Rustic.

Visitors to our system of national parks and monuments seldom pay much attention to park architecture. This is as it should be, for since its founding over 60 years ago, the National Park Service consistently has sought to provide visitor facilities without visually interrupting the natural or historic scene.  Occasionally, however, the park visitor will discover in one of the older parks a structure so highly stylized in its attempt to be non-intrusive that it attracts the immediate attention of those who are accustomed to the simplicity and frequent sterility of contemporary architecture. It may take the form of a pioneer log cabin, or an Indian pueblo, or a New England "salt-box, " or it may be built of over-sized, rough-hewn logs and stones. Whatever its style, its obviously intensive use of hand labor and its clear rejection of the regularity and symmetry of the industrial world, mark it as the work of another age, the product of an attitude far removed from our own.

For lack of a better phrase, these varied styles have long been inadequately lumped together under the term "rustic architecture."  But perhaps a voice from the 1930s can explain the problem more clearly:

"The style of architecture which has been most widely used in our forested National Parks, and other wilderness parks, is generally referred to as "rustic. " It is, or should be, something more than the worn and misused term implies. It is earnestly hoped that a more apt and expressive designation for the style may evolve, but until it appears, "rustic, " in spite of its inaccuracy and inadequacy, must be
resorted to . . . . "

A superior term has never appeared, so "rustic" it remains. 

CONNECT