Evoking the Past by Design

There is no town here, none of the shops, restaurants and museums that make La Jolla to the south and Del Mar to the north such popular getaway spots. People come to Torrey Pines for its well-known golf course and stunning five-mile-long strip of California coast, with wide flat beaches, bizarrely eroding sea cliffs and gnarled, photogenic trees. Now another equally compelling attraction has put this in-between place on the map in bold letters: the 175-room Lodge at Torrey Pines, built in the Arts and Crafts style of Southern California architects Charles and Henry Greene.

When San Diego businessman William Evans decided to give Torrey Pines (which had only a Hilton) a luxury hotel inspired by the brothers Greene, his wife thought he was possessed. Co-developers worried that the exquisite refinements of the Greene and Greene style--the mortise-and-tenon joinery of its mahogany beams, its art glass lights, its earth-toned palette--would be lost on the public. And architectural historians whom Evans consulted thought his re-creation of the Greenes’ costly, labor-intensive architecture and design couldn’t amount to more than a gimmick.

Evans proved all of them wrong (except for his wife, he readily admits). There is nothing gimmicky about this hotel on the edge of the Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Course, just south of Torrey Pines State Reserve. It is not a palace of gold plating and marble, though it’s luxurious and pricey (doubles start at $450). The lodge, which opened two months ago, is all about the fine craftsmanship, attention to detail, love of wood and accents from the Orient that make such Greene and Greene works as the Gamble and Blacker houses in Pasadena so beloved. Edward R. Bosley, director of the Gamble House, now a Greene and Greene museum, calls the effect “a wonderful combination of elegance and rusticity.”

To understand how seriously Evans pursued his quest for authenticity, you have only to see the porte-cochere. It is supported at the center of a circular driveway by a brick-and-cobblestone stanchion like the one at the Blacker House, a privately owned residence considered the architects’ masterpiece. The glass in the front door at the lodge was made by Judson Studios of Los Angeles, one of the firms the Greenes favored, and it is very much like the front-door glass at the Gamble House, except that a Torrey pine is used as the motif in its art glass panels instead of an oak.

Inside, you’ll find more signature Greene and Greene features: wide-hooded wood and glass lamps; chandeliers suspended by leather straps; ebony-pegged chairs, intricately paned windows and copper fireplace hoods; joints in the wood borrowed from shipbuilding, walls made of oddly shaped bricks known as “clinker,” shady roof overhangs. Perhaps an expert could detect flaws and inconsistencies and would find the hotel somewhat too big for its site. But to someone like me who knows the Greenes’ work chiefly from the Gamble and Blacker houses, the lodge is breathtaking in its thoroughness and faithfulness to the Greene and Greene designs.

Evans says he knew he was in the presence of greatness when he first saw the Gamble House about six years ago. The Greenes helped bring the handmade, nature-inspired precepts of the Arts and Crafts movement to America during the peaking of the machine age in the early 20th century. To Evans, their work symbolizes “what California was before beach culture and Hollywood, the mythical land where you could open a window and pluck an orange off a tree.”

I walked through the hotel with Evans, but only after staying here for two nights in early May without telling the management I was from The Times, because I wanted to get my own impressions of the place and find out how the average guest is treated. Immediately upon arrival, the wide smiles of the kilted Scottish doorman, valet parking attendants and receptionists suggested they knew I was a travel writer, as did the lecture on Greene and Greene I got from the bellboy who took me to my fourth-floor room.

The room had a fireplace, a king-size bed in the style of Arts and Crafts furniture maker Gustav Stickley and a wall of windows directly overlooking the golf course. I had booked a less expensive room with a courtyard view. But this was clearly an upgrade. That iced it. They were onto me.

Later I challenged Evans to deny it. “We thought you were Susie Spanos, the wife of the owner of the San Diego Chargers,” he said. With rumors flying that the football franchise plans to move to Los Angeles, treating her like royalty made sense to Evans. (As for the Greene and Greene lecture, it turns out that Evans has staff members tour the Gamble House museum so they’ll know a bit about the story of Arts and Crafts.) I benefited from the mistaken identity, but as a result I can’t say for sure just how good the service is at the lodge.

It seems as well-oiled as the Honduran mahogany and Brazilian cherry wood lining the hallways. I lost my key card and valet parking ticket: “No problem, Ms. Spanos.” A room service breakfast of coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice and yogurt with berries arrived at my door 15 minutes after I ordered it, accompanied by a little vase of fresh flowers. After dinner at A.R. Valentien, the hotel’s handsome restaurant named for the San Diego painter who was a contemporary of the Greenes, I asked the waiter to save the split of 1998 Chalk Hill California Chardonnay I couldn’t finish: “But of course, Ms. Spanos.”

More than the service, I loved the details. The hot tub, beyond the pool, is set in a wood deck and shaded by those rare Torrey pines. It is so close to the first hole of the south course that you can check out the golfers’ form while you’re lazing in the water. The pressed paper coasters in the beautiful little bar are prints of botanical paintings by artist Valentien; the originals are in the restaurant next door. Public hallways are lined with more art, including a fascinating series of covers from the early 20th century German Art Nouveau magazine “Jugend,” which Evans says he found at an antique show and bought for $1.50 each. The Spa at Torrey Pines, where I had a massage, abandons Greene and Greene for the Scottish Art Nouveau of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau were closely allied, but Mackintosh is as different from the Greenes as a lily is from a pine cone, so the spa seems a bit of a jolt.

After the massage, I dined lavishly at A.R. Valentien, which has beautiful brown banquettes and booths and the air of a private club. (In about two months it will be joined by a less formal grill in the wing closest to the golf course clubhouse.) The chef is Jeff Jackson, formerly of Santa Monica’s Shutters on the Beach. My meal--braised radicchio and prosciutto, scallops on a bed of pesto risotto and flourless chocolate cake--was good, the service polished. Actually, though, I liked lunch there the next day better; it seemed more relaxed, and the chicken leg and root vegetables in mole poblano was marvelous.

Above all, a great hotel ought to have great guest rooms. Mine had all the obvious luxe touches--spaciousness, a nonpareil view of the golf course from the balcony, a marble double sink and inviting toiletries in the bath (Randell International, a Carlsbad company, makes the shampoo, conditioner, lotion and shower gel in sage, lemongrass and rosemary scents that evoke the Southern California landscape), lots of places to sit with good lighting and easy laptop computer hookup. The room also had a brocade bedspread and gold and green textured carpeting in patterns inspired by English Arts and Crafts designer William Morris. All of the furniture was Stickley-inspired, solidly made of wood, with leather cushions on the settee and easy chair. The doors had latches, not knobs. The walls were cream and olive green, outlined in dark brown beams, decorated with a Hiroshige print and two California Impressionist landscapes. Alas, the gas fireplace, surrounded by green tile, had a noxious smell.

Evans says the only design compromises he made in the lodge were the modernization of the old Greene and Greene bathrooms and the raising of guest room ceilings to bring in light. The single convincing criticism I’ve ever heard against the Greenes is that the interiors of their buildings tend to be dark. Despite Evans’ effort, my room was a little tenebrous. But once in a while, after a day at the beach, darkness has allure. Though the weather was moody and the skies mostly overcast while I was here, I spent my days exploring. I drove north through the Sorrento Valley just south of Del Mar, where North Torrey Pines Road dips through Los Penasquitos marsh, close to the beach. At the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club (which was founded by Bing Crosby and cronies in 1937), I checked out the handsome Spanish Mission-style clubhouse and bandstand. Racing starts this year July 24 and ends Sept. 11.

In La Jolla I studied the big, geometrical Sol LeWitts at the waterside Museum of Contemporary Art, browsed through John Cole’s Book Shop in a 1904 cottage on Prospect Street and toured the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (though I was too early for the new “Secrets of the Seahorse” exhibit, which opened May 11).

Just as interesting to me was realizing that there’s more to the in-between area of Torrey Pines than is readily apparent, like the cliffhanging Salk Institute on North Torrey Pines Road, founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk of polio vaccine fame. The institute is made of two banks of concrete buildings, designed by Louis Kahn, with teak-paneled windows and a breathtaking courtyard in the middle. The biomedical researchers inside need peace and quiet, so taking an architectural tour of the exterior, available by appointment on weekdays, is the only way to see this modernistic masterpiece. I don’t play golf, but I did take two long walks in 2,000-acre Torrey Pines State Reserve, one a marvelous three-mile circuit from the beach to the uplands and back down again, the other with a docent. He explained that many of the rare spindly trees, which the reserve was founded to protect, grow naturally only here and on Santa Rosa Island, 25 miles southwest of Santa Barbara. Stopping often to inspect plants at home on the reserve’s stark gullies and hills, we went only as far as Razor Point, an aerie at the lip of a sandstone cliff about half a mile from the visitor center. There the Pacific stretched away west, apparently boundless, beachcombers below looked the size of cockles and mussels and paragliders hovered in the sky above our heads, as if eavesdropping on our conversation. The paragliders and hang gliders take off from Torrey Pines Glider Port at the far end of a dirt parking lot a few miles south of the lodge. It has a funky, jury-rigged air, a shop where the brave sign up for paragliding or hang-gliding lessons and a cafe where the timid can watch.

North Torrey Pines Road, which runs in front of the glider port and lodge, is lined with biotech companies and the sprawling campus of the University of California at San Diego, home to La Jolla Playhouse performances from May to November. At stoplights a stream of students crossed the road, carrying surfboards down to the beach, which gave me the idea of taking a free 90-minute campus tour. On it I learned that UCSD was a hotbed of activism in the late ‘60s. The spirit of Angela Davis, who got a doctorate there in 1969, lingers at the Che Cafe, where oversized portraits of student radicals decorate the walls. Futuristic Geisel Library, at the center of the campus, is named for the beloved children’s book author Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, who lived in the area.

I was thinking about the way an elephant saves a whole race of minuscule creatures on a pink flower in my favorite Dr. Seuss book, “Horton Hears a Who,” when I got back to the lodge after the campus tour. People were wandering in just to see the place and have a drink, a good way to enjoy the lodge without paying for a room.

Unlike Horton, architecture will never save the world. But when it’s done right, it can make us more sensitive and content by surrounding us with beauty, which surely must be what Greene and Greene intended. They designed residences, not hotels, that a favored few get to live in. Now, for everybody else with the money to spend, there’s the Lodge at Torrey Pines.

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Guidebook: Visiting Torrey Pines

Getting there: Torrey Pines, which is part of the town of La Jolla, is just off Interstate 5 about 100 miles south of L.A.

Amtrak service is available to Solana Beach. Round-trip tickets are about $44 from Los Angeles.

Where to stay: The Lodge at Torrey Pines, 11480 N. Torrey Pines Road, (800) 656-0087 or (858) 453-4420, fax (858) 488-1387, www.lodgetorreypines.com, is adjacent to the Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Course clubhouse. Rates for doubles range from $450 (courtyard view) to $600 (golf course view) June through August. There is a pool, spa and gourmet restaurant. Golf packages are available.

Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, 10950 N. Torrey Pines Road, (800) 762-6160 or (858) 558-1500, fax (858) 458-6662, www.lajollatorreypines.hilton.com, is next door to the Lodge at Torrey Pines and just south of the golf course clubhouse. Standard doubles begin at $165.

Where to eat: A.R. Valentien at the Lodge at Torrey Pines (see above) serves breakfasts, lunches and dinners in the Arts and Crafts atmosphere of Greene and Greene; dinner for two with wine, $100-$150.

Bully’s North, 1404 Camino del Mar, (858) 755-1660, is a longtime favorite with the Del Mar racetrack crowd for breakfast, lunch and dinner; steak dinners about $20 per person.

The Cliffhanger Cafe at the Torrey Pines Glider Port, 2800 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive,(858) 452-9858, www.flytorrey.com, has tables near the edge of the cliff where paragliders and hang gliders take off. Sandwiches and salads are $5-$9.

For more information: San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, 401 B St., Suite 1400, San Diego, CA 92101-4237; (619) 232-3101, fax (619) 696-9371, www.sandiego.org.

Torrey Pines State Reserve, California State Parks San Diego Coast District, 9609 Waples St., Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92121; (858) 755-2063, www.torreypine.org.