Grand Canyon Village Historic District

Grand Canyon Village Historic District comprises the historic center of Grand Canyon Village, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. The district includes numerous landmark park structures, many of which are National Historic Landmarks themselves, or are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town design as a whole is also significant for its attention to integration with the Grand Canyon landscape, its incorporation of National Park Service Rustic design elements, and for the idiosyncratic design of park concessioner structures such as the El Tovar Hotel.
Design and history.
Grand Canyon Village was planned by the National Park Service to be a comprehensive development for tourism on the South Rim. It is the largest example of Park Service town planning extant in the national park system. Initially centered on the terminus of the Grand Canyon Railway, the village expanded as both the Park Service and the park concessioner, the Fred Harvey Company, built or expanded facilities. Initial development was centered on the El Tovar Hotel and the Bright Angel Lodge, both concessioner-operated facilities. The El Tovar was opened in 1905 as a destination hotel on the canyon rim by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, who owned the Grand Canyon spur. A new train depot was built next to the hotel by the railway in 1909. Nearly all early development at the village was undertaken by concessioners.
In 1910, while the Grand Canyon was still designated a national monument, Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger suggested that a plan be established before further development took place at the South Rim. Mark Daniels, the general superintendent of the parks from 1914, called for similar comprehensive planning to establish water and sewer systems, power distribution and telephone networks. A 1924 master plan by National Park Service landscape architect Daniel Ray Hull established a "village square" at the intersection of the railroad and east road just below the El Tovar. The first park administration building was established there. Hull used the local topography, dictated by Bright Angel Wash valley's topography, with residential neighborhoods on two small hills divided by a branch of the Bright Angel drainage, away from the main south entrance road down Bright Angel and keeping hotel development in the area of the Bright Angel Camp and the El Tovar. Another square or plaza was intended where the new south entrance road approached the rim, surrounded by another administration building, a post office, and a proposed museum. Over time, the plaza became a parking area. Treatment of residential areas varied, including use of bungalows. Park Service housing was arranged so that automobile access was to the rear, with the house fronts oriented to a central communal space. Grand Canyon Village is one of the earliest uses of this arrangement in a planned community, predating its use at Radburn, New Jersey by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright. Housing for Fred Harvey Company personnel was arranged in a more traditional street-facing arrangement, with a parallel system of alleys for access to garages at the rear of the lots.
Much of the work that was accomplished in the late 1930s was done by Civilian Conservation Corps labor, particularly the landscaping, which involved the transplantation of native vegetation into areas that had been disturbed by construction.
Contributing structures.
Many of the contributing features and structures in Grand Canyon Village are simple landscape structures such as sidewalks, retaining walls and culverts. The canyon rim stone wall is the principle defining feature of the area, constructed in stages between 1905 and 1934. 44 such structures have been identified as contributing features, mostly built of local Kaibab limestone.
The district includes a number of significant structures, some of them National Historic Landmarks in their own right, with several others individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The buildings can be divided into two categories: the fanciful structures built by park concessioners, many of which were designed by Mary Colter, and the more restrained examples of National Park Service Rustic architecture designed by Hull and Thomas Chalmers Vint for park administration and housing. Concessioner structures include:
Park Service structures include:
Other contributing buildings include dormitories, service shops, a jail, a firehouse, the park hospital, a post office and two schools. Non-contributing structures include the Thunderbird and Kachina lodges between the Bright Angel Lodge and the El Tovar.
Landmark designation.
The village's initial listing on the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1975 included 39 buildings, then was expanded in 1982 to include the Bright Angel Lodge and an additional 25 buildings. The district was declared a National Historic Landmark District on February 18, 1987. On October 24, 1995 the district was again expanded to include the historic center of Grand Canyon Village. The present district includes 247 buildings, 55 landscape structures and three sites. The NRHP district differs from the NHL district by its inclusion of two non-contiguous cemeteries, not part of the NHL since they have no association with park architecture.