You are here

Colorado » The Colorado » Pitkin County » Aspen » Benedict Building

Benedict Building

-A A +A
1980s, Fritz Benedict. 1280 Ute Ave.

Hidden in an aspen grove, this one-story, raw wood, shed-roofed extension of its site is almost a nonbuilding, Along with the architect's office, it houses the Tenth Mountain Headquarters, which, among other things, operates eighteen backwoods crosscountry ski huts, whose design Fritz Benedict oversaw.

Frederic (Fritz) Benedict, who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, became acquainted with Aspen while a member of the army's Tenth Mountain Division ski troops. During a fifty-year romance with Aspen landscape and architecture that ended with his death in 1995, he developed, with his brother-in-law Herbert Bayer, an “Aspen style,” exemplified by well-sited, low-slung Modernist structures of indigenous materials, notably wooden beams that often seem to fade into surrounding aspen groves. Benedict's work in Aspen ranges from the sod-roofed, lowslung Aspen Club Condominiums, 1450 Crystal Lake Road, to the Tipple Inn, 605 Dean Street, an old mine tipple site where Benedict made simple but handsome use of structural members as decorative elements.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Thomas J. Noel
×

Data

What's Nearby

The Little Nell
Hemmeter House
Elks Club (Webber Block)
Aspen Mall
City Hall (Armory)

Citation

Thomas J. Noel, "Benedict Building", [Aspen, Colorado], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/CO-01-PT24.

Print Source

Buildings of Colorado, Thomas J. Noel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 496-497.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,