WRITTEN BY SALLY MACDONALD

PHOTOS COURTESY OF "COASTAL RETREATS"

The top-floor living room and deck of Steve and Pam Zeasman's urban retreat open wide to views of Puget Sound from Alki Point. The three-level, three-bedroom home, designed by the architectural firm Arellano/Christofides, is supported on 55 steel pin piles sunk into beach sand.

By 1900 they were leaving their fine Victorian homes in the city for getaways at sandy seashores, on rocky-topped islands and in fragrant fir forests in the shadows of sleeping volcanoes.
 

The sun room of the Diamond Cottage is a perfect place for guests of Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker to read and relax. The couple bought the tiny cottage so visitors to their cabin in nearby Neahkahnie, Ore., could have their own, private space.

The sturdy houses they built in wild terrain and settled into so comfortably to watch nature in action formed the basis for an architectural tradition that could exist nowhere else, says Linda Leigh Paul. Paul, an Oregon-based architectural writer, studied the roots of vacation architecture in Washington and Oregon. Some of the most creative of the past 100 years are showcased in her book, "Coastal Retreats: the Pacific Northwest and the Architecture of Adventure."

"I was surprised to learn that the Northwest was an early haven for vacationing," she says. "It was a concept that was very quickly adopted. Those hard-working pioneers and farmers were definitely ready to take weekends off and get away."
 

	Jim and Christina Lockwood are grateful for the view and the peace from their bluff-top perch on Lopez Island. The house, by George Suyama Architects, is divided into public and private sections. Glass on either wall of the open gathering area allows views throughout.

The result, she says, is a unique architectural tradition that borrows heavily from the seasonal retreats built by Native Americans in the region long before the settlers showed up. Native Americans stashed their retreats in "unassuming places," near beaches or streams or on high bluffs. And they created some architectural elements still being used, such as peeled-log corner posts, open interiors with loft spaces for privacy and movable roof planks that formed an early version of skylights.

Paul knows her subject well. She lives in Lake Oswego, Ore., but grew up in Tacoma. She studied architecture in college, and her "first real job" was with a young architecture firm in Portland. Later she was an architectural reporter for McGraw-Hill publishers.

Paul set out to explore the diversity of style within the genre, and contacted every architect registered to practice in both states to nominate their best examples of Northwest coastal style. She rejected those that "didn't make me tingle." The ones that made the cut cover a lot of territory.
 

When the owner of this Whidbey Island retreat specified no cedar shingles and no river-rock trim, architect DeForest Ogden Design Office used fiber-cement siding with stained wood trim. The front entry acts as a pause between the public and private wings of the home, and also serves as a gallery for the owner's collection of antique textiles.

For starters, "coastal" in the book's title includes all of both states, because "everyone east of whatever thinks the coast is anything west of whatever, including mountains."

Many of the retreats Paul features have a rich and long history.

One is a log cabin built above Cannon Beach in 1922 for Oswald West, an Oregon governor. After an arson in 1991 almost destroyed the place, the owners restored it, working from historic photos, plans and site drawings. The "new" cabin features replications of the original wrought-iron hardware and fixtures.

Paul also included a personal favorite — a sprawling glass-and-cedar beach house built in 1950 on Puget Sound's Henderson Bay, near Gig Harbor. It belonged to friends, and Paul spent summers there when she was young.
 

	The glass-and-cedar beach place on Henderson Bay near Gig Harbor on Puget Sound was built in 1950 with weekend fun in mind. Tacoma contractor Jim Purvis used the classic California flooring, red cement, throughout the house, out onto the terrace and down to the pool.
	The kidney-shaped pool was one of the main attractions at the Purvis place, where a constant stream of weekend guests could also take a dip in the Sound.

Paul features several restored houses overlooking the Pacific in Neahkahnie, Ore., an artist community that has served since the early 1900s as "an incubator" for Northwest architecture. A 1916 cottage was a collaboration between friends — Harry Wentz, founder of the Portland Museum Art School, and A.E. Doyle, one of the region's early and most prominent architects. The weathered-wood cottage, perched on a bluff amid a grove of windswept trees, features a stone fireplace, cozy loft and natural wood paneling.

Another classic Neahkahnie cabin was designed in 1962 by James Storrs, also a well-known Oregon architect. The cabin, carved into a steep bluff, was found in a state of decline by two young architects, James and Kathleen Meyer, who've spent the past several years restoring it.

"The next best thing to designing and building your own dream house is to find a classic that has been almost forgotten," Paul writes. This one, she says, is "as perfectly sited as a puffin nest."

The owner of a newer Whidbey Island retreat specified the architect use "no cedar shingles and no river-rock trim." That doesn't mean the house falls outside Paul's definition of traditional Northwest design. It includes one classic Northwest element: a long, broad eave made to keep rainwater well away from exterior walls.

Paul says she was fascinated by Jim and Christina Lockwood's retreat on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands chain. The Lockwoods camped out in tents on the 25-acre site for 10 summers before starting on the 2,600-square-foot house.

"Over the years, they had learned the path of the sun, the cycles of the seasons, the comings and goings of animals, the changing plant life, the directions of the wind," Paul writes. In the process, she says, they discovered the importance of keeping it simple, something weekenders have always valued.

Paul includes one urban retreat, the Alki Point house of Steve and Pam Zeasman. The three-bedroom home combines Northwest "lodge" materials with the latest design elements. On the inside, grayed-out wood and flagstone offset polished stainless-steel railings, fireplaces and light fixtures. On the outside, vertical metal cladding perches atop a rustic wood base and abuts a Brazilian-cherry stair tower and elevator shaft.

"Coastal Retreats" (Universe Publishing, $39.95) is Paul's third book. Last November, she published another, "Desert Retreats — Sedona." In it, she demonstrates a connection between modern architecture, the ancient architecture of the Anasazi Indians of the region and the Asian tradition of feng shui.

It's a theme that will be familiar to readers of "Coastal Retreats" — the way in which nature in all its diversity affects the very lifestyle of people. Even on the weekends.