Hotel Valley Ho

Hotel Valley Ho
Hotel Valley Ho
Location within Arizona
General information
Location	6850 East Main Street, Scottsdale, Arizona
Coordinates	33°29′37″N 111°56′0″W / 33.49361°N 111.93333°W / 33.49361; -111.93333
Opening	December 20, 1956
Management	Westroc
Technical details
Floor count	7
Floor area	220,000 square feet (20,000 m2)
Design and construction
Architect	Edward L. Varney (1956) Allen+Philp (2005)
Other information
Number of rooms	194
Number of restaurants	1
Website
https://www.hotelvalleyho.com

Hotel Valley Ho is a historic hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. Also called the Valley Ho and, for 28 years, the Ramada Valley Ho, the hotel was originally designed by Edward L. Varney, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. It first opened in 1956 with a forward-looking and futuristic design. Movie stars and famous baseball players stayed, and the building quickly became known for its trendsetting guests and its fashionable atmosphere. The success of the venture resulted in expansion in 1958, with two additional two-story wings of guest rooms extending to the north. Though initially proposed by Varney, a central tower of guest rooms, rising over the lobby, was not built.

The property was bought by the Ramada hotel chain in 1973, and was redecorated to cover the 1950s design, seen at the time as outdated. No longer in vogue, but centrally located, the hotel remained prominent for years, and hosted conferences, business meetings, and vacationers. Under Ramada management, however, the property began to show a lack of maintenance, and its popularity declined. It closed in 2001 and its demolition was considered when no purchase offers were received. Admirers of the hotel's exemplary architecture and its local history rallied to save it, and it was placed on the Scottsdale Historic Register.

In 2002, the hotel was bought by Westroc Hotels & Resorts and underwent a renovation, which was completed in 2005. Conceived anew by the architectural firm Allen+Philp, a seven-story tower with guest rooms and condominiums was built above the lobby, in the spirit of Varney's proposal. New restaurants were incorporated, including a retro-chic seasonal-American restaurant (ZuZu), and a Trader Vic's franchise at the northeast end of the property (closed in 2011). The hotel's original jet-age design was restored as much as possible, augmented with 2000s-era fixtures.

The Hotel Valley Ho is a AAA "Four Diamond Award" winner and a member of "Preferred Hotels & Resorts". Author and architect Alan Hess called the hotel "one of the best-preserved mid-century hotels in the country".

Robert and Evelyn Foehl were the first to conceive of the hotel. Robert Foehl trained at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He then bought the Hotel San Marcos in Chandler, Arizona. Following that, he managed the Jokake Inn in Scottsdale. Evelyn Foehl managed the Hacienda del Sol in Tucson as one of the few women in the hotel business. The two established a core of investors to build a new hotel on an 8.86-acre (3.59 ha) site in Scottsdale and to design it, they hired Edward L. Varney, one of the most prominent local architects of the time. Varney set the hotel around a central pool lounge and used extended horizontal lines in the wings where rooms included air conditioning for year-round operation, a first for Scottsdale. A curving porte-cochere with abstract Southwestern designs in cast concrete opened onto a high-ceiling lobby which gave guests a "sense of arrival", a feature often used by Frank Lloyd Wright. The tall lobby connected the guests to a restaurant, a lounge, a nightclub, and the central pool. The interior design was conceived and executed by interior architect Thelma Hawkins, the director of Barker Bros. Phoenix Studio of Interior Design. The project was completed on December 20, 1956 at a cost of $1.5 million, an amount equivalent to $13.2 million in current value.