A Mining Heritage Revisited in Deer Valley
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
In 1997, after 15 years of spending vacations in their Park City condominium, Jeanne Wohlers and her husband Alan were eager to build a house in Deer Valley reflecting their appreciation of the area’s rich mining history. A preference for an informal lifestyle dictated a “not-too-large” home (read: under 4,000 square feet), with minimum frills. Like many homeowners in mountain resorts, they wanted a space that suggested instant relaxation when they returned from an active day skiing or after a few hours hiking and biking summer trails.
For years, Jeanne collected clippings from magazines and devoured books on rustic architecture and antiques including one of the first books to extol Adirondack design (“Great Camps of the Adirondacks,” by Harvey Kaise). She saw a kinship between the architectural styles of grand ‘cabins’ in the Adirondacks and mining structures in Utah. But it was a spread in Architectural Digest on a mine-type house in Telluride, Colorado that caught her eye and crystallized her ideas. “It was a revelation,” Jeanne recalls with a smile. “I said to myself, this might work! We immediately began to explore the idea with several architects. John Shirley of JAS Architects in Salt Lake City, who had helped design Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort, seemed really enthused and came up with a plan that was almost eerily like a drawing that I had made of my ideas but had never shown him.”
The plan was in the shape of a cross—almost church-like; but it was also similar to the configuration of standard mine buildings. Shirley was excited that the proposed design reminded him of Park City’s famous Coalition building that had tragically burned down in 1980. “When he exclaimed, “It’s the Coalition building!” I knew we were off and running,” Wohlers remembers.
The most pressing challenge for John Shirley and his associate Chris Jensen proved to be the placement of the house on a small lot surrounded by neighboring homes and condominiums. “It was essential,” Chris Jensen recalls, “to raise the elevation of the Great Room, so that from the windows and decks you could see the views of the mountains in the West, particularly Jupiter Peak.” This goal was accomplished by installing a half-flight staircase from the entry corridor to the Great Room. He continues, “By designing a tower-like entryway with timbers and an exposed ceiling, we created in effect the feeling of a trestle above a mine shaft.”
The choice of materials proved to be a labor of love. JAS Architects selected Douglas fir and redwood from the Salt Lake railroad trestle for the exterior façade and interior beams. The trestle was built sometime in the 1880s and usage of it stopped in the early 20th century when the causeway was built (about the same route as I-80). Its reclaimed lumber was being sold by a yard in Heber, Utah. “We were lucky enough to get the last of the lot that had been above the water line,” Jeanne remembers. “When we ran out midway through the project, we had to be satisfied with wood that had been submerged for three posts of the interior stair railing. At first the logs smelled like salt water, but eventually the odor disappeared.” All the beams were made from the trestle, which originally measured 14 x 14 feet before they were cut down to size.
In 1997, only one home in Park City had a corrugated metal roof. The architects and their clients held their breath until the design was approved. Throughout the house, one finds motifs with an industrial look. Stair railings are enclosed with a four-inch wire grid, and steel light fixtures seem appropriate for a factory setting as well as a home.
When it came time to furnish the house, Jeanne referred again to her Adirondack sources and memories of childhood summers spent at a Girl Scout camp on Upper Saranac Lake in the Adirondack park. “While the interior decorations of some of the camps were too cluttered and ornate for our tastes, we distilled some elements that worked for us,” she says. “The floors of the lodges were covered with animal skins, Oriental rugs and Navajo blankets. Also, the furniture when not Victorian was Mission; and wicker was used extensively—especially on the porches. So, where it fit into our floor plan, we incorporated Oriental rugs, Mission furniture and old wicker chairs.” In the Great Room, Jeanne had the fireplace copied from a plate of William Rockefeller’s fireplace at Camp Wonundra from one of her books on the Adirondacks. She even went so far as having the wrought iron candelabra on the mantle faithfully reproduced.
Jeanne and Alan favored an eclectic mix of American antiques and furnishings. A turn-of-the-century Amish rocking chair is a focal point of the living room, and, “The most comfortable chair in the house,” Alan claims, while vintage quilts and reproductions of old game boards are everywhere. Brightly colored bowls and pitchers (Bauer Ware) are displayed with books on photography and art in corner bookcases made from barn wood. Across the way, by a large picture window, soft afternoon light filters through the aspens and illuminates a ‘card table’ made by Don Mack, a well-known contemporary craftsman from New York State. The scene is an ode to a contentment defined by and reinvented in this paean to both the mining camps in the West and the Adirondack camps in the East.
Wendy Lavitt has authored six books and many magazine articles in the collecting and interior design fields. She is a regular contributor to Park City Magazine.
The Wohlers would like to gratefully acknowledge: JAS Architects and Consulting Designer, David Krajeski (Design Coalition).
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