The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway was following the same course that other railroads were at the turn of the century.

By increasing passenger traffic on main lines to the west coast the railroads increased revenues. The demand for rail service to the remote western locations like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon included a need for accommodating the passengers who had traveled so far. The usual length of stay for vacations at that time varied from several weeks to an entire season. The simple camps that often greeted the visitors before rail service were primitive in comparison with the excellent resorts in the east and on the west coasts. The railroads in promoting passenger traffic to these places also assumed the responsibility of building resorts that enhanced the scenic and natural wonders and provided levels of comfort and even luxury that made the trip particularly noteworthy.

The stiff competition between the railroads for passenger traffic and the unique locations each served also created the perfect reasons for pursuing types of architecture synonymous with the image the railroad sought to create. The concept of large luxury hotels was not new to the United States, but the concept of national parks was. The typical luxury hotel in a resort area in the country at the turn of the century was a large wood-frame building with a sprawling plan with applied Victorian ornament for distinction. The construction of Old Faithful in Yellowstone in 1903 altered that architectural concept. The architects and the railroads began using structural materials left in their natural state, similar to the rustic buildings of the Adirondacks. The image that those materials projected when used in that way was of a western, frontier, rustic character. Combined with that was the hold-over of romanticism from the nineteenth century that contributed to the way people perceived and experienced these natural and scenic wonders later set aside as national parks.

The Santa Fe Railway's extension of a spur to the south rim of the canyon and the knowledge that image, romanticism, and a taste of the western frontier were selling points, resulted in the need of a major hotel that fulfilled passengers ' dreams of the exotic west at that destination resort. The Railway chose one of its talented staff architects as designer of the building--Charles Whittlesey. Whittlesey was born in Alton, Illinois in 1868. He moved to Chicago when he was young and began studying architecture and engineering there when he was only 16 years old. He practiced in Chicago for 25 years, and then moved to Albuquerque as an architect for the Santa Fe Railway for five years, during which time he designed El Tovar at Grand Canyon, and the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque. After that Whittlesey moved to Los Angeles and designed a number of noteworthy buildings including Temple Auditorium, the Wentworth Hotel in Pasadena, and a series of commercial structures. He moved to San Francisco in 1907--a year after the earthquake and fire--and designed more commercial buildings there including the progressive Pacific Building--a reinforced concrete structure considered remarkable for its terra cotta ornament and landscaped interior courtyard. [1] Whittlesey was renowned for his early use of reinforced concrete.

El Tovar opened its doors in January, 1905, as the luxury hotel at the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railway. The building's style remained steeped in the late Victorian predeliction for the exotic with its roof turret and chalet-like balconies and terraces. Whittlesey's use of log-slab siding and log detailing on the first floor created that rustic frontier atmosphere that the railroad sought. The dark color of the building and the dark interiors contributed to the woodsy ambience. The dark exterior color gave added architectural importance to the building s silhouette--easily distinguishable by its turret and varied roof forms as the most important structure on the south rim by the way it was outlined in the sky. Over the years El Tovar has housed such dignitaries as George Bernard Shaw, Ferdinand Foch, Gugliemo Marconi, Presidents William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, and even Arthur Fiedler. Once described as "the most expensively constructed and appointed log house in America" the hotel has retained most of its original character.

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