by Tracy Ostroff

Need to get away? The new 30,000-square-foot spa wing by Saratoga Associates at the historic Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., 90 miles north of Manhattan, may be just the paradise for you. Capitalizing on its natural setting to enhance and heighten the relaxation and renewal of its guests, the new wing is an extension to the turn-of-the-century historic Mohonk Mountain House. “Given the overall goal of the institution, which is sustainability and renewal, the first order they gave us was, ‘Make us better, but don’t change us.’ They wanted it to look like it had always been there.” says Michael Rudden, AIA, an executive vice president at Saratoga Associates, and the firm’s principal in charge of the Mohonk spa project. That, indeed, was their challenge in completing the $13-million, multi-level facility.

Rudden, with project architect Andy Allison, took special care to design the space for an “outside feel from within,” they say. “When you look at the character of it, I don’t think you can say it’s a High Victorian nor is it the rustic Adirondack style that you’d find in the Adirondacks. It’s a unique style—almost a Mohonk-specific style,” Rudden says. Part of that vernacular is generated by the collection of wings that have been added (and some torn down) to the family-owned property over its 136-year history. “Although there’s a commonality of material to a certain extent and a commonality of purpose to a certain extent, each one has its own uniqueness. In some cases it’s almost whimsical. It’s certainly not a slave to formality.”

The architect’s challenge, Rudden explains, was to place a standard hotel spa program on an unusual site for an unusual client. To ascertain the essence of the spa and to determine how they could reflect and complement the combination of High Victorian and Adirondack styles, the design team poured over photographs of the existing building. Their discovery found big pieces of stone; Mohonk railings (hand-crafted wood railings done onsite) that line the mountains and walking paths; peaked roofs; funky towers; lots of double over-hung windows; exposed stained wood, carpeting, and fireplaces in virtually every room in the House. These elements defined the new spa’s architectural character. “When you’re there you will think it’s part of the original complex, and it was designed to be able to do just that,” Rudden explains.

Your grandmother’s parlor
The spa concept manifests with a U-shaped veranda to look like an old Victorian porch that “someone had come along later and filled in with glass enclosure.” The two 80-foot-long verandas wrap around 16 treatment rooms and come together at the solarium, which takes advantage of the western light. Its stone fireplace, comfortable porch loungers, and library make it an ideal space for guests to turn inward with a book or to look outward to the cliffs surrounding Lake Mohonk and the vistas of the Catskill Mountains. Polished hardwood floors, sisal runners, and hanging ferns add to the verandas’ ambiance.

Historically more women go to spas than men, Rudden notes, “but in this particular instance we knew that people would probably want to spend more time on the veranda than what you’d normally spend in the spa waiting room. We also knew that the trend is for more and more couples to want to go through this together, so we designed the veranda so that a third of it is just for women, another third, which is the solarium, is for women and men, and then there’s a third on the other side, which is divided into two-thirds for men, and another third of flex space with an extra set of doors. By providing that flexibility of the doors, we were able to allow them to reflect where they are today and the mores of the future.”

The design also considers the generations of families that cycle through the resort. For example, the pool was designed to be like a lake, so that one could walk across in three feet of water the full length of the pool, so if you’re learning to swim you could have someone walk beside you the full 60 feet of the pool. “Instead of having a separate child wading pool, we wanted to bring the parents into the action. It’s designed so the children can step off into the water and progressively make their way into the deeper section. There are seating areas designed for the parents, who can help coach them and give them support.” The design is working. Rudden reports they’re seeing a lot more interaction among parents, grandparents, and children, especially the very young ones.

Sustainability part of mission, design
The architects employed as many natural products and finishes as possible for the spa’s exterior and interior for sustainability and aesthetics. The heavy timber they used for the pool was harvested with the use of helicopters, Rudden says he was told, from deep slope areas in the Western Rockies to avoid construction of new roads. “And all the lumber was dead fall, so none of it was involved in taking live trees in the heart of the Douglas fir forest,” Rudden says. There’s also the 14,000 cubic square feet of stone that was either used or stored on pallets for future projects.

A 2,000-square-foot green roof tops the deck that connects the two spa wings above the pool locker rooms. “The idea of this was not that we had a lot of flat roof, because the design vocabulary was gable, but we wanted to demonstrate the technology of a green roof,” Rudden says. “We wanted to highlight the shade plants, especially the plants that are found locally right up on the hill of the mountain, and ones that could be used, such as witch hazel, in the medicinal spa treatments.” He says it can reduce the water runoff in that area by about 50 percent. Access to the green roof terrace—where guests can participate in tai chi or other meditative exercises—is from the exercise room.

The firm took advantage of the “fact that we were sitting on a mountain and that if we drilled into the mountain we’d find approximately 50-degree temperatures year-round. In this case we put up a ground heat exchange, which consists of a grid of 48 vertical bore holes about six inches in diameter that go about 480-feet deep each, loop, and come back. Each bore hole is connected to a horizontal piping that runs to a common manifold to an underground vault, and from that vault, there’s a supply and return piping that connects to the building. By the time the water circulates to the field the temperature is suitable for heat pumps. Our engineers tell us its about 30 percent more efficient than a conventional heating and cooling system and it also has the advantage of not having the imposition of cooling towers, boilers, or outdoor condensers, which we would really not want to see on this pristine site.” They anticipate a savings payback from the geothermal system somewhere in the area of 3-5 years over a conventional heating and cooling system.

“As architects for this 136-year-old, historic, 2,220-acre resort, our mandate was to ensure that the spa’s ambiance was consistent with the physically and emotionally comfortable style of the original buildings, and at the same time that it embraced the natural landscape of the setting so as to make it both aesthetically appealing and therapeutically restorative,” Rudden says. Saratoga is no stranger to the Mountain House. They were similarly challenged when they added an award-winning Victorian Skating Pavilion to the hotel for which they put a wooden-structure truss pavilion and built the base out of stone they had taken out of the mountain right beneath the site of the skating pavilion. “Everyone thinks it’s been there for a 100 years. So they like that approach.”

To visit the Mohonk Mountain Home is to be smitten with it. “The photographs don’t do it justice. This is truly a magical place,” Rudden says.

Copyright 2005 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page