Robert Reamer

Robert C. Reamer
Robert Chambers Reamer
Nationality	U.S.
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Old Faithful Inn
Projects	Yellowstone National Park hotels

Robert C. Reamer (1873–1938) was an American architect, most noted for the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. Reamer was born in and spent his early life in Oberlin, Ohio. He left home at the age of thirteen and went to work in an architect's office in Detroit as a draftsman. By the age of twenty-one, Reamer had moved to San Diego and had opened the architectural office of Zimmer & Reamer in partnership with Samuel B. Zimmer. The firm produced a wide variety of projects, but the only surviving example of Zimmer & Reamer's work is the George H. Hill Block in the Gaslamp District. The partnership dissolved in 1898, but Reamer continued to work on his own, including work at the Hotel del Coronado. During this period he became acquainted with the president of the Yellowstone Park Company, Harry W. Child.

The Old Faithful Inn was commissioned in 1902 by Child, and funded with loans from the Northern Pacific Railroad, using laborers who were experienced railroad trestle builders. Child introduced Reamer to Charles Sanger Mellen, president of the Northern Pacific. While he was carrying out design work on the Old Faithful Inn for Child, Reamer was also designing the Gardiner, Montana depot for the Northern Pacific, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The depot and the Inn were complementary projects, and similar in style. The depot opened first, in 1903, and embodied many design features that Reamer explored on a grander scale at the Old Faithful Inn.

The Old Faithful Inn is a National Historic Landmark, honored as the inspiration for a rustic style of architecture popular throughout the western United States. The rustic style is sometimes considered a branch of the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasized fine, hand-hewn details and harmony with the surrounding environment. It became so popular at western National Parks that it is sometimes referred to "parkitecture".