Previous Meetings
2001 Annual Meeting
Bend, OR, October 12-14
Theme: "Building on the East Side: Traditional Architecture to Post War Development East of the Cascades."
The 2001 Annual Meeting of the Marion Dean Ross/Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians was held October 12-14 in Central Oregon, setting of distinctive planned resorts and pace-setting museums. The conference was attended by sixty-one members and guests who enjoyed crisp, sun-filled high desert atmosphere while traveling to scattered venues. The Chapter welcomed registrants from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California.
The conference opened with a Friday night dinner at Sunriver Resort in the Great Hall of Camp Abbot Officers Club, an impressive rustic vestige of a U. S. Army Engineers Training Center where chapter founding member Marion Ross was posted during the Second World War. Donald Stevens, A.I.A., spoke briefly on the Officers Club and his part in the buildings adaptation as a resort conference center. Robert Boyd and Ward Tonsfeldt presented orientation talks on Basque, Buckaroo, and Chinese cultural landscapes in the high desert and the rise of Bend, a lumber company town that became the regions commercial hub. Mr. Boyd is Curator of Western Heritage at The High Desert Museum. Dr. Tonsfeldt is Emeritus Professor of Humanities, Central Oregon Community College.
A new feature in the conference format was the candlelight colloquium which gave members an informal opportunity to discuss future directions and organizational issues to be raised during the annual business meeting the following day. Among the productive effects of the session was the call for more interactive exchange between speakers and listeners, and new formats to serve a diverse audience.
Six papers were presented by member scholars during the Saturday morning session. Presenters included two graduate students: David Knoblach, University of Washington, whose topic was Geologic Origins of Early Architectural Designs in the Inland Northwest, and Grant Crosby, University of Oregon, who spoke on Hand-building the Aneroid Lake Resort, Charles Seebers Horizontal Log Cabins in Oregons Wallowa Mountains. Veteran presenters were: Donna Hartmans, Architect, Boise, Idaho, Pacific and Idaho Northern Railroad Depot: Catalyst for Economic Development in New Meadows, Idaho; Nels Reese, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Idaho, Sharpening the Image of the Italianate Style in the Idaho Outback; Richard Sundt, Professor of Art History, University of Oregon, The Emergence of the Decorated Church Among the New Zealand Maori; and Leonard Eaton, Emeritus Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan, Hardy Cross and the Moment Distribution Method: An Oregon Application in the Work of Pietro Belluschi. The cross-disciplinary flavor of the papers was well received.
The annual luncheon business meeting, presided by Vice President Shirley Courtois, included election of officers and confirmation of appointments to positions and committees. Kenneth Guzowski rendered his final report as Treasurer to conclude six consecutive years of exemplary service. Miriam Sutermeister and Grant Hildebrand announced a joint gift to the fund established by Wendell Lovett and Professor Hildebrand in 1996 to support the participation of younger scholars in Chapter affairs. The Chapter approved continued planning by the Publications Committee to bring out a volume of members' papers commemorating the Chapter's 50th anniversary in 2004. According to Committee Chair Joby Patterson, the object is to bring research to print that would otherwise remain unpublished.
Trophies were presented to Leonard Eaton and announced for Earl Drais Layman in recognition of their long careers in the Society of Architectural Historians. Professor Eaton has been active in the national organization since 1952; Mr. Layman since 1954. Miriam Sutermeister was presented with a framed restatement of the resolution of the previous years annual meeting; she was acclaimed for her success in establishing high professional standards for the Chapter during five years as President. The Chapter conferred a new accolade in the Marion Dean Ross Award for outstanding work toward the goals of the Chapter. Elisabeth Walton Potter was named as its first recipient.
A bus and walking tour brought members to downtown Bend, where the citys industrial and related residential resources, public and commercial buildings were examined. The tour was led by Michael Houser and Ward Tonsfeldt. Gil Eade gave insight to the areas eventful geologic history of volcanic peaks and cinder cones, lava fields, and sheer canyon walls. The tour concluded at Central Oregon Community College campus, an example of natural hillside site planning in which all aspects of development, from site selection to furniture design, have been guided by the single firm of Wilmsen, Endicott, Unthank and Associates (later WEGroup), from 1962 to the present.
Saturdays full-day schedule culminated in a gallery walk-about and banquet buffet at The High Desert Museum, an innovative facility for interpreting natural and cultural history of the Inter-mountain West. The group was joined by Bend architect Robert Hyde, who with consultant Pietro Belluschi in 1979 designed the core of the museum that later was greatly expanded by Thomas Hacker and Associates.
The speaker of honor for the banquet was Donald J. Stastny, F.A.I.A., whose Museum at Warm Springs completed for the Confederated Tribes of Oregon's Warm Springs Reservation in 1993, was the first in a succession of cultural centers he designed for tribal groups in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, Alaska, and the American Southwest. Mr. Stastnys riveting and handsomely-illustrated talk focused on the challenge of giving architectural expression to both current and ancestral values of tribal organizations. It was titled Giving Form to Traditional Values: Reflections on The Museum at Warm Springs, Huhugam Heritage Center, Arizona, and a Native American Student and Community Center for Portland State University.
Sundays caravan tour to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation began with Peter Skene Ogden Scenic Wayside on U. S. 97, where Dr. Tonsfeldt commented on three remarkable deck-arch bridges spanning the spectacular Crooked River Canyon. Stops were made also at The Museum at Warm Springs and at privately-owned property on the Deschutes River where the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation are undertaking rehabilitation of splendidly-sited contemporary-style houses of 1947 designed by Pietro Belluschi for the brothers Robert and Charles Wilson. The conference concluded with no-host lunch at Kah-Nee-Ta Resort Lodge on the Reservation, where members inspected the flying trusses of the fireplace lounge and enjoyed a panorama of the Warm Springs Valley. The Lodge, opened in 1972, was designed by Wolff, Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca, and Ritter.
Posted September 03, 2004