This historic hotel transformed metro Phoenix into a travel powerhouse: 'If the walls could talk'

It was the hotel that transformed Phoenix into a winter tourism paradise.

San Marcos Hotel in downtown Chandler has existed almost as long as Arizona has been a state. It helped lay the groundwork for the metro Phoenix resort hotel landscape as we know it, aspiring to draw winter visitors through recreational sports and relaxation in the desert.

The historic hotel, distinctive for its Mission Revival architecture inspired by the Spanish Colonial mission heritage of California, survived many financial crises and ownership changes during its life and still hosts guests today, operating under IHG's Crowne Plaza brand. It's now the Crowne Plaza Phoenix-Chandler Golf Resort.

It was also the first of downtown Chandler's historic buildings to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, receiving its designation in 1982.

Jill Turski, director of sales and marketing for the hotel, said she feels a sense of excitement going to work every day knowing she is part of a property with a storied past and a legacy in shaping Phoenix's place as a tourist destination.

"I love it. My heart is in that hotel," she said. "You always wonder if the walls could talk, what they could be saying, from years ago with the property."

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San Marcos Hotel: Bringing Southern California ambiance to Arizona

When Dr. Alexander J. Chandler founded his namesake city in 1912, he imagined a place that would become "the Pasadena of the Salt River Valley," said Jody Crago, administrator of the Chandler Museum.

San Marcos Hotel was conceived as part of this vision.

"It was going to be this lush area, this community centered around a resort hotel, and then the business of the community being agriculture," Crago said. "He was basing the entire city on tourism, on a place in California that had a resort."

Chandler was developed based on City Beautiful design, which involves the orderly placement of parks and landscaped squares surrounded by civic buildings and broad streets. Dr. Chandler's team included planners and architects who worked on projects in California, including Arthur Burnett Benton, who designed the San Marcos.

Dr. Chandler named the hotel San Marcos after the Franciscan friar Marcos de Niza, who is believed to be the first European to set foot in what is now the Southwest U.S. De Niza was on an expedition to find the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola.

When was San Marcos Hotel in Chandler built?

Construction on San Marcos Hotel began in 1912 and it opened on Nov. 22, 1913.

The two-story hotel was notable for being the first steel-reinforced, cast-in-place concrete structure in Arizona, according to the Chandler Historical Society. It was built that way because Dr. Chandler wanted the hotel to be fireproof.

And its 100-acre golf course was the first grass course in the state, seeded with Bermuda grass.

The hotel opened with just 35 guest rooms, yet the opening night gala drew a crowd of 500 that included Thomas Marshall, who served as Woodrow Wilson's vice president. Each room featured handcrafted wicker furniture, art deco light fixtures and original artwork.

With help from Chicago architect Myron Hunt, a peer of Frank Lloyd Wright, Dr. Chandler expanded the resort in 1924 to include additional towers, meeting space and ballrooms, as well as bungalows on the hotel's west side. Dr. Chandler lived in one of the bungalows until his death in 1950.

Today, the San Marcos Hotel has 249 rooms on four floors. The bungalows are no longer there; they were demolished in the mid-1980s, Crago said.

The San Marcos Hotel made metro Phoenix a resort destination

San Marcos' debut was a big deal for metro Phoenix because it was the first luxury winter resort in the region designed specifically to attract wealthy travelers, according to the resort's nominating document for the National Register of Historic Places.

"The biggest component they were advertising was that you could sit on these beautiful porches with our wonderful weather and talk to your colleagues on the phone while they're freezing in the winter," Crago said.

Visit Phoenix, the city's tourism marketer, credits the opening of San Marcos Hotel as the moment when metro Phoenix became a resort destination.

Prior to the hotel's 1913 opening, two other winter resorts existed, according to the National Historic Register. Ingleside Inn, which was open from 1910 to 1939, was the first luxury resort in the Scottsdale area, but it functioned as a private club.

Castle Hot Springs, a wellness retreat that opened in 1896 and remains popular today for its geothermal hot springs, was considered "more rustic and was outside the Salt River Valley," about 73 miles from Chandler. Additionally, Crago said, Castle Hot Springs marketed itself as a retreat for sick and injured people, not as a leisure tourism destination.

San Marcos operated from October to May each year with virtually no competition in its first two decades in business. Its success inspired other historic resort hotels to open in metro Phoenix: the Jokake Inn, a precursor to the Phoenician, in 1926; the Arizona Biltmore and The Wigwam in 1929; and the Camelback Inn, still operating today under the JW Marriott brand, in 1936.

Why was San Marcos Resort popular?

San Marcos and its competitors sought to draw visitors to Phoenix for leisure sports like golf, polo, horseback riding, tennis and swimming, as well as "the restful atmosphere of the desert," according to the National Historic Register. Such amenities remain selling points for the historic resorts and others that followed in the present day.

For San Marcos, even the smallest details were significant selling points for travelers. Every room had its own phone and bathroom, things that weren't yet standard in the hospitality industry.

"Sometimes, you go to a hotel and have to share a bathroom with other (guests)," Crago said. "Not here."

Dr. Chandler even taught his staff to play golf and polo so guests could play against them during their visits, Crago said.

"The early hotels that were just normal hotels were built in city centers and were designed to house a lot of people for a short trip, while the San Marcos was, relax, enjoy the trip, play polo, play golf, ride a horse," Crago said. "It's different from, 'I'm coming to Phoenix to discuss business.' It's, 'I'm staying at this wonderful resort.' It's like your Western home for the season."

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Highs, lows after A.J. Chandler's departure

San Marcos' early glory was undone in the Great Depression years.

Near the end of the 1920s, Dr. Chandler and renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright discussed plans for a second San Marcos Hotel near present-day Ahwatukee that would be billed as "San Marcos in the Desert," Crago said.

It never happened.

After the stock market crash of 1929, many travelers could no longer afford to stay at the San Marcos and business suffered. Dr. Chandler lost the hotel in 1936; he mortgaged it with the intention of using the money to build a second hotel.

When the San Marcos changed hands, a new general manager pursued a different clientele: business travelers.

"It had been elites coming for 30 years, and kids didn't want to stay where their parents stayed," Crago said.

John Quarty, who became general manager of the San Marcos in 1943 and became its owner in 1961, updated the hotel to give it a more contemporary feel. His aim was to attract celebrities — Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, Errol Flynn and Howard Hughes were among the famous guests to stay there — as well as conventions.

The hotel suffered again after it was abandoned and fell into disrepair following Quarty's death in 1979. After it was purchased by a group of Canadian investors, it reopened in 1987 as a Sheraton hotel.

Today, San Marcos operates as a Crowne Plaza, a high-end hotel brand by Holiday Inn proprietor IHG.

Turski, the sales and marketing director for the hotel, thinks San Marcos continues to stand out for its history and the Mission-style architecture.

She talked about how many historic buildings in downtown Chandler have plaques that note what was in the building in the past.

For instance, SanTan Brewing is in a building that once housed the city's bank.

As for San Marcos Hotel, Turski said, it's still what it was more than a century ago.

Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @salerno_phx.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How the historic San Marcos Hotel made metro Phoenix a destination