Hotel history: El Tovar Hotel (95 rooms) and The Hopi House Gift Shop

One hundred and sixteen years ago, two architectural gems opened in Grand Canyon National Park: the 95-room El Tovar Hotel and the adjacent Hopi House Gift Shop. Both reflect the foresight and entrepreneurship of Frederick Henry Harvey, whose business activities included restaurants, hotels, dining cars, souvenir shops and newsagents. His partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railway drew many new tourists to the American Southwest by making rail travel and dining convenient and adventurous. The Fred Harvey Company employed many Native American artists and also collected examples of native basketry, beadwork, kachina dolls, pottery, and textiles. Harvey was known as the “civilizer of the west”.

Long before the US Congress proclaimed Grand Canyon National Park in 1919, the first tourists came by stagecoach and stayed in tents, huts or primitive commercial hotels. However, when the Atchison, Topeka, and Sante Fe railroad opened a track almost directly to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, a lack of adequate accommodation arose. In 1902 the Sante Fe Railway commissioned the construction of El Tovar, a first-class four-story hotel designed by Chicago architect Charles Whittlesey with nearly a hundred rooms. The hotel cost $ 250,000 to build and was the most elegant hotel west of the Mississippi. It was named “El Tovar” in honor of Pedro de Tovar from the Coronado expedition. Despite its rustic decor, the hotel had a coal-fired generator that supplied electric light, steam heating, hot and cold running water, and indoor plumbing. However, since none of the guest rooms had their own bathroom, guests used a public bathroom on each of the four floors.

The hotel also had a greenhouse for growing fresh fruit and vegetables, a chicken coop and a dairy herd for fresh milk. Other facilities included a hair salon, solarium, roof garden, billiards room, art and music rooms, and a Western Union telegraph service in the lobby.

The new hotel was built before the Grand Canyon became a protected Federal National Park after President Theodore Roosevelt’s visit in 1903. Roosevelt said: “I would ask you to do one thing in this regard, in your own interest and in the interest of the country – to preserve this great natural wonder as it is now … of any kind, no summer house, no hotel or anything, in order to to tarnish the wonderful grandeur, the grandeur, the great beauty and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You can’t improve it. “

Fred Harvey’s restaurants were built almost every 100 miles along the Sante Fe Railway through Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California. He filled his restaurants and hotels with “Harvey Girls”, young women who were recruited in the USA, with “good moral character, at least an eighth grade education, good manners, clear language and a well-groomed appearance”. Many of them later married ranchers and cowboys and named their children “Fred” or “Harvey”. Comedian Will Rogers said of Fred Harvey, “He kept the West in food and wives.”

The El Tovar was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 6, 1974. It was declared a National Historic Landmark on May 28, 1987 and has been a member of the Historic Hotels of America since 2012. The hotel has luminaries like Albert. houses Einstein, Zane Gray, President Bill Clinton, Paul McCartney, and many others.

The Hopi House Gift Shop (1905) was built to blend in with the surrounding area and was modeled on Hopi pueblo dwellings using local natural materials such as sandstone and juniper in their construction. While El Tovar served upscale tastes, the Hopi House represented the emerging interest in Southwest Indian handicrafts promoted by the Fred Harvey Company and the Sante Fe Railway.

Hopi House was designed by architect Mary Jane Elizabeth Colter, who formed a partnership with the Fred Harvey Company and the National Park Service for over 40 years. It was designed and built to sell Indian works of art. She enlisted the help of Hopi artists from the surrounding villages to help build the structure. Colter made sure that the interior reflected the local architectural style of the pueblo. Small windows and low ceilings minimize the glaring desert sunlight and give the interior a cool and cozy atmosphere. The building includes wall niches, corner fireplaces, adobe walls, a Hopi sand painting, and a ceremonial altar. Chimneys are made from broken clay pots that are stacked and pounded together.

When the building opened, a collection of old Navajo blankets that won the top prize at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis was on display on the second floor. That exhibition eventually became the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection, which included nearly 5,000 Native American artworks. The Harvey Collection toured the United States, including prestigious locations such as the Field Museum in Chicago and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, as well as international locations such as the Berlin Museum.

Hopi House has a wide variety of Native American handicrafts for sale then and now: ceramic and wood carvings on counters draped with hand-woven Navajo blankets and carpets, baskets suspended from peeled wooden beams, kachina dolls, ceremonial Masks, and wood carvings, illuminated by the thick light from the building’s tiny windows. Hopi murals adorn the stairwalls and religious artifacts are part of a shrine room.

The Fred Harvey Company invited Hopi artisans to demonstrate how they made jewelry, pottery, blankets, and other items that were then put up for sale. In return, they received wages and accommodation in the Hopi house, but they never owned the Hopi house and were seldom allowed to sell their own goods directly to tourists. In the late 1920s, the Fred Harvey Company began providing some Hopi Indians with responsible positions in business. Porter Timeche was hired to demonstrate blanket weaving but was so fond of chatting with visitors that he rarely finished a blanket to sell, and was offered a job as a salesman in the Hopi home gift shop. He later served as the buyer for Fred Harvey’s concessions at the Grand Canyon. Fred Kabotie, the famous artist who painted the mural of the Hopi Snake Legend in the Desert View Watchtower, ran the gift shop at Hopi House in the mid-1930s.

Due to the prominence of the Hopi home, many visitors can assume that the Hopi were the only tribe that was native to the Grand Canyon, but that is far from the truth. In fact, 12 different tribes are now recognized as having cultural ties to the Canyon, and the National Park Service has endeavored to accommodate the cultural needs of these other groups as well.

The Hopi House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. During a complete renovation in 1995, Hopi consultants participated in the restoration work and helped ensure that none of the original architectural or design elements were altered. Hopi House and the Lookout Studio are major structures in the Grand Canyon Village National Historic Landmark District.

My latest book “Great American Hotel Architects Volume 2” was published in 2020.
All of my following books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and click on the title of the book.

  • Great American Hoteliers: Hotel Pioneers (2009)
  • Built to last: 100+ year old New York hotels (2011)
  • Built to last: 100+ year old hotels east of the Mississippi (2013)
  • Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar des Waldorfes (2014)
  • Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Hotel Pioneers (2016)
  • Built to last: 100+ year old hotels west of the Mississippi (2017)
  • Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)
  • Great American Hotel Architects Volume I (2019)
  • Hotel Mavens: Volume 3: Bob and Larry Tisch, Curt Strand, Ralph Hitz, Cesar Ritz, Raymond Orteig (2020)

If you need an expert:
Stanley Turkel has served as an expert witness on more than 42 hotel-related cases. His many years of experience in the hotel business is an advantage in the following cases:

  • Slipping and falling accidents
  • wrongful deaths
  • Fire and carbon monoxide injuries
  • Security problems in the hotel
  • Requirements for the Dramshop
  • Hurricane damage and / or business interruption events

Don’t hesitate to call him toll free at 917-628-8549 to discuss a hotel-related appraisal assignment.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR