Lake McDonald Lodge interior log lobby
— — a room built of whole trees.
Not only on a wall.
“The lobby is held up by full-length cedar and Douglas-fir logs, bark still on, cut from the slopes around the lake. Lanterns drop from the cross-beams. A stone fireplace rises the full three stories at one end. Underfoot, the original concrete floor carries the pictographs that Blackfeet and Salish artists painted in 1914, the year the lodge opened. — from the studio
Lake McDonald Lodge interior log lobby, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lake McDonald Lodge stands on the southwest shore of Lake McDonald, the largest lake in Glacier National Park at roughly ten miles long. It was built in 1913 and 1914 for John Lewis to a Swiss-chalet design by Kirtland Cutter of Spokane. The lobby and adjoining dining room sit at lake level, about 3,153 feet above sea level, at the end of the boat dock that originally received guests delivered up the lake by steamboat. The Park Service acquired the lodge in 1930, and it was named a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
Three stories of unmilled cedar and Douglas-fir logs hold the lobby up, gathered from the surrounding Flathead valley. A great fireplace of local stream cobbles climbs the full height at one end of the room. Hand-wrought lanterns hang from the rafters. The concrete floor carries the original pictographs painted by Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai and Cree artists in 1914. Cutter's design follows the same park rustic logic seen later at Many Glacier Hotel and Glacier Park Lodge, but here the room is smaller, darker, and closer to the water.
The lobby reads as a dim, warm room even at midday. Light comes from small mullioned windows on the lake side and from the lanterns above. In summer, the door to the back porch opens onto the dock and a long view down Lake McDonald toward the head of the lake and the Continental Divide. In the late afternoon the room takes on the colour of the cedar logs, which is roughly the colour of the red argillite cobbles in the shallows just outside.