Monday, October 3, 2011

Monday Visual Inspiration: Yellowstone, the Building Edition


Again, I appreciate everyone indulging me with the constant photo-posting while I get through this deadline. I took strangely few photos of buildings in Yellowstone, mostly because man-made built stuff takes up less than 2% of the area of the park. However, a few buildings were really cool, and I did get pictures of that which struck my fancy.


Gas station near the Roosevelt Lodge. What a wonderfully throwback early 1950s building.


Restaurant at the Canyon Lodge. Another wonderfully throwback 1950s A-frame building. Those light fixtures look custom...and original.

The lounge of the Canyon Lodge restaurant. Same light fixture with different bulbs in them. I'm amazed at how much of the original architecture and finishes are left in the buildings at Yellowstone. As someone who spends a lot of time facelifting buildings and interior design that's only 15 years old, I effing love this stuff.



The front of the Old Faithful Lodge at Old Faithful. Built in 1904, this building was made from actual lodgepole pines. As in, they cut down a big-ass tree, sat it up on the foundations, and braced it to some other lodgepole pines, and used them as the columns for the lodge. Check it, yo:


This is the main atrium inside Old Faithful. Architectural. History. Squee.


Cool acoustical baffle-cloud-thingys in the theater in the new Old Faithful Visitor Center.


The lakefront side of the Lake Yellowstone Lodge. This was the original lodge in the park (late 1800s), and it was facelifted about the time the Old Faithful Lodge was built (renovation overseen by Old Faithful's architect). It's a weirdly-nice building, though it reminds me of the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick's version of The Shining.



Each lodge also has a small general storage inside or near it. Some of them even have gas pumps, which is smart because doing the figure-8 loop of Yellowstone is a couple hundred miles. This was the old general store and gas station at Lake Yellowstone. It's boarded up now, but I love the forlorn nature of this building, photographed on the eve of our last day in Yellowstone.


3 comments:

LMH said...

I like the pictures! I saw this article and NY Times today and thought of you.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/shifting-the-suburban-paradigm/?hp

Miss Kitty said...

WOW! Awesome photos & architecture! Just amazing.

Anonymous said...

i really like the 50's era gas station . . . is a flat roof practical in an area with significant snow fall?