Deco-Style Fireplace in the Mountains

PE recently purchased a tiny “fixer-upper” cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. During the remodel, he discovered that the 1,660-square-foot cabin was originally built in 1919, with an addition completed in 1927. He sent me an image of the fireplace in the main room – currently under construction – and asked whether the fireplace and its treatment date to the original 1919 structure or the 1927 addition. This is a question that spans two distinct eras of design; the Arts and Crafts style of 1919 and the Deco style of 1927. 

Unmistakably, PE’s fireplace is a rustic, somewhat amateurish interpretation of an Art Deco design – far removed from Deco’s birthplace in Paris. The design is Deco; the materials are not. The first clue lies in the cast-iron vent covers, known as Heatilator grilles, which circulate air and protect the firebox from excessive heat. These vents are quintessentially Art Deco: flat, geometric, symmetrical compositions featuring zigzags, chevrons, and sunburst motifs.

Art Deco designers embraced repeating geometric forms to express modernity, speed, and forward movement. By contrast, the fireplace’s material – the local light gray granite and white quartz of the San Bernardino region – is anything but modern. This stone, likely formed during the Precambrian era some 300 million years ago, grounds the piece firmly in deep geological time.

Yet the form of the fireplace is undeniably Deco: square, angular, and assertively modern, anchored by a simple rectangular mantel. It’s an endearing rural interpretation of a Deco fireplace. If you imagine this same form reconstructed in black-veined Carrara marble, polished to a mirror-like sheen and paired with those Deco grilles, you can easily envision a refined Parisian example.

PE’s modest mountain cabin, infused with international Deco elements, stands in stark contrast to the glamorous Deco apartments of Paris, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles in the late 1920s. In those urban settings, a similar fireplace would be taller and more monumental, set within ten-foot walls and crowned by an overmantel featuring a dramatic mural – perhaps sleek, sculptural female figures rendered in a stylized modernist idiom. One certainly wouldn’t encounter the charmingly “glamping” version PE has uncovered.

Still, the Arrowhead fireplace – with its planar surfaces and Deco ornament – demonstrates how one of the first truly international design movements resonated even at 5,500 feet above sea level in 1927. It’s entirely possible that the architect responsible for the cabin’s addition had worked in the Los Angeles Deco high style of the late 1920s before bringing a simplified version of that aesthetic to a mountain retreat.

Art Deco’s birthplace was, of course, Paris, and its defining moment came with the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a landmark world’s fair of design and architecture. Visitors were captivated by the pavilion designed by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, whose oval grand salon featured soaring 20-foot ceilings, silk wall coverings inspired by Egyptian motifs, an amboyna and ebony grand piano, and a monumental, black-veined marble fireplace. This fireplace was anchored by a mural of parakeets and stylized nudes and illuminated by a chandelier cascading with crystal spheres. The fireplace’s metalwork was created by Edgar Brandt, whose work helped define the Deco aesthetic.

Brandt later worked in the United States, including New York City, where he designed an extraordinary set of metal doors for the Belmont Building on Madison Avenue. Like the anonymous Arrowhead designer, Brandt often incorporated Egyptian-inspired relief patterns – stepped, faceted forms influenced in part by the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Thus, the enthusiasm and persistence of the modern Deco style in the 1920s traveled far beyond Paris, finding expression even in a small lakeside cabin in the California mountains. Here, local stone was used to interpret an international style – resulting in a uniquely regional take on Deco in 1927. However, the question remains: do you like it? PE’s fireplace may be a hybrid, but is it a good hybrid? In my opinion, the main problem is the squat of the fireplace: it might have a higher hearth for proportion. When performing a remodel the question is, does PE stick with the period, and if so WHAT period of design should guide PE’s decisions? The Deco flair or the rustic, earthy, rugged look of the stone. BOTH exist in this one fireplace. 

For added interest, PE also shared before-and-after images of the fireplace following sandblasting. He welcomes any thoughts on the remodel – and perhaps, extra period furniture, lighting, or tile would be welcomed. You can reach him through my email [email protected].