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A Retreat Within the Retreat: Overland Partners Are Remaking Cedar Brake

When architects Rick Archer (pictured left) and John Byrd (right) began their designs for the new Cedar Brake guest rooms and Laity Lodge site concept, they started by simply listening to the landscape. They walked the site, took in its features. What they saw was a place that had been added to over time and […]

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Daylighting Studies

We recently visited the offices of Overland Partners where significant progress is being made towards Cedar Brake and the overall site plan. We found Helena Zambrano, Overland’s Sustainability Coordinator, running daylighting studies on the early Cedar Brake concepts. Her work, based on real-time analysis of the sun’s effect, will play a critical, shaping role in […]

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When Beauty Is Worth the Effort: A Q&A with Glenn Echols

Beauty transcends the economic value we place on things. That’s what Glenn Echols learned when he moved to the Frio River Canyon with his wife, Mary, in 1983 to work as a foreman on a maintenance crew. The first project he worked on was the construction of the women’s restroom and the bookstore at Laity […]

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Demolition Progress: February 1, 2016

Retaining the wide, low-pitched style of the Lodge’s original roof has been a priority from the start. But with rooms expanding by a few feet, and windows pushing up to the ceiling, it became clear that the actual old roof needed to go. The new roof will be designed to match the old … just with a […]

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The Shaping Power of Place

As a renovated Lodge slowly comes into view, we look forward to the continued shaping impact of the space on all of us who enter.

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Monastic Elegance: A Q&A with Designer Kimberly Renner

“Long after cost is forgotten, quality remains.” That phrase has reverberated in the H. E. Butt Foundation’s language for many years, and it’s one that informs interior designer Kimberly Renner’s plans for the Laity Lodge restoration. Renner is respecting the Lodge’s rich history while bringing the retreat center into a form that is relevant to […]

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Ten Eyck Site Visit

Christine Ten Eyck gets tips from Rudy Gonzalez (Director of Site and Construction) on the path rainwater follows down to the Frio River. This week landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck made her first site visit to Laity Lodge. A recurring theme in our meandering conversation (most of it occurring on foot as we walked the […]

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Preserving the Lodge’s Heart and Soul: A Q&A with Architect Mark Eubank

Unlike a new build, a remodel requires discovering the heart and soul of an existing building and figuring out how to accommodate it. But it also involves addition—pulling ideas from particular structural needs, your own imagination, and the context. Kerrville-based architect Mark Eubank is doing just that for the Laity Lodge renovation project. He’s an […]

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Cedar Brake and Site Planning with Overland Partners

Laity Lodge is excited to announce that Overland Partners has been retained to assist us in completing several aspects of the renovation project including the design of the new Cedar Brake guest rooms and a reimagined site concept that dramatically improves the arrival experience of our guests. The Lodge team recently spent two days on-site with […]

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The Rheem Richmond Cast Iron Tub

We are learning a lot about the original Lodge building through the process of systematically dismantling it. And we are uncovering some fascinating details. One recent curiosity: the cast iron bathtubs with manufacturing date/time stamps on the bottom. In this case, 12-19-1960 at 4:50.

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