The Lake McDonald Lodge Coffee Shop is a visitor services building in the Lake McDonald district of Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. The coffee shop was built in 1965 as part of the National Park Service's Mission 66 program to upgrade visitor facilities, in order to increase visitor dining capacity. Under the Mission 66 projects, visitor facilities were usually comprehensive in nature, providing a range of visitor services. Specialized concession buildings like the Coffee Shop were unusual in Mission 66. It was leased to the Glacier Park Company for operation, in anticipation of the construction of lodging facilities by the company.The Coffee Shop was designed by Burt L. Gewalt of the Kalispell, Montana architectural firm of Brinkman and Lenon. Gewalt designed the roofline to echo individual design elements of the nearby Lake McDonald Lodge, using compatible paint and trim materials.DescriptionThe Coffee House is located a little to the east of the Lake McDonald Lodge, between the Lodge and the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The 40ft by 100ft rectangular one-story shop is set on a small hill, surrounded by a lawn with mature conifers shading the site. The building is clad in white stucco over plywood and battened cedar panels. The roof structure is composed of glued laminated timber frames on steel columns, supporting a modified hipped roof. The roof is the building's most significant detail, with clipped ends to echo the main lodge structure, and a louvered roof monitor along the ridge, designed to conceal ventilation equipment in an open roof well. The present monitor has been modified from the original cap structure, which did not cope well with the heavy snow loads at the site. The eaves extend from the building at either end. The stucco panels near the entrance feature metal sculpture designed by Gewalt to express the surrounding mountains.
