AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE Yosemite National Park
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AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS CA-2830-C Yosemite National Park HABS CA-2830-C 1 Ahwahnee Drive Yosemite Valley Yosemite Village Mariposa County California PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA FIELD RECORDS HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW Washington, DC 20240-0001 HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY AHWAHNEE HOTEL, FOURPLEX COTTAGE HABS No. CA-2830-C Location: 1 Ahwahnee Drive, Yosemite National Park, Mariposa County, California The cottages are located southeast of the Ahwahnee Hotel main building, on the south side of Ahwahnee Drive. USGS Half Dome 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 Yosemite Valley 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 pine 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 Sierra Nevada foothills. Spencer attended the University of California at Berkeley and served as a pilot in the Signal Corps of the United States Army from 1917-1919 during World War I. When he enrolled in the Army, Spencer adopted the name Ted in admiration of former president Theodore Roosevelt, 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 Donald Tresidder 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, San Francisco, 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