Timberline Lodge; Doorways to the Past

A. The front of a building much of the United States.

So I take great pleasure dedicating this new address not only of national prosperity but also as a place what generations of Americans. The days from high up on Mt. Hood the president of the United States has dedicated Timberline Lodge a million dollar recreation in the mouth not far from Bonneville Dam already focused morning the president and body motor. Seventy six miles along the Columbia River and the giant sign up the slopes of Mount Hood to the south but 3000 people from surrounding territory and from nearby towns have come up the slopes

and they're steaming automobiles to see and hear the president speak. As I recall it other than his aid as you know President Roosevelt was crippled. Other than his aides who assisted him in moving around I don't think they were over maybe three or four secret service men and you didn't see any walkie talkies no attempt to hold back the crowds. You could stand around him and he was a very gracious very cordial man who shook everybody's hand. He took a great deal of personal pride. I must say that I think he took as much personal pride and Timberline Lodge as and the achievement of the WPA. Interesting began in Oregon in the late 1920s with a group of young people members of the Cascade ski club. They built a small primitive shelter near Camp blossom as a base for their climbing and skiing ventures on Mount Hood.

Jack Meyer was a member of the group in the early 30s the Junior Chamber of Commerce the Portland Junior Chamber had a winter sports committee. Which I happen to have served on those many years ago and through the efforts of that committee we formed what was known as what became known as the Oregon winter sports association I think its first name was the Portland Winter Sports Association. One of the devil is in those days was a man by the name of Griffith who was a mountain climber and a skier of sorts and subsequently Mr. Griffith was appointed the administrator for the WPA. So with hat in hand and trepidation and fear of the establishment a bunch of us youngsters at that time went to the WPA and said Would you consider building us a more modern and larger shelter facility somewheres up around camp

at the head of the timberline trail because he had suffered through the difficulties of using the existing cabin. And he said well we'll see what we can do. A long story out of that request. A lot is known today as Timberline Lodge and I can remember the first sketch just showed an octagonal fireplace. Pretty much as you know it's a day with a couple of restrooms and facilities off of that. And each time some government official picked up a pencil it got a little bigger and led a little further this way and why don't we extend this way and this would make a good dining room and so forth and so on. And some of the plans for Timberline Lodge began in 1935 when the United States was deep in its worst depression Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program had set up the National Recovery Act the Civilian Conservation Corps

Works Progress Administration the WPA provided workman writers and artists with employment on federally funded projects Timberline Lodge was unique as a WPA project although it is a legacy of the 30s still it belongs more to the mountain and the forest than to a particular time in history. There's Lynn Forest one of the architects of all of the actual working drawings. And the supervision was handled by the architect the architect for the Forest Service which was GM Tim Turner. Howard Dean right. And me I think it's safe to say that we are working with that even the environmentalists. One thing that we want to do use the natural materials that would fit into the landscape there to become a part of it.

Good material. We used to be welders don't work some as much as eight feet long and we did various other things to try to bring this building into scale. We had to live along the scale the buildings we had to be concerned with the ice and the snow in the wind. Remember this location is radiation to the Oregon Trail and there's again had a bearing on the kinds of things that we want to do and accomplish in the building. And it had some bearing I'm sure on this whole piece. It's only fair to say that these were obtained from a wife but got mad and we adapted them as we saw I think they were directing and appropriate the building had been called by people different in every different style of architecture.

Some call it Cascadian. Others have other names. I don't believe the building has a style of architecture. I think once something has can be named by a style that's become decayed in this building I think it's just an honest reflection of the type of thing that we want to accomplish to suit that environment and suffice for that environment. And I would crawl out of it if they can. Perhaps Northwest architecture. I would sure hate to call it style. Construction of the lodge began in February 1936 it was the U.S. Forest Service structural engineer whose first job was to survey the building site which was still buried deep beneath the snow. Next was the job of shoveling out the road to bring in workman and equipment. The construction headquarters or the camp for the workman was located at the steel Creek

area down below the present highway. And the workmen were truck back and forth from the camp to the large site. Every morning and every night and trucks like this. This photograph was probably taken. The first part of August of 1936. It's showing the East Wing of the large is pretty well framed in the West Wing of the lozenges. It is also pretty well along and they had houses just being erected. The. Six columns that form the hexagon interior of the lobby are in place and it appears that with a gym Bowl they are about ready to erect the roof trusses of

girders at the heads of the columns there are probably in their order of 0 8 to 9 feet deep and they are tremendously heavy. The columns and selves came from the front one at that time was a Colombian national forest and and is now a different national forest and the state of Washington. They were brought to the site as round timbers. They were probably all in the area five to six feet in diameter pine logs and then they were added step into shape on the site as a down broad axe type I should say because it was it was quite a sight to watch. Those men were skilled in the use of broad axe shaped always columns from

their rough round configuration to a very very fine hexagon shape. They rocked for the outside walls of a large came from the area right around the building site. Actually these rocks through a veneer on top of a concrete wall behind them. Most of these men were highly skilled rock Masons and many of them came from the town going to extraction and Scandinavian countries. Earlier days in the early 1900s Sam Lancaster who was then the highway engineer for the state of Oregon visited in Italy you know ordered to arrange for some of the old stone masons to immigrate to this particular country. My father as he tells me he was one of these men and

along with other members of his family emigrated to this country in order to work on the Columbia River Highway at Timberline Lodge and when it was under construction the same group of of Italians and Scandinavian stone masons came together again too. More or less work in the trade that they were brought over to this country for the main objective of getting the building completely closed in before winter all was accomplished thanks to a long fall. And then work continued on the interior of the building during the winter under the same conditions of men living at the camp at the foot of the hill and being trucked up to the lodge each morning and back to the camp at night. One of the pleasures we had in my lifetime certainly had been working with the fine people in the Forest Service in marketing

and all of the craft people that went along to make a mess with my Jewish men who contributed greatly to this project and looking good long after we had gotten it pretty well started just what a magnet it was when I first was asked. Yeah I know they need a woman's advice on interior details. Which I think they did and I talked to Mr. Jeffers who was most sympathetic person and I said why don't we furnish this I said we can use Oregon flaxen Oregon for to seke industries time and we went to work. Remember we were dealing with people who were destitute and desperate. There were great the average age of our project worker was 56.

So you see we were not dealing with you. And that's why we were so happy to have experienced carpenters because they were of the old school and I did indeed know their trade and the experience blacks missed. Today there wouldn't be any blacks. We had a few very fine fine artists painters sculptors and so forth. Who sort of shows up beautifully today. There were many but we had a great many willing crafts. Since Mr. Black's artist but he had trained blacks to do the ornamental ironwork I went to the stage employment office listed work needing work and

there I picked up the black list the best I had or experienced. And let the rest or what we would call blackness. WAGONMAKER spring makers and heavy hammers what have you. But they had to learn how to do work for buildings architectural work in other words they had learned very very easily very quickly and took especially good interest in doing the work. It was something new to some of the andirons for the big far places were made. Railroad rails weighing 90 to the yard. They were called 90 pounds. They were made by a big blacksmith by the name of blush I don't know

what his first name was and he had a helper a good husky helper that helped him make them. Sometime in September 1937 I have no look out the window in a big black sedan rolled up in front of the shop in a light and several men whom I recognized at once as high officials of the PTA. They came in and told me that President Roosevelt was coming out there and they wanted the lighting fixtures. I couldn't build anything till I got some draw and then they told me the breadmaker had been engaged to design the lighting fixture. When they got the design they will know what I need and I told them to fix every available space in this building where men can work. When they got me the man there I had fifty men and NY able International Youth ministration boys on the job and we got the fixtures out in time for the president right in the

midst of all this hectic work on the lighting fixtures. Mike's Moran's the construction superintendent said he wanted the dining room. By the time the president arrived. Mine told him it couldn't be done and we didn't know what to do with him. He said What have you done with the ornaments I said their ornaments are scattered all over the all over the shop and nobody knows what they want. He says go ahead and put those ornaments in there and get those gates up here. So I called the architect and he sent out the right one of his architect and between Dean Wright and myself we get a lot of ornaments that had been made. We decided what we wanted to use there and we made enough to complete that those motives and finish the gates and got them home and before the president arrived. All of that was my design course I had a workman who made them. Among the blacksmiths in the shop and frisk was the most experienced in our

metal crafting He was 68 years old at the time he boards the front door knocker from a design brought to him by Dean Wright one of the architects of the risk. Studied it. We didn't know how to do this and how we were going to do that. But finally I just said picked up the girl and looked out into the shop. Two or three days later he came with a head knocker all late. So what he did I don't know but I do know that he made one of the finest jobs of of the journal or not I have ever seen because it was handmade It was not cast but the letters I considered all of the work that I put it in lodge as sculpture not are not are not for the little Or in its scope. Our cabinet makers worked under a new for the carpenters.

They were cabinet makers by hand and intelligent people but not by ours. I think you have to realize that when you look at the building and look at it from that point of view that's what I feel it should be made into a museum because it's a great exhibition of good craftsmanship that it doesn't go for it. It doesn't get into the category everything made for use. Very interesting about our furniture. We didn't have time to get people in we had to keep them busy. Piece of furniture. Stand over I would help stand for minute. It would be after it was built. And then make more like it.

To get away from the. Machine made portraiture. Through the wood. One thing we've tried to achieve the top two extra heavy on the church work heavier than to suggest and the scope of the building and. The timber. If you look at that timber there you see how that is carried out the same general. Strength. And naturalness of the world itself. The timbers have checked which is a natural thing for me. It doesn't indicate any weakness particularly the characteristic of solid wood.

The various covered with bag. That's. The nature of the construction. Nor post on the main stairway at the lodge. These posts were made from telephone poles furnished by the phone company. And carved on the project. By the various. Workers. Models for this case some sort of seabird. Were made in plaster cast by Florence Thomas and then brought to the project. And the workers. Converted that figure into the carbon you see here. And then they were brought here and into the stairway these were all made important. The Rams had table in the dining room reminds Renu for one of his favorite

stories about one of the wood guards. He came on the job one day in the shop and he had been celebrating Rather gate. And. He says I have an idea. And he started working on a piece we didn't know what it was going to be. He had no idea what it was going to be and when we got through with it. It was a Rams Head. So we decided to. Make a table in the dining room. We called it the Ramsay table. Several items originated in that way. Just because somebody had an idea and wanted to do something. We got word. That the president was coming to dedicate a large. Friday. They told us. That he needed a chair. With arms. We didn't have a chair with arms we hadn't made any. So from Friday. Till Monday evening we

succeeded in. Designing and making this chair and getting it up to the lobby. So this is the president which now has a plaque indicating. You're. In the water. Flora region. Thanks for the color schemes of our rooms. They were done but charming old German who had spent his life his early life and copying masterpieces in museums for sale commercially. We found him in a most elaborate situation he was on a piano.

After he was so grateful to be on the project and Byron really dominate us we didn't have very much money which was great. And you had which made it extremely interesting. Curtain was a triangle that was left over from something else. Little round circle was something else but it made a nice pattern. We had fun. The fish in the brook. We did the covered wagon. We did the blue Gentian. We did the shooting star. We did the Indian zigzag patterns done in each room and the bread

was made to go with the fabric. It was interesting. It was made of like it or not. See uniforms for an hour. The background was drab. Then we took the colored corduroys from the sewing rooms where they were closed for destitute families. We had some very nice cars putting the two together we were able to get to light for rugs. We took the older women and led the laundresses. Janet is mostly overweight and not too strong. And put up hooking rugs. Now the rug hooking project was to me one of the most exciting because the workers got so

excited about it. And what was interesting was that these women got so excited about the designs because every day or two there would be a different design. And they never knew what it was but it was a matter of extreme interest. Some of Oregon's finest artists of the 1930s were also selected to make their contributions paintings represent the work of sprites. One of Oregon's finest painters. There are paintings by Charles. There was the work of Daryl Austin in the dining room. There are two large meetings by Howard Sewell and wall decoration by Doug Lynch which speaks of book 1 The enjoyed by visitors on the mountain. Virginia Darcy's work in glass mosaic decorates the Blue Ox bar.

Tom Lehmann's tile mosaic brightens the sky. What driving's suggest the wildlife of the natural world outside the law. Eric Lemmy depicts the smaller creatures of the woods and there's the market rate of any gorup using a wood mosaic technique. The greatest team ever. Was. Like that. With. Whatever. If they build.