engineering

Parsons Memorial Lodge

Parsons Memorial Lodge is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Parsons Memorial Lodge rather than just read about it. In short: The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a small building built in 1915 by the Sierra Club at the northern end of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. It was one of the earliest structures built of stone in a national park.

Key takeaways

Parsons Memorial Lodge belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Parsons Memorial Lodge to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Parsons Memorial Lodge from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a small building built in 1915 by the Sierra Club at the northern end of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. It was one of the earliest structures built of stone in a national park.

Memorial The lodge is a memorial to Edward Taylor Parsons, a New Yorker who moved to Berkeley, California and joined the Sierra Club about 1900. Parsons worked with William E. Colby to establish the club's outings program, and served as a director of the club from 1905 to 1914. Parsons was heavily involved in the losing fight against the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley to provide a municipal water source for San Francisco. Parsons died in 1914, and in memorial the Sierra Club established a fund to build a club meeting house, library and headquarters in Yosemite. The site at Tuolumne Meadows was chosen for its accessibility to park backcountry and its location near Soda Springs, a location that the Sierra Club wished to safeguard.

The lodge's design It is not clear who designed the Lodge. Mark White, brother-in-law and partner in Maybeck and White to architect Bernard Maybeck, was credited at the time of the lodge's completion. White was a Sierra Club member. Maybeck scholars Gray Brechln and Kenneth Cardwell have suggested that Maybeck was involved in the design, chiefly through similarities to Maybeck-designed buildings at Lake Tahoe. Maybeck is alleged to have done the conceptual design, which was developed by White and White's brother John, who would go in to design the LeConte Memorial Lodge.

Description The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a 1,400-square-foot (130 m2) one story stone building, accessible only from June through October in most years. The walls are rubble masonry with a concrete core, using local pink feldspar and gray granite, bedded with deeply raked mortar joints, and tapering from three feet at their base to two feet at the top. The door is arched with heavy stonework. The low-pitched roof is framed with peeled log rafters, about 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter with interior and exterior log braces resting on low buttresses projecting from the walls on the east and west sides. The rafters are similar to the vigas found in American Southwestern architecture. Smaller peeled logs analogous to latillas rest on top of the rafter logs, running perpendicular, topped by roofing paper and a galvanized metal top surface. The interior features a massive fireplace on the north wall opposite the entrance. There are two windows with benches below them in the east, west and south walls.

Modifications to the lodge The lodge has been modified slightly. In 1935 a concrete floor was installed over what had apparently been a dirt surface. Wood surfaces were placed over the stone benches, and the windows and shutters were studded with nails to deter bears. The lodge is still in use today, though it is now managed by the National Park Service. It is representative of the Bay Area architectural influences adapted by Bernard Maybeck for the extreme weather variations on the high valley, and National Park Service Rustic.

The lodge declared a National Historic Landmark It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

References

External links

Architecture in the Parks: A National Historic Landmark Theme Study: Parsons Memorial Lodge, by Laura Soullière Harrison, 1986, at National Park Service. Yosemite National Park

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Parsons Memorial Lodge

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Parsons Memorial Lodge claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Parsons Memorial Lodge before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Parsons Memorial Lodge ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Parsons Memorial Lodge

In research: Parsons Memorial Lodge appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Parsons Memorial Lodge in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Parsons Memorial Lodge is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1915 establishments in California, Bernard Maybeck buildings, Buildings and structures completed in 1915, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Parsons Memorial Lodge outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Parsons Memorial Lodge in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Parsons Memorial Lodge means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Parsons Memorial Lodge out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Parsons Memorial Lodge in simple terms?

Why does Parsons Memorial Lodge matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Parsons Memorial Lodge?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Parsons Memorial Lodge.