La Posada Hotel

Mary Colter was one of the most significant American architects of the early 20th century — a designer who worked almost exclusively for the Fred Harvey Company across a four-decade career, producing landmark buildings at the Grand Canyon (Hopi House, Hermits Rest, Lookout Studio, Desert View Watchtower, Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Lodge), at Harvey hotels across the Southwest, and at La Posada specifically. Colter's design philosophy combined deep research into Southwestern Native American and Spanish Colonial building traditions with a kind of imagined-history approach: she would invent a fictional backstory for each building and design every detail to be consistent with that imagined history.

For La Posada, Colter imagined the building as a grand Spanish hacienda established in the 1860s by a wealthy don and continuously expanded across subsequent decades by his descendants. Every architectural choice — the asymmetrical floor plan with multiple wings added over the imagined decades, the mix of architectural styles from earlier and later imagined periods, the wear patterns and patina on woodwork and tile, the placement of gardens to suggest later additions — was designed to be consistent with the fictional family history.

Colter personally oversaw the construction and interior design across multiple years. She designed the furniture, the lighting fixtures, the tile patterns, the wrought iron work, the painted ceilings, the door hardware, and dozens of other custom architectural elements. She traveled to Mexico and Spain for design research and acquired antique furnishings and architectural elements that she incorporated into the building. The total construction cost was approximately $2 million in 1930 dollars (equivalent to roughly $35-40 million today) — an extraordinary investment that reflected both the Harvey Company's confidence in the railway hotel format and Colter's unusual creative freedom on the project.

La Posada opened to guests in 1930 as the showpiece of the Fred Harvey railway hotel system. The hotel typically accommodated travelers arriving on Santa Fe Railway passenger trains, including major transcontinental routes like the Santa Fe Chief and the Super Chief. Guests included Hollywood celebrities (Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Howard Hughes), political figures (Franklin D. Roosevelt, multiple cabinet secretaries, foreign dignitaries), scientific luminaries (Albert Einstein during his lecture tours), and a steady flow of upper-middle-class American travelers who could afford the railway-and-Harvey-hotel travel format.

The hotel operated successfully through the 1930s and 1940s. World War II actually increased traffic temporarily as the Santa Fe Railway became a major military and civilian transportation route to and from the Pacific theater. After the war, however, the combination of rising automobile travel, the development of commercial aviation, and the construction of the Interstate Highway System steadily eroded passenger rail demand. By the mid-1950s, La Posada was operating at substantially reduced occupancy and the Fred Harvey Company was assessing the future of its railway hotel portfolio.

La Posada closed in 1957. The Santa Fe Railway, which owned the property, planned to demolish the building in 1959 to expand rail yard capacity in Winslow. The demolition would have proceeded except that the U.S. Postal Service offered to lease the building for storage and office use — preserving the structure but converting it to industrial use. The Postal Service occupied the building through the late 1990s, and the long postal tenancy preserved La Posada from demolition while allowing the original Mary Colter interiors to deteriorate substantially. By the 1990s the building was substantially structurally intact but interior detail work, gardens, and many architectural features had been damaged, removed, or covered over.

Allan Affeldt and Tina Mion, a Los Angeles-based artist couple, acquired La Posada in 1997. Affeldt had been pursuing the property for several years; he recognized La Posada's architectural significance and was concerned that the building would be lost if the Postal Service vacated without a preservation-minded new owner stepping in. The acquisition included the building, the surrounding grounds, and a substantial commitment to restore the property to operational status as a hotel rather than as a static museum.

The restoration has continued across more than 25 years and remains ongoing. The early years focused on basic structural repair, removal of postal-era partitions and modifications, and reactivation of guest rooms in the wings most easily restored. Subsequent phases have addressed the gardens (which had been completely lost during the postal years and were rebuilt from Mary Colter's original drawings), the dining room (now operating as the Turquoise Room restaurant), the lobby and major public spaces, and progressively more of the original guest rooms. Each restored room has been refurnished with period-appropriate antiques and Colter-designed details recreated from her original drawings where possible.

Tina Mion's artwork is integrated throughout the building. Mion is a substantial painter whose work hangs in major American museum collections, and La Posada functions as something of a permanent installation of her paintings alongside the restored Colter interiors. The combination of Colter's architecture, Mion's contemporary paintings, and Affeldt's careful curation of antique furnishings produces a hotel-and-museum hybrid that is genuinely unique among American historic properties.

The gardens are one of La Posada's most beloved features — multiple separate garden spaces ranging from formal Spanish-style paved courtyards to informal English-style flower gardens to a substantial rear garden with a sundial and seating areas. The gardens were entirely lost during the postal years and were reconstructed by Affeldt and Mion from Colter's original drawings and historic photographs across the late 1990s and 2000s. Mature plantings now make the gardens feel substantially original; the seating areas and walking paths are accessible to visitors who are not overnight guests.

The lobby is the architectural heart of the building — a substantial open space with Spanish Colonial detailing, painted ceiling beams, custom Colter-designed lighting fixtures, antique furnishings, and Mion's paintings hung on the walls. The lobby includes a small museum-style display area with historic photographs, original Colter drawings, and information on the building's history and restoration. Visitors typically spend 20-30 minutes in the lobby and surrounding ground-floor public spaces, browsing the displays and absorbing the unusual ambiance.

Other accessible public spaces include the ballroom (used for events but generally viewable when no event is in progress), several lounges and sitting areas off the main corridor, the gift shop (which sells postcards, books on Mary Colter and Fred Harvey history, regional art, and other merchandise), and the Turquoise Room restaurant entrance (the restaurant itself requires a reservation but visitors can typically peek in to view the dining room).

Non-guest visitors are genuinely welcome at La Posada and the property is set up to accommodate substantial visitor traffic from Route 66 travelers, architecture enthusiasts, and Winslow day-trippers. The lobby and gardens are accessible from approximately 7am through 11pm; the gift shop is typically open 9am to 6pm; the small museum area is included with general visitor access. A formal hotel tour is available at additional cost and runs at scheduled times (typically morning and afternoon) — the tour covers the upstairs guest room hallways, additional architectural details, and the building's history in greater depth than the self-guided ground-floor visit provides.

The Turquoise Room restaurant inside La Posada is the most highly-regarded restaurant on the entire Route 66 corridor and is worth a separate visit for lunch or dinner. Reservations are strongly recommended for dinner and recommended for lunch; the dining room is small and frequently books out 1-2 weeks in advance during peak tourism months.

For visitors interested in the architecture and history but not staying overnight, plan 60-90 minutes for a focused lobby-and-gardens visit, or 2-3 hours to combine lobby exploration with a formal tour and lunch at the Turquoise Room. La Posada pairs naturally with Standing on the Corner Park (three blocks north) and the Old Trails Museum (also in downtown Winslow), making a 3-4 hour afternoon in downtown Winslow easily achievable.