Grand Canyon Park Headquarters: Historic Structure Report

Built to the designs of Park Service architect Cecil J. Doty, the Grand Canyon Park Headquarters was formerly known as the Visitor Center and was completed in 1957. The building epitomized a new style of architecture for the national parks. Initially called the Public Use Building at the Grand Canyon, the building was one of the earliest products of the Mission 66 building program, a one-billion dollar government effort to improve visitor facilities nationwide in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service in 1966. Within the context of the development of a new style of park architecture, sometimes called Park Service Modern, this early building was critical in the visitor center building type development. During Mission 66, the Park Service introduced the comprehensive visitor center as a new building type. The Park Service constructed one hundred new visitor centers, a series of distinct modern buildings representative of post-World War II prosperity and architectural design in the ruid-20th century. Based upon modern architectural designs and the influence of the International Style, Doty's long, onestory building, the Grand Canyon Park Headquarters is orgauized around a central open courtyard and uses contemporary materials, glass, stucco, steel and concrete, and a new building technology to achieve a modern expression in straight clean lines. Aluminum framed awning-type windows and a flat-roofed canopy over the entrance contribute to the contemporary idiom. Unlike the NPS rustic architecture of previous decades, Mission 66 architecture did not seek to incorporate elements of the surrounding landscape but rather sought to achieve an intentional simplicity that deferred to the landscape. This building, however, does not strictly adhere to the new philosophy. This is a more transitional, hybrid building with a gesture toward ornamentation, incorporating subtle references to natural features.

Grand Canyon Park Headquarters: Historic Structure Report

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