Arizona Architecture from the Archives

McArthur admired Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of textile-block slab construction and requested Wright’s help and technical assistance. Wright agreed to serve as a consultant on the project for three months in 1928, with the understanding that Albert Chase McArthur was to be the architect of the hotel. After the hotel opened, there was a controversy over whether McArthur or Wright was the architect of the building. Wright often contradicted himself on the matter, sometimes claiming credit for the building but also expressing that McArthur was the architect and that Wright acted only as a consultant. This elevation drawing shows the textile block construction of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.

Although best known for the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Albert Chase McArthur designed other projects in Phoenix. Among them is the D.B. Morgan House, designed in 1926 and built in 1927. The residence is an excellent example of the Pueblo Revival style.

The design for the Fifth Avenue Medical Building included stilt-like columns to raise the building above its site. Decorative concrete shading panels and underground parking provide protection from the sun.

Blaine Drake established his own architectural practice in Phoenix in 1945. Over a long career, he designed approximately 200 projects, nearly two-thirds of them built. Most of his work was in the Phoenix area and focused on residential architecture, including the Graham Cottages on East Camelback Road in Phoenix.

One of Blaine Drake’s Influences was Usonian architecture, a term popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to residential designs that featured open living areas, built-in furnishings, use of local materials, low roofs, and consideration of light, shade, and sun angles. Drake really adapted these concepts specifically for the desert environment to include favoring the sun on the south elevation to provide light in the winter and shade in the summer. In the 1950s, Blaine Drake was active in bringing his own brand of modernist, Usonian-influenced designs to residential architecture, such as the Washburn Residence.

Harold Housley
Archivist, Design and the Arts Special Collections

Harold.Housley@asu.edu 
(480) 965-6370