The Ahwahnee Hotel, built in 1927 is a national historical landmark and a pretty darn impressive looking hotel.
The past month, I’ve had the luck to run into a couple of exceptional log inspired buildings & cabins. One was a log masterpiece & a work in progress, another a concrete-faux-log marvel completed some 80-odd years ago and now designated a national historical landmark. There is far too much to write in one simple post so I’ll share my log learnings with you over a couple of different pieces.
little log cabin in the woods! 100% authentic in construction!
Happening upon “the-work-in progress-log cabin” was nothing more than a stroke of luck. Just down the lake from my own summer cottage, the owner (an ex-techie) had sold his computer business and was in the process of building his own cabin – not from a kit, oh no – from scratch! Peter started his log cabin venture with a 10 week intensive building course at the Pat Wolfe Log Building School. Learning his tricks from long time log cabin builder, Brian Morrison, Peter constructed the shell of the cabin, off premises, at the school before moving it to our lake up in Northern Ontario. The longest logs in this cabin measure 54 feet end to end with an estimated weight of 3 tons. Truly a log cabin in every aspect, the design is considered a 3 log base with a Texas V-Groove, the logs are notched so that they can stack one on top of the other.
The Ahwahnee Hotel: Faux concrete logs & granite
My second log cabin is not a log cabin at all but a landmark hotel built with look-a-like logs to mimic the traditional log cabins that surrounded the ediface. Built in 1927, the Ahwahnee Inn of Yosemite Park is a National Historic Landmark within the US. I happened to visit this hotel over the weekend and was struck by the variety of designs from Native American Indian to Arts & Crafts. According to the National Park Service: “The building was mostly constructed in concrete & what looks like wood siding and structural timbers between the piers is actually concrete, poured into formwork that shapes it to look like horizontal redwood siding and large milled timbers. The stain on the concrete, similar in color to pine bark and redwood lumber, reinforces that illusion that the fabric is wood.” A truly remarkable piece of work (this is me talking now)… If my friends had not told me the building was made out of concrete and not log, I never would have believed it!
[...] Junky: Log Cabins & Concrete Share it with your Junky [...]