Lodge · Port Angeles (vicinity), Washington · Built 1914–1915; later cabins and additions
Lake Crescent Lodge
Listed on the National Register as Singer's Lake Crescent Tavern Historic District
A shingled bungalow-style resort lodge of 1914–15 on Barnes Point at Lake Crescent, built by Avery and Julia Singer and reached at first only by boat; Franklin Roosevelt stayed here in 1937 while weighing Olympic National Park.
History
Lake Crescent, a glacier-carved lake at the foot of the Olympic Mountains, drew sport fishermen after an 1895 visit by Admiral Leslie Beardslee made its trout famous, and small resorts sprang up around its shores; none of those built before 1914 survives. Avery and Julia Singer, who had lived on the north shore since 1907, traded their place for land on Barnes Point at the mouth of Barnes Creek and incorporated in December 1914. Lumber came across the lake by barge, and they built a two-story lodge with a long veranda facing the water, a row of sixteen small cottages behind it, tent cabins and a garden. Singer's Tavern opened in 1915 a few hundred yards from Rose Littleton's Rosemary Inn. Until the south shore road was finished in 1922, guests came by ferry or launch from East Beach, and the tavern became a meeting place for clubs and outings.
The Singers sold in the late 1920s to the Seattle Trust Company and moved to California; by the mid-1930s the renamed Lake Crescent Tavern had about 100 acres and thirty to forty cabins. On September 30, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt spent the night in a cottage here and met Washington's senators and Park and Forest Service officials over the proposed Olympic National Park, created the next year. Walter and Bessie Bovee revived the resort in the 1940s, and the Park Service bought it in 1951. Mission 66 planners proposed replacing it, but the lodge survived, was rehabilitated in 1984, and was listed on the National Register in 2007.
“The resort gained an immediate widespread reputation for its good food, comfortable lodging, the cordiality of its hosts, and the scenic splendor of its surroundings.”
Architecture
The lodge is a two-and-a-half-story wood-frame building, irregular in plan and about 57 by 36 feet, sheathed in cedar shingles under gable roofs with overhanging eaves and exposed rafters. The nomination places the whole group in the Bungalow mode: multi-light casements with wide board trim, light gray walls with yellow or white trim. An enclosed porch on the lake side has windows whose panes grow smaller in three tiers, and an open porch wraps the east side. Inside, the main room centers on a large stone fireplace, with guest rooms upstairs and Roycroft-inspired furnishings. Three historic fireplace cabins west of the lodge, stonework along the main walk and the submerged piers of the original dock also count as historic.
What to look for
- Shingled lodge with exposed rafter ends
- Tiered-pane windows of the lakeside porch
- Stone fireplace in the main room
- Fireplace cabins west of the lodge
- Remnants of Julia Singer's garden plantings
Setting
The lodge sits on Barnes Point, a level spit on the south shore of Lake Crescent about twenty miles west of Port Angeles, just off U.S. Highway 101 inside Olympic National Park. Pyramid Mountain rises across the lake and Mount Storm King behind, and old-growth fir and cedar ring the clearing. The trail to Marymere Falls starts nearby.
Timeline
- 1914Singers incorporate and begin building on Barnes Point
- 1915Singer's Tavern opens
- 1922South shore road reaches the resort
- 1937Franklin D. Roosevelt stays on September 30
- 1951National Park Service buys the lodge
- 1984Major rehabilitation
- 2007Listed on the National Register as a historic district
Where sources differ
- The nomination calls the founder both Avery J. Singer and 'Al' Singer.
- The nomination says guests arrived by water for the first seven years; Wikipedia says six.
- Wikipedia's room count for the original lodge (seven rooms) is not confirmed in the nomination.
