One of the original residents of Denver’s Cheesman Park neighborhood has returned, in grand style.
The park’s Rustic Shelter, or gazebo, has been renovated and restored to its original glory. Built entirely of elm logs in the Adirondack style, it was in danger of falling apart before a painstaking repair project begun last year ended in a ribbon-cutting ceremony April 13.
German landscape architect and engineer Reinhard Schuetze’s drawing of the Rustic Shelter, or “Japanese Tea House,” dated to 1906, and the log-post structure was built soon after on the park’s north side. In recent years, the six-sided gazebo with the circular roof had become an eyesore.That is, until its restoration became a labor of love for the city planner, architect, construction firm and building crew selected to bring the Shelter back to life.
The project began with Thomas Hawkey, parks and recreation projects manager for the city of Denver, who had been keeping an eye on the structure’s perilous state.
“I live in the neighborhood and drive by every morning on my way to work. I was watching as it slowly deteriorated and thought, ‘If we don’t do something soon, we’re going to lose it.”‘
Using a $50,000 grant from the Colorado State Historic Fund and $22,300 from the city, Hawkey hired principal architect Nan Anderson of the firm Andrews & Anderson in Golden to design the new structure.
The design was something of a puzzle. “We were working from an original drawing, a schematic, so it didn’t detail what held it together. We also had a historic photo,” from the ’30s, but it showed few details, “and the historic photo didn’t match the original drawing,” Anderson said.
She and the builder, White Construction Group of Castle Rock, had to throw out their assumptions about construction.
“It was our intent to use elm that the city had salvaged for us and stockpiled in their nursery,” White project manager Chris Haugen said. “… As we got into it, it turned out we were far short of what we needed.” They also hoped to save four of the original six posts that held up the roof, but only two could be salvaged.
Weathered and darkened with age, they bear initials, names, hearts and other designs etched by those who took shelter under the gazebo for the last century.
Work began in July 2005, Haugen said, when his crew began disassembling the original structure and transporting salvageable parts to the company’s shop in Brighton. The first step was using a crane to lift the roof, intact, from the top. Most of the roof was reused, and it was topped off with new cedar shake shingles.
The project presented several unique challenges.
“This one definitely required a level of craftsmanship and a lot of the old-world skills for making handcrafted furniture,” Haugen said. “That’s not something we typically deal with.”
He cherry-picked a crew of log workers familiar with historic projects: Derek Razo, Bryan Marchese, Rick Hoffner and Doug Fowler.
Fowler did most of the log work. He hails from eastern Tennessee and grew up watching old-time craftsmen. His grandfather was a carpenter, craftsman and furniture maker; his father was a jack-of-all trades and woodworker.
The Shelter project was special to Fowler because of its one-of-a-kind design.
“It’s a hexagon, but at the same time it’s a circle,” he said. “It’s not only a circle, but a locking circle.”
Fowler hand-peeled bark using a draw knife, and completed drawings to figure out how each log would interlock: “I took the pieces back to the shop in Brighton and documented all the joinery and layout done on all six (supporting) logs, and I started to see a pattern of what the layout was, how they did it and why they did it.”
As the team worked this spring, area residents and park visitors watched their progress.
Susan Kirk, who lives across the street from the Rustic Shelter in Park Tower, watched the reconstruction from her window and documented it by taking photos.
“Many of us were just intrigued,” said the longtime Cheesman Park resident. “(The restoration was) the evolution of something quite wonderful.”
Kirk chose about eight photos to frame and present to Denver manager of parks and recreation Kim Bailey. The montage now hangs in her office.
Today, the Rustic Shelter stands ready to shade new generations of parkgoers. Anderson hopes its artistry will inspire more appreciation of its historic significance.
“I just hope the people who use it, who sit under it, appreciate the value of what went into building it,” she said. “It’s a piece of furniture, really, not a building.”
