Maybe the only thing nicer than staying in a guest room at The Ahwahnee Hotel is staying in a guest cottage at The Ahwahnee Hotel. Built in the late 1920s, the twenty-four guest rooms in these freestanding cottages are accessed from the hotel via a short walk along a wooded, gently winding path. Late in 2014, we completed an interior renovation of a model cottage that acknowledges the past with furnishings that reflect its history while also providing guests with all the comfort and conveniences they expect.
Being careful not to “overcook” the room with any fancy, historically unsuitable elements, we relied again on photographs and documents from the National Park Service archive to shape our direction, guided by historic photos that revealed simple wooden furniture and homey, hand-crafted textiles. We designed oak night stands and a credenza in a 1930s California Mission Style (albeit with integral power outlets and USB ports for guest convenience); we re-introduced authentic Stickley pieces that were in the room generations ago, and we integrated Georgian oak chairs from D.R. Dimes in a style similar to chairs originally placed in those rooms in 1927. We also replicated the cottage’s original woven bedspreads as a lap throw, and we returned a vestige of the wool hooked rugs that once covered the floors.
The in-room interpretive panel we wrote concludes this way: “Fashion is fleeting, but style endures. With the exception of a few modern electronics, we think a time traveling guest from the hotel’s earliest days would feel right at home in this room – and we hope you will, too.”