type D” (Fourplex with Living Room), Ted Spencer, c. 1927 Yosemite National Park Archives AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 48)

Plot Plan for Ahwahnee Hotel Grounds, showing seventeen cottages, February 17, 1930 Eldridge Ted Spencer and Olmsted Brothers From “A Report on A Program for the Development of the Buildings, Equipment, and Grounds of the Yosemite Park & Curry Company for a Five Year Period, 1930-1935” Yosemite National Park Archives, Linda Greene Cultural Resource Records AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 49)

B. Early Views:

Promotional Photo of Cottages with snow, c. 1933 From advertising pamphlet, The Ahwahnee

Promotional Image of Cottage Exterior, Fourplex with Living Room, c. 1938

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 50)

Cottage Exterior, Fourplex Cottage with Living Room, unknown date Note original stained siding and wood-framed windows Yosemite Research Library

Cottage Entrance, c. 1940 Photograph from The Ahwahnee, Yosemite (1942) AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 51)

Cottage Guest Room, 1936 From Yosemite Park & Curry Co. Advertisement, Yosemite National Park Archives

Cottage Guest Room, c. 1940 Collection, AAAH1 AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 52)

Carved Frieze of Music Notes, Fourplex Cottage Guest Room Sleeping Porch From The Ahwahnee, Yosemite (1942)

Footbridge to Ahwahnee Cottages from the main hotel building during snowfall, c. 1940 Yosemite National Park Research Library, MW615

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 53)

Cottage Living Room, c. 1940 Photograph from The Ahwahnee, Yosemite (1942) AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 54)

C. Selected Written Sources

AECOM and Architectural Resources Group, Inc. “The Ahwahnee: Cultural Landscape Report.” San Francisco: National Park Service, 2011.

Albright, Horace and Marian Albright Schenck. Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.

Architectural Resources Group, Inc. “The Ahwahnee: Historic Structures Report.” San Francisco: National Park Service, 2011.

Barnes, Christine. Great Lodges of the National Parks. Bend: W.W. West Publishing, 2002.

Carr, Ethan. Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Carr, Ethan. Wilderness By Design: Landscape Architecture & the National Park Service. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Carr, Ethan, Paul Cloyd, Randy Fong, Cathy Gilbert, Robbyn Jackson, Laura Kirn, Erica Owens, and Robert Page. National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the Yosemite Valley Historic District. 2006.

Ellis, Dorothy, Jeannette Dyer Spencer, Phyllis Ackerman, and Mary Curry Tresidder. The Ahwahnee, Yosemite. Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1942. Revised 1964, 1970.

Faragher, John Mack. “Bungalow and Ranch House: The Architectural Backwash of California,” Western Historical Quarterly 32, No. 2 (Summer 2001): 149-173.

Farquhar, Francis. History of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: University of California Press: 1965.

Glenn, Constance. “Ansel Adams: Recalling the Renowned Photographer on the Big Sur Coast.” Architectural Digest (December 2002). http://www.architecturaldigest.com/decor/ archive/adams_article_122002.

Greene, Linda. Historic Resource Study: Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources. Denver: National Park Service, 1987.

Hailey, Gene. California Art Research: John Galen Howard, Robert Boardman Howard, Charles Houghton Howard, Adaline Kent, Jane Berlandina. Abstract from WPA Project 2874. San Francisco: California Art Research Project, 1936. https://archive.org/details/ californiaartres17hail.

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 55)

Harrison, Laura Soulliere. National Historic Landmark Nomination for The Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California. 1987.

History of the United States Naval Special Hospital, Yosemite National Park, California. Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1946.

King, Anthony. The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

Knudsen, Dagmar. “Indian Basketry Art in the Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Valley.” The Architect and Engineer (November 1928).

McClelland, Linda Flint. Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Montgomery, Cornelia. “Ackerman, Phyllis.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ackerman-phyllis.

Page & Turnbull, “The Ahwahnee: Historic Structure Report.” San Francisco: National Park Service, 1997.

Runte, Alfred. Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.

Sargent, Shirley. The Ahwahnee: Yosemite’s Classic Hotel. Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1984.

Sargent, Shirley. Yosemite’s Innkeepers: The Story of a Great Park and Its Chief Concessionaires. Yosemite: Ponderosa Press, 2000.

Schweitzer, Robert and Michael Davis. America’s Favorite Homes: Mail Order Catalogues as a Guide to Popular Early Twentieth Century Housing. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

Siver, Noel. “Pope, Arthur Upham.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pope-arthur-upham, 2005.

Spencer, Jeannette Dyer. The Life of Eldridge Ted Spencer, Architect. Unpublished, 1983.

Thirtieth Street Architects, Inc. HABS CA-2184-F: Vista Del Arroyo Hotel Complex, Bungalow 3. San Francisco: National Park Service, 1992.

Tweed, William, Laura E. Soulliere and Henry G. Law. National Park Service Rustic Architecture: 1916-1942. San Francisco: National Park Service, 1977.

AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C (page 56)

Van Ommeren, Alice. Yosemite’s Historic Hotels and Camps. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2013.

Walklet, Keith S. The Ahwahnee: Yosemite’s Grand Hotel. Yosemite: DNC Parks and Resorts and the Yosemite Association, 2004.

Wilson, Merrill Ann and Leslie Starr . National Register of Historic Places Nomination for The Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California. 1977.

Wyman, Beth. National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the Saratoga Village Library, Saratoga, California, 2007.

Zaitlin, Joyce. Gilbert Stanley Underwood: His Rustic, Art Deco, and Federal Architecture. Malibu: Pangloss Press, 1989.

Yosemite National Park Archives:

Concessions Management Office Records Series 1, 3

Design and Engineering Flat Files

Historic Newspaper Collection Box 1, 2, 3, 7, 8

Linda Greene Cultural Resource Records

Old Central Files Series 3, 6, 7, 10

Resource Management Records Series 2, 5

Shirley Sargent Collection Series 1, 2

Yosemite Park and Curry Company Collection Series 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9

Yosemite National Park Museum Files (Photographs): Collection 1026

Yosemite Research Library: Ahwahnee Hotel Folder Historic Photograph Collections