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Back To Its Roots
Timber Homes Illustrated September 2005
Written by Colleen Morrissey | Photography by Roger Wade
Irish Farmhouse inspired a resort clubhouse
If you're a golf enthusiast and dream of playing some of Ireland and Scotland's legendary old courses, you don't need to apply for a passport. Just pack up your clubs and ask your travel agent to book you on a flight to Wisconsin. Golf may have originated in Scotland in the 15th century, but today it's reached near perfection in the heart of the American Midwest at the Whistling Straits Golf Resort located only minutes away from the Village of Kohler in northeastern Wisconsin. Living the Legacy The Whistling Straits Golf Resort sits along the coast of Lake Michigan on 560 acres.
The land, which had originally been flat, was shaped by the legendary golf course designer Pete Dye to resemble the playing fields of some of the best golf courses in Ireland and Scotland. It just so happens that the coast of Lake Michigan shares some of the same characteristics and topography as areas in Ireland and Scotland-from breathtaking bluffs to natural and wild terrain. The resort consists of two golf courses. The Straits Course was created from the rugged and windswept area that overlooks two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline with fescue fairways and massive sand dune bunkers. It's the course that most resembles those found along the coastline of Scotland. For golfers Interested in playing more of an Irish game, a little further inland is the Irish Course. It was designed in and around four meandering streams, leading duffers through a landscape that oscillates between grasslands, wetlands and dunes.
Whistling Straits, which has only been open to the public since 1998, has already hosted a PGA Championship and was recently ranked as one of the top golf resorts in America by Golf Digest.
Timbers, Too
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It's not just the golf courses that have garnered all the attention for the resort though. Nestled between the two courses is the Whistling Straits Clubhouse. While Herb Quast designed the clubhouse, and George Blaustein built it (Both associates of the Kohler Company), it's inspiration came from a photo of an old farm building Herbert Kohler, JR. discovered when he was formulating a concept for the clubhouse.
The photo Herbert found showed a fortified farmhouse in the Irish countryside. A modified version of the farmhouse, Herbert thought, would be perfect for the clubhouse. It would not only fit in the old world look and feel of the two golf courses that it sat in between, but it would provide a large enough space to hold all the rooms needed to run a successful clubhouse (such as a bar, lounge, locker room, pro shop, and restaurant.)
They wanted to be very authentic about the construction of the building," says Tom Schrock,
Since most older farm buildings were timber framed, it was decided to include a timber frame in the structure of the clubhouse. Architect Herb Quast brought Riverbend Timber Framing (based in Blissfield, Michigan) into the picture. The team decided to create a hand-hewn frame for the clubhouse so the timbers would look historic. "They wanted to be very authentic about the construction of the building," says Tom Schrock, the representative assigned to the project for Riverbend. "In some commercial buildings the timbers are used only as trim, but in this case it is the real thing. Most of the building is a structural timber frame. "To duplicate the look of the original building in the photo, limestone was used for the makeup of the interior and exterior walls. A plaster finish was. Then applied to give the walls a timeless look.
Fully Framed
The clubhouse, which is a two-story structure, consists of a first-floor level with a flat ceiling and a second level with a vaulted roof. Because of the size of the structure it measures 72 feet long by 56 feet wide*it was constructed with two separate timber frames stacked one on top of the other. The first frame can be found on the first floor supporting the ceiling above all the rooms on this level, and the second frame sits directly above it, providing support for the structure's long roof.
"Some of the beams are big," Tom says, "measuring, in some cases, 10 by 22 inches. That is big for oak."
On the first floor, the ends of the timbers rest on the masonry walls. Because of the enormous size of the building, Riverbend had to use nearly 150 timbers alone just to create the joists in the ceiling above the first floor. The timber frame isn't impressive just because of the sheer number of framing members used to construct the first frame, but also because of the size of some of the timbers. "Some of the beams are big," Tom says, "measuring, in some cases, 10 by 22 inches. That is big for oak."
The timber frame on the second level is a bit more complicated. It consists of a series of seven bents (a vertical cross section of the frame), spaced nine feet apart, that span the length of the building-72 feet. In addition, each of the bents spans 56 feet across from wall to wall. Despite these spans, the entire frame was made using a centuries-old technique employing wooden joinery and oak pegs to hold the structure together. The frame was hand-hewn from oak, by highly skilled craftsmen Riverbend brought in just to work on this project. "Since they wanted everything to be as authentic as possible," Tom says, "The frame was given a hand-hewn finish just like a barn frame would have had in the old days."
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"Since they wanted everything to be as authentic as possible," Tom says, "The frame was given a hand-hewn finish just like a barn frame would have had in the old days."
The last step in constructing the clubhouse was the placement of the roof. The roof, which is 47 feet from ground level to the peak, is made up of 8-inch-thick insulated panels supplied by a company Riverbend owns called Insulspan. The interior sides of the panels are lined with pine tongue-and-groove decking. On the exterior side of the panels is a slate roof, similar to that seen in the original photo.
The rough fairways, deep bunkers and windswept courses of the Whistling Straits Golf Resort were designed to give visiting golfers a taste of Ireland and Scotland's best. The clubhouse-an impressive sight as it stands on a slight rise overlooking the greens surrounding it-goes one step further, transporting all who enter through its heavy oak door to another place and time without leaving the shores of Wisconsin. THI |
