A month before its April 4 opening, The Lodge at Torrey Pines already looks old — mature in a comfortable, safe and cozy manner that conjures feelings of an idyllic traditional American home. As the season’s steadiest rain falls during a tour, the courtyard’s clinker brick walls draw stares, curled seemingly by decades of shifting soil and tree root upwellings. Inside, heavy beams are fastened together by thick brass straps. Everywhere are fireplaces, fine floorings, plush rugs and places for hanging 20th century art.

The word “custom” doesn’t quite go far enough for a project where every beam was cut on-site. Where faded century-old patterns were used to build furniture for the rooms. Where the door handles, hinges, dead bolts, wet bar fixtures and a half-dozen other components were all chosen at once, both to represent the period accurately and to look, and age, like they belong together.

While the world’s architectural critics have yet to officially speak, it seems easy to jump to conclusions for them: The 175-room Lodge at Torrey Pines is the world’s finest new example of West Coast Craftsman architecture. If the creators of the style, brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, were alive and walked in today, they would feel instantly at home. (Of course amenities like free poolside high-speed data ports might throw them for loop, as would a Google Internet search that turns up more than 1 million references to their names.)

Credit for this new landmark belongs to its $60 million budget and six years of patience from San Diego’s Evans family and other investors. They bankrolled the nearly 100 percent tear down of the former lodge, which could generously be described as an overgrown motel with meeting rooms and a smattering of Japanese temple architecture.

Reint Reinders, president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, says what the family has done goes far beyond just adding 175 more luxury rooms to the market.

“It elevates the destination to another level,” Reinders says. “It appeals to a whole different category of visitors who may have never been to San Diego in the past. Also, there are so many beautiful things in the hotel — the woodworking, the art and the history of how this thing came about. Those things will give it PR value for people to write about all over the country and that will translate into, ‘wow look at what is happening in San Diego.’”

Yet investors look at bottom lines. To build something like this, so accurate and respectful and real, yet not over-the-top, took someone with vision. In this project, the person experiencing a revelation was Bill Evans, the son of hospitality matron Anne Evans and the late William D. Evans whose accomplishments included pioneering the Mission Bay visitor industry.

The affable Steven Pelzer, himself a veteran of opening significant San Diego hotels (Hyatt Regency La Jolla, Parisi in the Village of La Jolla), was hired by Evans Hotels a year ago as executive vice president of sales and marketing. His job of marketing a project where regular rooms will run $350 to $750 a night, includes leading tours.

On a recent visit, Pelzer expertly describes the hotels’ unique elements, like the clinker brick walls that were made from turn of the century broken bricks dug out of a turn-of-the-century dumpsite just for this project. As he notes the delicately balanced yet solidly anchored awning adjacent to the lobby that will shelter cars dropping off guests, Evans appears from the building’s innards.

With a guest in tow, he sweeps through the project, noting where a chandelier with more than 1,000 pieces of glass will hang. He points to lamps that are replicas of those that adorn the Pratt House in Ojai. His hands move closer together as he describes how 12-by-12 beams taper down to 8 by 10s. Compared to Pelzer, he is a poor tour leader. He moves too quickly, talks too fast and always, always, is hunting for not-right details, like a suite’s fireplace he had raised off the floor because it didn’t look right.

An opportunity to talk in depth with this intense hotelier comes nearly a week later, in a long telephone conversation as he drives back from Los Angeles, again from business related to the hotel.

The Lodge at Torrey Pines story starts six years ago as Evans was about to travel to Poland for the wedding of his best friend in college. When he called the Marriott in Warsaw to make a reservation, an employee who collected golf course hats asked if Evans would bring him one from Torrey Pines. Evans, who had never been to the course — “I don’t play golf” — said yes.

As he drove from Torrey Pines Road around to the golf course, he saw the hotel. Immediately the site, which looks over the course and out to the Pacific Ocean, had his attention. The family soon after purchased the property with renovation, and then reconstruction, in mind.

The old hotel’s temple elements were naggingly familiar to Evans, who studied art while attending college at Cornell.

About 1 a.m. one sleepless night, Evans was stuck on where he had seen some of the design elements of the family’s newest purchase. He got up, went through his library of about 5,000 books and found what he was looking for in a book on five architects that contained photos of the Gamble House in Pasadena.

“The next morning I got up at 5 a.m. and drove to the Gamble House,” he says. “It was closed when I got there, so I spent the next three and a half hours waiting outside. It was really quite nice getting to understand the architecture from outside.”

The obsession was under way.

Evans read numerous contemporary sources on the Arts & Crafts Movement and went through 10 years of old The Craftsman magazines. To get things right he hired Randell L. Makinson, director emeritus of the Gamble House Trust, as a consultant.

“He came on board about two days after I saw the Gamble House,” Evans says. “He has helped steer me clear of the rocks; what I call the ‘Home Depotizing’ of the hotel. Some people find one element of the style and think ‘Oh boy, that is what makes it Greene and Greene.’ But really it is a whole vocabulary of things. It is the subtle things.”

Professionals At Work

The project architect is Wimberly Allison Tong and Goo. The landscape architect is Joni L. Janecki & Associates. Evans admits to driving everyone a little nuts with his focus. For example, Greene and Greene were into using boulders. This project has lots of boulders. Evans personally placed each one.

That personal involvement of Evans, indeed the entire family, was noted by Mark Mardock, vice president of McCarthy, the contractor that built the hotel.

Mardock says a member of the Evans family was onsite during 75 percent of the construction effort. That meant nearly anytime a building issue came up, the family was involved. Such attention is not normal, but in the end Mardock says it shows up in the higher quality.

McCarthy, at 138 years old is the largest privately held construction firm in the United States. It is headquartered in St. Louis with its closest local office in Newport Beach. The company has had a long-time relationship with the Evans family — it built the new garage for the expansion of the Catamaran — but had to compete for this project. Along with owners hovering nearby, it was McCarthy’s job to make sure everything that hotel guests experience is true to Greene and Greene, yet everything else met the standards of modern amenities and building codes.

“What we have done here is take a concrete and masonry structure and incorporate the 19th century wood architecture of Greene and Greene,” Mardock says. “Basically you are hiding the modern day construction. And making all appearances, from an exterior and interior perspective, in the 19th century style. And using real wood to do it. In some of the other facilities where they have made attempts to accomplish this kind of architecture, they have used molded materials where here it is all large, old-growth lumber.”

For example, the trim inside the hotel rooms is Brazilian cherry wood (known as Jatoba). “It is a very, very hard non-flexible wood material,” Mardock says. “We are applying that to skim-coated masonry walls in the rooms.” Normally, masonry walls have a few dips and bumps that are imperceptible to the untrained eye. But those variations would make it impossible to so perfectly attach the trim. So walls the public will never see are more perfect than walls they will view in other properties.

A Bygone Era

When it came to finding fixtures and furniture for the hotel, a single supplier was not available. “Almost everything had to be made,” Evans says.

Today’s manufacturing methods presented a hurdle.

“Modern manufacturing is about consistency of finish,” Evans says. “They are preserving those finishes with different kinds of lacquers so they don’t change. But I want there to be use patterns and wear patterns and marks on things where you use it. The horn of the rhino at the Wild Animal Park is shiny because it has been touched so much. That’s what I want to happen with our fixtures. So with the exterior fixtures we are doing with brass, we will patina them. Some of the patina will wear off, some will not. Things will change over the years. You don’t want things to always stay static. I do not want this to be a place frozen in time. I want there to be some wear and use. That is what gives depth and a certain palette to it. Gives it a certain texture. I think there is a real desire with a lot of people to say ‘we are finished, now let’s keep it that way forever.’ That is not what I want. At the Lodge at Torrey Pines materials will find their natural balance, where the finish should be.”

As Real As It Can Get

The attention to authenticity goes as far as using the same product on the shingles, Cabots Clear Stain, that was used on Blacker House in the 1900s. “Thirty or 40 years from now, those shingles will be substantially darker then they are today,” Evans says. “You can’t force architecture upon the environment. We want to blend in and have the environment tell us about the look of the hotel. Not to say that you won’t maintain.”

The wood used includes Brazilian cherry, oak, mahogany and Douglas fir.

Based on Greene and Greene designs, the hotel’s dining room chairs are being made by a furniture manufacturer in Los Angeles. Evans has visited the shop 13 times, from the prototype to final manufacturing stages.

Rolled asphalt material, custom made in Germany, covers the roof, not shingles. Why? “That is the way the Greenes did it,” Evans says.

Comfortable Stickley furniture will invite guests to stop and rest a moment. The rugs and carpets were influenced by the style of William Morris.

Evans’ myopic commitment to the project spills over onto the construction crew.

“My biggest pleasant surprise is that there is a sense of pride and accomplishment of every single trade involved with this project,” Evans says. “Tradesmen are a pretty jaded lot. But for this hotel they are bringing their friends and family through, just to show them how proud they are. I have worked on a lot of jobs and I have never seen masons ask if they could bring their children over to see what they have done.”

A Crafty Spa Design

While the Greenes favored dark, luxurious woods, one significant element of The Lodge at Torrey Pines not will reflect that style — the spa.

The 9,500-square-foot Spa at Torrey Pines will be operated not only as an amenity for hotel guests, but also marketed as a separate business. A chief provider of clientele is expected to be the adjacent Hilton Torrey Pines.

“They (the Hilton) wanted to make sure we clearly delineated the spa from the rest of the hotel,” Evans says. “No American Craftsman.

“So we used Scottish Arts & Crafts. And with the spa itself, we thought it was important to have it light and airy. We are using the style of Charles Mackintosh, who is probably the finest designer in the 20th century, in my opinion.”

Dining And Walls Of Art

The restaurant, A.R. Valentien, also exemplifies Craftsman architecture, with features that include a metal-strap post-and-beam structure, handbuilt wood-framed windows and stained-glass lanterns. It is named after Albert R. Valentien, a San Diego Impressionist who was commissioned by Ellen Browning Scripps to paint 1,000 native wildflowers for her private library.

That art is in the possession of the San Diego Natural History Museum.

But Evans learned of a large collection found in Montana and to be disposed of on a first-come, first-serve basis during a sale in Cincinnati. Evans traveled to the city but was told by a friend that strict anti-loitering laws would prevent him from getting in line that night.

Cincinnati is, however, relatively lax in its dealing with the homeless.

So Evans checked into a fancy hotel, ate dinner and, late that night, grabbed what was left of a bottle of wine from his room, a blanket and a newspaper. He lay in the doorway, covered in newspapers, even when in the early morning a police officer shooed away others trying to line up.

He was first in the door and bought all the Valentien art he wanted. “It’s about winning,” he says.

Lessons Of Love

Evans has less hair on his head than when he started. He jokes the stress of creating this project has done that. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This hotel is really as close as we can get to creating something that Charles and Henry Greene would have created at the site we have,” he says. “We used only their designs from houses that were built, built and torn down or houses that were never built.”

Evans wants San Diegans to embrace the hotel as part of their heritage.

“I hope it will allow the citizens of San Diego to really appreciate their Craftsman past and its important place in architecture,” he says. “And finally we need to make sure we save the Green Dragon colony down in La Jolla. There should not be any more Craftsman buildings torn down.”