From the archive · 1940 – 1957
Click any card to page through the originals. Arrow keys navigate; Esc closes.
July 10, 1940
William Wurster (site notes) → Project file
Wurster's own handwritten notes from the very first site visit — locating the house on the lot with Hannes Schroll, sketching the plan against the saddle, and worrying about the view of Lincoln Summit.
September 14, 1941
Jerome Hill → William Wurster (copy)
A thirty-six-item punch list from a site meeting on the mountain: ski room windows up 4 inches, hearth flush with the floor, cedar-lined linen closet, 1×4 Douglas fir bath walls — the bones being argued into place.
1941
Wurster office → Jerome Hill
The lodge in three numbers: 1,766 sq ft main floor, 613 upstairs, 1,333 basement — 3,712 square feet total, worked out in pencil on the back of a page.
October 20, 1941
Jerome Hill → Bill Wurster
Written on Sugar Bowl letterhead a week before Hill and Wurster were to meet at the site — flush shutter-doors, a stationary glass in the bedroom door to the balcony, small doors in the bookcase for filing.
c. 1941
Wurster office → Project file
Pencil elevations of a built-in cupboard — the kind of quiet millwork drawing that never leaves the office, working out shelves, drawers, and a lower cabinet.
January 17, 1942
William Wurster → Jerome Hill
Wurster's thank-you note for the final payment on the house, written a month after Pearl Harbor as the office pivots to Sacramento defense-housing work.
May 1, 1952
Ten years on. Hill borrows a filing trick from his Schweitzer correspondence — one subject per letter — and reports the lodge has come through the winter in ship-shape, with a full photo record on the way.
July 8, 1957 →
Wurster · Bernardi & Emmons office → Sugar Bowl (Cardwell, Hill)
Fifteen years after the build, the architects are still fielding questions — where the septic tank is buried, what the foreman remembered, small repairs and long memories.
