The Santa Rita Hotel that will soon fall to the wrecking ball, is merely a shadow of the splendor which once was Tucson’s grandest hotel. A grand hotel that owed its existence to some pesky bedbugs.
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1904 Arizona Daily Star
Rendering of Tucson’s new showplace.
On the evening of February 1, 1904, over 2,000 Tucsonans turned out for the grand opening of Tucson’s new showplace. The Star wrote “When the grand Hotel Santa Rita is open to the public, Tucson will soon thereafter experience a large influx of a class of people she has long wished to come and enjoy our salubrious clime.”
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Star photo files
This undated photo showing the Santa Rita Hotel.
The six-story hotel featured the finest appointments, a dining room and cafe, a sixth floor roof garden and a dance hall. There was a private phone connection, complete with available long-distance, in each room and baths for every one of the 200 rooms. The original lobby opened to the sky with white columns supporting an overhang.
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Star photo files
An undated photo of the lobby of the Santa Rita Hotel.
The chef was none other than Chef Miller, late of the Angelus of Los Angeles. “That a man who has held so important a position with so famed a house as the Angelus could be induced to sever his connections to come to Tucson and the Santa Rita speaks volumes for what the hostelry is to be.”
As for those bedbugs, back in 1901, a visitor named L.V. Raphael had been plagued with the little critters following a stay in one of Tucson’s hotels. He convinced Gen. Levi H. Manning, one of Tucson’s leading citizens, that Tucson needed a modern hotel. Manning, along with Col. Epes Randolph and Fred Ronstadt, backed the plan and the city even donated some of the land.
By the mid-30s, the first of many visiting movie companies stayed at the Santa Rita. Eventually such notables as Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Paul Newman and Gregory Peck would spend time there. Peck was said to have ridden his horse through the lobby.
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1962 Arizona Daily Star
More than 500 spectators attended a quarter horse auction in the hotel lobby.
In addition to the occasional horse in the lobby, the hotel was also a home for cattlemen. The lobby, with straw covering the floor, was used for livestock auctions.
Around the time of the second World War, the Santa Rita was a swinging place with the bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller all playing there.
But, by the 1960s the Santa Rita was showing her age. The city had grown away from the area, the movie people were staying elsewhere and the hotel was on the market. A series of owners took over and by 1972, everything but the south wing was torn down.
Soon what is left of the Santa Rita will be gone. The memories will live on in the photos and stories that survive. And, possibly, with a few of those ghostly inhabitants said to roam the halls.
