As part of the Last Resorts series, The Show is exploring architectural elements from Phoenix’s iconic resort past that still exist.
The first hidden gem is the Camelback Inn Chapel. Very modest in size, it would be easy to miss this piece of the resort’s history.
Scott Jarson, a longtime realtor in town who specializes in architecturally unique properties, joined The Show to talk about what remains relatively unchanged roughly 85 years later.
Reflecting on the history and architecture of the chapel
SCOTT JARSON: Today, we're at the Camelback Inn. It's a ubiquitous Desert Inn that is morphed through the years, and we're in a very unique structure on the property.
It's one of the few structures here that date back to the early beginnings of the resort, and it's right up by the valet when you check in. But it's the chapel.
It was built in 1938 and it's a stone structure. It's really organic in nature. It's modest in size. It's built out of native Arizona rock. There's little pieces of, of copper ore embedded into the rock here and there. But it's a wonderful, small space and it just has a piece of history. It just says a little Arizona structure in the desert.
Like a lot of people who visit Arizona or those of us who have grown up here, we've all been coming to the Camelback Inn for decades, and we've seen it more from a more traditional sort of adobe structure into some '70s and even 2000 updates. But this structure has always remained the same. The walls, the integrity of the structure been the same since 1938, and it's overlooked. You kind of come in and you get, you get drawn into the grand scheme of the resort. But here it is this little piece of, of history still intact.
It's very modest in size, maybe 16 by 16, nice low ceilings. And we, we happen to be here on a summer day. It's very, very comfortable even though there's not a lick of air conditioning in here. But it was a structure that wasn't meant to be inhabited. I think it was a place of, of reflection and maybe at some point, maybe a light place of worship. But it's not large enough to hold any kind of big events in here.
Here's a little piece that they can preserve unchanged that doesn't have a specific use. In other words, it's not a dining room, it's not a guest room, it can remain as it was.
And I think it really does lure and harken the visitors back to a time when this was a desert place. And you'd come here to interact with things like native stone and small handbuilt spaces.
So I think it serves a number of purposes and one is a great little surprise for the visitors who might be strolling to the parking lot and say, "Hey, what's that building?"
I know I've had a lot of friends through the years, we'd come for brunch, and I'd say, "Let me show you my favorite part of Camelback Inn."
As we've grown up, these desert resorts have either gone away or they've morphed into something a little more complex. But if you go back to the beginnings when people would come here for the dry climate for just a solitary, sort of, adventure in the desert. This is what they were expecting, and this is what you get in these little structures, the deserts all around us.
So we do hear the birds and we're in a heavily landscaped place with beautiful cactus specimens. But what we're hearing is that nature interacting with those.
What I do love about it is, it is a little funky. It — there's not a lot of you know, capital-a architecture here. This is obviously handbuilt. It harkens back a little to sort of Victorian follies, where people would build something maybe out of scale, but from a distance, it looked like a ruined castle, that sort of thing. So to some extent, I feel like this is, this is a little folly in the desert. And it just shows hand of the maker, which I love, too.
You can see the grout lines where somebody obviously built this, this wasn't a big crew. This is probably two or three people really honoring this little building.
Our desert's very special, but it's a harsh environment. And having a respite from the sun, from the heat of the day or even the chill of the night, is something that's almost primal. And you see it in a lot of good desert architecture. And this, this structure is kind of one of those. It's a sense of shelter the minute you walk into it. You're out of the sun, and you're still connected to the Earth.
