Arizona Biltmore Hotel

The Arizona Biltmore is a historic resort located in Phoenix, Arizona, near 24th Street and Camelback Road. Designed by Albert Chase McArthur, it opened on February 23, 1929, as part of the Biltmore Hotel chain. Actors Clark Gable and Carole Lombard often stayed there and the Tequila sunrise cocktail was invented there. It is part of LXR Hotels & Resorts.

Warren McArthur Jr. and brother Charles McArthur, along with John McEntee Bowman, the entrepreneur behind the Biltmore Hotel chain, constructed the Arizona Biltmore. The Arizona Biltmore's architect of record is Albert Chase McArthur (brother of the hotel owners), yet the design is often mistakenly attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright. This is due to Wright's on-site consulting for four months in 1928 relating to the "Textile Block" construction used in the hotel. Albert McArthur had been a draftsman for Wright and specifically asked him to assist with implementing the textile block system, which became a signature element of the hotel's appearance. The hotel has similarities to several Wright buildings, especially in the main lobby, owing to a strong imprint of the unit block design that Wright had utilized on four residential buildings in the Los Angeles area six years earlier. McArthur is indisputably the architect, as original linen drawings of the hotel in the Arizona State University Library archives attest, as does a 1929 feature article in Architectural Record magazine. The two architects are a study in contrast, with the famous and outspoken Wright being self-taught and never licensed as an architect in Arizona. The more soft-spoken McArthur was Harvard-trained in architecture, mathematics, engineering, and music. McArthur obtained architect's license number 338 in Arizona in 1925, the year he arrived in Phoenix to begin his practice. Adding to the confusion, Frank Lloyd Wright influences have been added to the property over the years. This includes a stained glass window design entitled "Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers" that Wright designed as a magazine cover for Liberty Magazine in 1926. It was fabricated by Taliesin students and installed during the 1973 hotel renovations and restoration. Reproductions of the geometric "sprite" statues originally designed by Wright and sculpted by Alfonso Iannelli for the 1915 Midway Gardens project in Chicago are placed around the property. Also, the original hotel solarium was converted to a restaurant in 1973 and, since the mid-1990s, has been named "Wright's". Three on-site restaurants bear Wright's name: Wright's at the Biltmore, The Wright Bar, and Frank & Albert's. Three construction crews worked 24 hours a day to complete the hotel. S. M. Benet & Company of Beverly Hills, California, was the contractor, with L. D. Richardson serving as project superintendent. The hotel opened on February 23, 1929.

In 1930, the McArthurs (the owners) lost control of the property to one of their primary investors, William Wrigley Jr., who became full owner. The nearby Wrigley Mansion was built in 1931 and now operates as a private club. In March 1952, Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their honeymoon at the resort. Their favorite cottage in the resort was Cottage I.

Hotel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).