If there were ever a daunting architectural challenge, it had to have been that of designing a hotel at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
How to do justice to a place John Muir dubbed “God’s spectacle’? Even President Theodore Roosevelt declared during a 1903 visit there, “I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loveliness and beauty of the Canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it.’
Fortunately, architect Charles Whittlesey rose to the challenge, concocting a structure that combined the stateliness of a European villa and the earthiness of an American hunting lodge.
This year, the grande dame El Tovar turns 100 and is celebrating the occasion with a $4.6 million face-lift. Closed in January, the hotel reopened to the public April 13 with a party befitting a centenarian.
The hotel preceded the Grand Canyon’s designation as a national park by 14 years, but it represents some of the best of what came to be known as “parkitecture’ – the use of native stone and wood to make the buildings better blend with their epic surroundings. Others in the genre include Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone, the Ahwahnee in Yosemite and Timberline Lodge on Oregon’s Mount Hood. And El Tovar has weathered the years with the best of them.
“In many ways it ranks right up there at the top (of national parks lodges) because it was built as a first-class hotel and it remains that way,’ says Christine Barnes, author of “Great Lodges of the National Parks’ and two new books commemorating the centennial of El Tovar and nearby Hopi House. “It also has the best food in the national parks. Plus, there’s the setting. You couldn’t build a hotel that close to the rim today.’
The latest renovation has upgraded all 78 guest rooms, refurbished elements of the public areas and updated some systems. Many of its more genteel amenities – the separate men’s and women’s sitting rooms, solarium, rooftop garden and billiards parlor – are long gone. But with its chocolate-colored log walls, heavy rafters and Arts & Crafts-style lobby furniture, El Tovar still reflects the social transitions at the time of its construction, Barnes says. “Part Victorian resort and part rustic log cabin, it provided both the comforts of the known, established Eastern resorts and the excitement of the unknown West.’
Also turning 100 this year is Hopi House gift shop across from the hotel.
Architect Mary Colter (who went on to design many of the Fred Harvey Co. buildings) took her inspiration from an ancient Hopi pueblo.
Curiously, neither structure is positioned to take in views of the canyon, even though one corner of El Tovar sits just 20 feet from the chasm.
“I think (the designers) wanted people to walk over and experience that gasp thing,’ Barnes says. “You really don’t know how spectacular it is until you get to the edge. You still can’t help but let it take your breath away.’
