On the route to a renaissance - A town attempts a renewal on old Route 66

Bill Strubbe reports in the Boston Globe :

At first glance dusty Winslow still appears a bit hardscrabble, but it has made a remarkable comeback reclaiming some of its heyday past. Once a prominent location on both Route 66 and the transcontinental railway, and home to an airport designed by Charles Lindbergh, Winslow was northern Arizona's largest town until the 1960s. With the decline of rail travel and the advent of nonstop coast-to-coast flights, the death knell was sounded when Interstate 40 bypassed downtown in the 1970s. Winslow's shops boarded up; many residents moved on; and it became a near ghost town.

Central to Winslow's resurrection was the restoration of La Posada Hotel a stone's throw from the train tracks. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel's plight caught the attention of Allan Affeldt, a California resident who believed that if the hotel were properly restored, it could jump-start a citywide renaissance.

Showing me around the hotel, Affeldt explained that in 1928, Mary Jane Colter, the genius behind tourist facilities like Hopi House and the Lookout Tower at the Grand Canyon, was commissioned by the legendary Fred Harvey Co. to design La Posada to cater to the burgeoning tourist trade coming to admire the nearby Grand Canyon, Little Painted Desert, and Petrified Forest. Rather than another posh lodge, Colter incorporated indigenous Southwest motifs and styles to create a work of art right down to the painted-tin light fixtures and whimsical jackrabbit ashtrays.

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