El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon National Park - NO CC
ET Rotunda Combined.jpg - width=1332 height=1440
ET Street Entrance Combined.jpg - width=1422 height=1430
Back Porch Combined.jpg - width=1252 height=1434
ET Employee Lot Combined.jpg - width=1261 height=1426
ET Lobby Combined.jpg - width=1260 height=1437
ET Check-in Combined.jpg - width=1143 height=1435
ET Dining Hall Combined.jpg - width=1211 height=1392
ET Mezzanine Combined.jpg - width=1263 height=1432
ET Foundation.jpg - width=1432 height=890
ET 1st Floor.jpg - width=1432 height=891
ET 2nd Floor.jpg - width=1431 height=892
ET 3rd Floor.jpg - width=1432 height=891
et combo.jpg - width=1389 height=919

OK, here's my first foray into the realm of making copies of real-world buildings. (Some of my skyscrapers were inspired by real buildings, but that mostly means I copied the parts of the exterior that captured my interest, and then did whatever struck my fancy with the rest. On the other hand, this lot is, as near as I can make it, an exact copy of the El Tovar Hotel, both inside and out) If you want to see the real building (or make a reservation for your next visit to Grand Canyon National Park!) here's the hotel's website: http://www.grandcanyonlodges.com/lodging/el-tovar/

This hotel is one of my favorite buildings in the world, so I know and want to share more about its history than many people might care to read. Plus, I worked as a Park Ranger for 4 summers, and the human history of the region in general was one of my favorite things to share with park visitors. That being said, if this section gets boring for you, just skip it.


The thing that really began to change this situation was the arrival of a spur line from the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1901. Since up until then the main method of access to the canyon was a bumpy, jarring, and thoroughly unpleasant 2-day stagecoach ride, the possibility of fast and comfortable rail service to the rim dramatically increased the number of people visiting the Grand Canyon on their vacations. It also meant that many visitors started demanding more from their lodgings than was available at the time.
During this era, the preeminent railroad hospitality company was the Fred Harvey company, which maintained a series of railside dining rooms and hotels, commonly known as Harvey Houses (and staffed by the famous Harvey Girls, yes, like the Judy Garland musical of the same name. If you haven't seen it, don't.

The exterior of the hotel building was designed by American-born architect Charles Frederick Whittlesey, who was the Chief Architect for the railway at the time, having designed the late great Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque NM. His design was for a European-style hunting lodge with Mission-style influences throughout it. The lodge was designed to take advantage of local resources, using native stone extensively in its lower levels. Unusual for a construction in the region at that time, the El Tovar was originally designed to be wired for electricity, giving it one more leg up on the other hotels in the community.
The interior of the hotel was designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, who would go on to design many other Harvey Houses and hotels for the ATSF railway across the Southwester USA, as well as many smaller hotels, gift shops, and rest houses throughout Grand Canyon, over the course of her career, establishing architecture as a profession in which women could compete against a largely male establishment, and emerge successful. For the El Tovar, she used a combination of Craftsman, Arts-And-Crafts, Mission, and Native American styles, resulting in an eclectic and distinctive feel throughout the hotel. Interestingly, with the exception of a few of the suites on the northern tip of the hotel (the righthand wing on this lot), none of the rooms provide guests with a direct view of the canyon, despite being only a few feet from the edge. The reasoning behind this was that, aside from hotels, the Fred Harvey Company made a great deal of its revenue by providing "detours," basically guided tours to places of interest in the region. By denying guests to the hotel a sweeping canyon vista from their rooms, Colter encouraged them to take advantage of these tours, since they couldn't just sit around the hotel to see everything they had come to see.
After the El Tovar was constructed, it quickly replaced the existing hotels to become the lodging establishment of choice for visitors to Grand Canyon. In its shadow, many of the ramshackle inns that had previously commanded the attention of visitors began to wither and die, eventually being replaced by other grand hotels built by Fred Harvey Company and its successors. The El Tovar hotel remained the most luxurious and the grandest though, and it became a center of community life for Grand Canyon Village. This tradition of serving the interests of both visitors and community residents continues to this day, with the hotel providing tens of thousands of visitors with a restful place to return to each night and strike out into the canyon again early the next morning, and providing an elegant venue for community events like holiday dances or graduation ceremonies for the local high school (I myself graduated on the north porch of the El Tovar, the deck shown in the next picture, along with my 17 fellow classmates. Go Phantoms!

Today, the lodge is operated by Xanterra Parks and Resorts. In 1974 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1987 the hotel was declared as a National Historic Landmark, ensuring it receives protected status and securing its landmark position in Grand Canyon National Park's historic district for years to come. It has played host to presidents, kings, movie stars, and many other celebrities over its more than 100-year history. It provides a direct link to the heady days of early explorers and pioneers in the Southwest, while still being welcoming and respectable in the modern age. Perhaps the most striking building in Grand Canyon Village, the El Tovar Hotel has certainly earned its place in the history of Grand Canyon.
OK, I'm done with my long-winded history of the building! (unless people have questions!


Returning now to the world of the Sims, this lot differs from the actual hotel in a few notable ways, as you can see in some of the attached pictures I've included, with comparisons to the real hotel. The two wings that house the guest rooms are each only about 1/3 as long as they are in actuality, and due to the limitations of Sim architecture, they do not bend out towards the road at about a 20-degree angle like the wings of the actual hotel do. The real building is also on a somewhat steep hill, but to keep the edges of this lot level, I modified the southern (lefthand) wing, eliminating the basement and lower level of rooms. The dining hall is also considerably smaller than its real-world counterpart, due to the fact that the lot does not extend far enough to expand it to its full size and still have room for the kitchen and other employee areas.
The rooms themselves are also a notable deviation. As with many old hotels, the rooms of the real El Tovar are small by modern standards, and would not be big enough to include some of the necessities of the game (dressers, tables, and the like) so I expanded them considerably. I don't include CC with my lots, so they are also not as close a copy as other parts of the hotel, but they do capture the feel of the normal rooms. "But Z!" you might say, "These rooms are boring!" To that I say, "Yes. They are." Aside from the suites, which I have included in some fashion or another (even if they're even less accurate than the standard rooms), the rooms of the El Tovar hotel are pretty unremarkable, and they look much more like a normal hotel than the public areas of the lodge.

The public areas of the El Tovar are much larger than those found in many hotels, which allows them to be used by both hotel guests as well as visitors staying elsewhere who just happen to be passing by. (Hint- the restaurant and gift shops of this hotel are just as good for vacationing Sims staying elsewhere as they are for hotel guests). During the hot, busy summer months in northern Arizona, the cool shade and relaxing couches of the El Tovar Lobby (shown above) are a welcome sight to tired visitors, fresh from a long canyon hike, while in the winter, the blazing fire and strong hot coffee offer a much-needed respite from the cold snowy canyon. (Hint- put this hotel in a mountain vacation neighborhood that has all 4 seasons if you want to get the most realistic placement you can).
The El Tovar also appears on many lists of "Haunted Houses of the Southwest," as there is supposedly the ghost of a Harvey Girl who haunts the upper floors of the hotel and disturbs the sleep of some of the guests... If you feel like your Sims might enjoy this aspect of the building, just kill off a female Sim wearing the basegame maid's uniform, and move her grave to this lot. The ghost is said to be most active on the upper floors, so hiding the urn in one of the upper level public spaces is your best bet. I myself have never felt any kind of supernatural or otherworldly presence when I've been in the hotel, but to each their own... some people are adamant that they've been awakened from their hotel beds in the middle of the night by the ghost of one of the Harvey Girls who tended to the guests of this hotel in its early days.

As a destination hotel, the prices of these rooms are fairly high even for the basic rooms, and if your Sims choose to stay in some of the larger, more opulent suites, prices can soar to well above $2000 a night- not for the faint-hearted traveler!

Now to the technical aspects- this is a huge lot! 5x6 and more than $1M worth of building and furniture means that it will probably lag on some machines, so just be aware of that. The 5th and 7th floors are also dummy levels, which you may need to address if you choose to change the hotel too dramatically. At the rear of the lot are "employee spaces," which I've tried to design so that your visiting Sims won't have a reason to go there. If you're running into too many lag issues, you can empty out these spaces, or if you want to use them, it should be easy enough to transform them into a spa or rec area or something along those lines. The rotunda area at the front should obviously connect to the street, driveway-like, but the game is fond of erasing the tiles anywhere beyond the sidewalk, so you'll probably want to use moveobjects to put down asphalt connecting the road to the rotunda area. Also, please forgive me for photoshopping the thumbnail picture- I've spent a long time at this building, and it was bothering me not to see the canyon behind it in any of my shots! An unedited version is included with the rest of the screenshots for this lot.
I've playtested the lot a fair amount, and haven't run into any major issues, but if you see any in your downloads, please let me know and I'll do my best to address them- I love this building, and I want this lot to do it justice!
Enjoy!
Lot Size: 5x6
Lot Price: $1,002,746
Additional Credits:
This is a real-world building, so while I made the TS2 version, I didn't design any of it! The building's exterior was designed by Charles Whittlesey, and the interior originally designed by Mary Jane Colter, both in the earliest years of the 20th Century. Thanks also to the Xanterra South Rim employees who allowed me to take reference photos of otherwise non-public parts of the building (even if I did get some odd looks taking pictures of the employee parking lot and the tile outside the bathrooms!).
Thanks also to the members of the MTS community who wrote the various tutorials on dummy levels and other tricks I used in making this lot as close to reality as possible.
El Tovar Hotel_1.zip
Download
Uploaded: 23rd Mar 2014, 3.35 MB.
1,854 downloads.
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1. Download: Click the download link to save the .rar or .zip file(s) to your computer.
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Updated: 24th Mar 2014 at 8:36 PM - Roofing Accessibility Glitch
#no cc, #el tovar, #hotel, #lodge, #national park, #park, #whittlesey, #colter, #mary colter, #grand canyon, #canyon, #hunting, #mountain, #fred harvey, #harvey house, #southwest, #arizona
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![]() | Pets |
![]() | Seasons |
![]() | Bon Voyage |
![]() | Free Time |
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Stuff Pack | |
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![]() | Glamour Life |
![]() | Celebration |
![]() | H&M Fashion |
![]() | Teen Style |
![]() | Kitchen & Bath |
![]() | Ikea Home |
![]() | Mansion and Garden |
About Me
You might call me a CC-atheist. While I'll use every cheat code in the book, I won't use anything that Maxis didn't ship with the game in one fashion or another. Ergo, you can rest assured that all my lots are CC-free.
Some creators describe themselves as constantly juggling projects. I suppose I do that too, except I'm really really bad at juggling, so I just throw lots of projects as high as I can, and sometimes forget all about them until they come crashing down on my head!
I won't *exactly* do requests, but since I pivot from lot to lot constantly, if there's a place you hope to see from me, there's a good chance that I've already started it! I make no promises, but feel free to ask about lots you want to see- you might inspire me to finish something!
My lots are my own work- I put a lot of effort into them, so have fun with them, use them for storytelling or making Sim movies, but please don't reupload them, in whole or in part, anywhere, including here on MTS!
One day I will rule the world with an iron fist and all will kneel before me.