Exterior

 

In the summer of 1934, Los Angeles resident Frances McAllister and her future husband, John McAllister, caught their first glimpse of Flagstaff, Arizona, as they passed through on the Super Chief, bound for New York City.  John and his sister had joined Frances for the transcontinental train trip; in New York, the two women would continue alone on a tour of Europe.  Together at the back of the observation car, John and Frances beheld a plot of land whose beauty stunned them.  “It was an amazement,” recalls Frances of the land located at what is now the southwest corner of West Route 66 and Woody Mountain Road.  “It was an area that had lovely trees.  There was a little trickling stream, which is from a source now on the maps as Railroad Springs.”  John and Frances made a pledge to one another: someday they would purchase the land they had seen and build a home for themselves there.

     So began Frances McAllister’s long and eventful relationship with Flagstaff and its natural wonders, an association, which eventually resulted in the founding of The Arboretum at Flagstaff.  So, too, was conceived the Log House, the rustic Flagstaff second home the McAllisters built for themselves in late 1935.  “We came here [to the Log House] to be alone and to think things through,” says Frances McAllister.  Builder Peter “P.J”.  Lindemann, a skilled carpenter and Flagstaff community leader, presided over a crop of experienced workers, many of who had worked on nearby Riordan Mansion and on the Grand Canyon’s El Tovar Hotel and Bright Angel Lodge.  Frances, watching joyfully as her new home rose from the ground, marveled at the deftness with which the men peeled and fitted the ponderosa pine logs which John, an early conservationist, had purchased from the Forest Service only after being assured they would be cut anyway ahead of the building of Highway 89A between Flagstaff and Sedona.

Though the Log House measures only twenty-four feet in width by twenty-six feet in length, it shares common design features with the massive Walter Reichardt House, built for Frances McAllister after her husband had passed away.  (The Reichardt House is attached to the Arboretum Visitor Center.)  Most important of these is the loving care put into every detail of the design.  The McAllisters were conscious of the architecture of their homes and were active participants in the buildings’ creation, always looking for ways to make the houses unique.  In the Log House, for example, the banister of the distinctive staircase was originally the limb of a downed tree, selected by Frances and John on one of their many walks in the woods.  The stones in the small but homey living-room fireplace were shipped sixty miles from a quarry at Mayer, Arizona, because of their special coloring.  (“‘Echo Canyon Green,’” says Frances, though she can still barely discern the subtle difference in shade from the “Echo Canyon Blue” of the Reichardt House fireplace.)  The living-room flooring consists of wide boards of solid oak, pegged together to remove the need for nails and thereby preserve the beauty of uninterrupted wood.  Also important to the McAllisters were the concepts of space and viewshed.  The Log House’s small living room seems larger than it is because of its spacious, vaulted ceiling, an idea reminiscent of the later Reichardt House’s uniformly tall rooms.  Also in keeping with the Reichardt House’s orientation toward the mountains are the two small bedrooms on the second floor of the Log House (a larger one is squeezed in next to the living room), which give impressive views of the surrounding landscape.  Originally the house was turned so that these windows offered “the best view of the [San Francisco] Peaks that you could get from this distance”, according to Frances. 

The sunroom and kitchen were added in the 1950s.  The kitchen contains a cutting board made from the maple flooring of the demolished U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego – a gift to Frances from her father, Clyde Burt.  The room is also constructed so that its occupants can view sweeping vistas of ponderosa pine trees outside.  Taken in its entirety, the Log House is a cozy and delicately crafted home, which is eminently in keeping with its natural surroundings.  “I like the whole thing”, enthuses Frances today.  “It is an integrity.” 

Living Room

 

Kitchen