Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District: Cultural Landscape Report, Petrified Forest National Park, National Park Service

John Milner Associates, contractor

After much deliberation of where to place the new administrative headquarters for the Petrified Forest National Park, a decision was reached in 1956 that emphasized the need to place the site in close proximity to Route 66 where visitors entered the park on their way to Petrified Forest, many not realizing that the Painted Desert existed in the same area. The National Park Service (NPS) together with Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander envisioned a headquarters that would provide visitors with an “oasis” experience. Having traveled a long and dusty road to reach the Painted Desert, the Complex would offer visitors refreshment as well as interpretation and information. Neutra developed a prospectus that discussed the effect of desert conditions, particularly wind, on a complex such as the one envisioned. His design for the Painted Desert Community Complex (PDCC) resulted in a complex that was a nexus of facilities sheltering each other, yet separated by landscape features into zones of private and public use. A Visitor Center was the focal point of the Complex, with a plaza that contained plantings, benches, a reflecting pool and shade trees. The plaza was designed to interpret the ‘degeneration’ of the giant prehistoric species into petrified specimens and the ‘tiny relatives’ of the present day. An interpretive second plaza or open area, containing native plants, linked the main plaza with the residential area. Together these spaces were intended to introduce the visitor to the ancient history of the park with a glimpse of the region’s transformation from lush forest to arid desert. Every element of the Complex reinforced the modernist aesthetic in both materials and form, with concrete, steel, and glass as the main materials; and a design idiom that focused on flat roofs, smooth lines, and low geometric forms. Neutra used this aesthetic in response to conditions he found at the Painted Desert, employing techniques such as high walls that were intended to protect against the desert wind and heat of the sun, while allowing the color and texture of the desert landscape to enter the Complex in a subtle manipulation of surface materials and plantings. Based upon the GMP preferred alternative and the planned projects discussed above, this CLR will provide guidance for undertaking rehabilitation of the cultural landscape. The park is particularly interested in suggestions for substitutions of invasive exotic plants; suggestions for reducing the extent of plantings that require high water use, while still meeting the overall intent of the original landscape design; landscaping techniques that may be helpful in reducing water pooling around building foundations; improvements to land contouring to improve drainage around structures that will not detract from the integrity or intent of the cultural landscape; and suggestions for basic treatment of housing courtyards. John Milner Associates, Inc. (JMA), working in association with Woolpert, LLP, was contracted in July 2004 to complete a Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) for the Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District. This CLR includes administrative data, site history, existing conditions documentation, landscape significance and integrity evaluation, and treatment. This CLR is intended to provide the park with general guidelines and specific design recommendations for the preservation, rehabilitation, and restoration of landscape resources within the PDCC that park staff may use when completing Section 106 compliance materials, and that NPS designers may use when preparing landscape project documents that involve cultural landscape resources within the PDCC district. The use of this information by NPS planners will provide information necessary to protect and preserve this listed National Register district and ensure that future rehabilitation considers the significant landscape character and features of this district.

Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District: Cultural Landscape Report, Petrified Forest National Park, National Park Service

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