Hotel · Gallup, New Mexico · Built 1936; later additions east and west
El Rancho Hotel
A rambling stone, brick and log hotel of 1936 on Route 66 in Gallup, built by R. E. 'Griff' Griffith to house the film companies shooting Westerns nearby; its two-story lobby wraps a walk-in fireplace and split-log stairs.
History
Hollywood had been shooting in the red-rock country around Gallup since the late 1920s, and R. E. 'Griff' Griffith, a film man usually described as the brother of the director D. W. Griffith, came to town in the early 1930s to direct a picture. He liked the place and returned to build a hotel suited to the trade. Joe Massaglia built it in 1936 on Route 66 about a mile east of downtown, in an area growing up around the tourist traffic of the decade, and across the road from the grounds of the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, which brought crowds every summer. The hotel opened in 1937, with staff trained by the Fred Harvey Company.
For nearly thirty years El Rancho was the base for casts and crews filming Westerns around Gallup, from the 1940s into the mid-1960s, and its guest list ran from Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn to John Wayne, Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan. Rooms were later named for the stars, and the lobby balcony became a gallery of production photographs. Additions extended the building east and west. When Interstate 40 bypassed the old highway, business fell away, and by 1987, when the hotel was documented for the National Register as part of a survey of Gallup's historic resources, it stood vacant. Armand Ortega, a dealer in Native American arts whose family ran park concessions across the West, bought it at a bankruptcy auction and restored it.
“The ambiance of this room is that of rusticated western grandeur mixed with the feel of a hunting lodge.”
Architecture
The hotel centers on a three-story block with a wood-shake roof and brick and stone chimneys. Random ashlar stone forms the first floor, brick the upper floors, in places laid in a deliberately wavy pattern that gives the walls what the nomination calls a rusticated fantasy appearance. A tall portico on six square posts carries a second-floor balcony, a touch of the Southern plantation, over three roughhewn doors with porthole lights in brick arches. Inside, the two-story lobby has a basketweave brick floor, a criss-cross balustraded balcony, a cage-like registration office and, at the back, a walk-in fireplace of brick and stone flanked by curving split-log stairs with railings of bent, polished limbs. Neon over the entrance announces the hotel's slogan.
What to look for
- Wavy-laid brickwork on the older sections
- Plantation-style portico and balcony on square posts
- Walk-in brick and stone fireplace in the lobby
- Twin split-log stairways with bent-limb railings
- Photographs of film stars along the lobby balcony
Setting
El Rancho stands on the old Route 66 alignment, East 66 Avenue, about a mile east of downtown Gallup, with the Santa Fe main line and Interstate 40 close by. The red sandstone mesas used in so many Westerns rise north and east of town, and the Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo lie a short drive away.
Timeline
- 1936Hotel built by Joe Massaglia for R. E. Griffith
- 1937El Rancho opens
- 1940s–1960sBase for film companies shooting Westerns near Gallup
- 1987Documented for the National Register while vacant
- c. 1988Bought at a bankruptcy auction by Armand Ortega and restored
Where sources differ
- The nomination dates the building to 1936; Wikipedia gives 1937 as the opening year.
- Griffith's relationship to D. W. Griffith is widely reported but not documented in the nomination.
- The exact National Register listing date and the year of Ortega's purchase are not given in the sources.
