Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District
Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District
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File:Painted Desert VC NPS.jpg | |
Location | One Park Rd., Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona |
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Coordinates | Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
Architect | Neutra, Richard; Alexander, Robert |
Architectural style | Modern Movement, International Style |
NRHP Reference # | 05000284 |
Added to NRHP | April 15, 2005[1] |
The Painted Desert Community Complex is the administrative center of Petrified Forest National Park. The community center includes administrative facilities, utility structures and National Park Service employee housing, planned by architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander as part of the Mission 66 park facilities improvement program. Work on the community began in 1961 and was completed by 1965. The complex contrasts with earlier Park Service architecture that sought to blend with the environment. The Painted Desert community used straight manufactured materials that deliberately draw a contrast with the natural environment.
The most significant building is the Painted Desert Visitor Center, designed as a severely modernist structure that includes administrative offices., a visitor center, an auditorium, a clinic and staff apartments. Other structures include a community center, school and a Fred Harvey Company concession building.[2]
Neutra and Alexander paid particular attention to the division of the complex into public and private areas, using low walls to divide the Park Service service area from the central zone, and setting the inward-facing residential areas at a distance. Pedestrian circulation paths are used as defining organizing elements.[3]
The original landscape design used non-native plants that required regular watering. Removal of irrigation caused these plants to die, altering the landscape.[3]
References
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- Pages with broken file links
- Richard Neutra buildings
- Buildings and structures in Petrified Forest National Park
- Mission 66
- Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona
- Park buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona
- 1965 establishments in Arizona
- Buildings and structures in Apache County, Arizona
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Modernist architecture in Arizona
- National Register of Historic Places in Apache County, Arizona
- Arizona Registered Historic Place stubs