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

NPS Intermountain Regional Office

The Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District is located within Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona. Petrified Forest is bounded by the Navajo Indian Reservation to the north, northeast, and northwest, and by private lands and state trust lands. This 109,001 acre park features one of the largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood in the world and more than 43,000 acres of the Painted Desert. Less than 5% of the park is developed, which provides a relatively unimpaired experience for visitors. The Painted Desert Community Complex resides 1 mile from the Painted Desert near Int. 40 and encompasses 23 contributing buildings, sites, and structures that comprise a self‑contained, architect‑designed, desert community. This complex was designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander in 1958 to serve as the park’s headquarters, including administrative offices, maintenance facilities, visitor and resident services, employee housing, and a designed landscape with features. This 24‑acre complex maintains its original form, footprint, spatial organization, and function, but most of the designed landscape features have all but disappeared. The period of significance is 1961‑1965. The condition of the property is poor as of 2008. In their prospectus, “Homes for National Park Service Families on a Wind‑Swept Desert,” Neutra & Alexander divided the Painted Desert Community Complex into four areas: the Commercial Area, including the Administration Building/Visitor Center, Apartment Wing, Fred Harvey Restaurant/Curio Store and Service Station, Central Plaza, and Entrance Station/Gatehouse; the Industrial Area, which contains the Maintenance Building and Vehicle Storage Building; the Recreation Area that includes the Community Building and School Building; and the Residential Area, including the Teacherage Apartments, Residences, Carports, and Trailer Court Building with associated Trailer Court. The focal point of the complex lies at its center, where administrative and visitor services are oriented around a central plaza. The Painted Desert Community Complex is exceptionally important and nationally significant for its association with Mission 66, a nation‑wide infrastructure improvement program implemented by the National Park Service from roughly 1956 until 1966. With the onset of World War II, the National Park Service was reduced to minimal staff and visitor services. All new construction projects halted and preventative maintenance was intentionally neglected. Shortly after the war, however, tourism increased dramatically. Even though the demand for facilities and visitor services intensified, the NPS budget for equipment, materials, and personnel did not increase and NPS was struggling to provide visitor services. Mission 66 was a development strategy that would address long‑neglected repair, restoration, and new construction projects. It provided NPS with the means to improve park infrastructure and increase visitor services over the next ten years. This district is also exceptionally important and nationally significant as an architecturally distinct example of Mission 66 design and representing a prominent work of Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander. As a result of the large number of Mission 66 construction projects, this program established a precedent for the “park service modern” style, which is a distinctive new style of park architecture that amounted to a Park Service adaptation of contemporary American modern architecture. The Painted Desert Community Complex exemplifies “park service modern” architecture and represents a unique and noteworthy example of Neutra & Alexander’s architectural design for the National Park Service. This complex signifies their distinct approach to modern wind‑swept desert design and is one of only two properties their architectural firm completed for the National Park Service as part of the Mission 66 initiative.

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

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