Casa Grande Ruins Administrative History

APPENDIX F: CASA GRANDE RUINS NATIONAL MONUMENT
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE BUILDINGS (continued)

The Administration/Museum Building (Visitor Center)

The administration/museum building, now named the visitor center (Building 12), was completed on January 5, 1932 at a cost of $9,166.20. Thomas Vint of the Park Service San Francisco Field Office had originally designed the structure to be built as a square with an open center, but the appropriation was only sufficient to complete the front part of the square. The building had a modified Pueblo architectural style. Built on a concrete foundation, its twenty-four-inch thick adobe walls had stucco on the exterior and lime plaster on the interior. Its flat roof was hidden behind a low parapet wall (figure 29). The major part of the building originally housed offices for the Southwestern Monuments headquarters personnel until October 1942 and for the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument custodian. In December 1940, the Southwestern Monuments Superintendent, Hugh M. Miller, had a private office built on the southwest corner of the structure. [2]

Almost from the day of its completion, monument personnel longed for the day when the administration/museum building would be expanded to the size that Mr. Vint had initially proposed. Finally, in 1963 Congress authorized the funds to increase the visitor center's size to a square building with an open center. Work began on the addition in late 1963. When it was completed in 1964, the restroom building (Building 13) to its rear had been incorporated into the structure for a conference room and an L-shaped wing had been added to achieve the hollow square building (figure 29). Restrooms were relocated into the front part of the structure with entrances off the new, covered porch which ran the length of the building's north side (figure 30). This expanded area, which provided more than double the exhibit space, had exterior walls of both adobe and concrete block covered with stucco. A pole ceiling was built into the lobby. The visitor center retained its modified Pueblo architecture. Cyclical painting maintenance has occurred with the exterior walls coated with a texturized paint in 1976, and 1986. A Dunn-Edwards Elastomeric Wall Coating in a new color termed "Casa Grande Ruins" was applied to the Visitor Center's exterior walls in 1991. Interior walls are painted every two years. In 1975 a one-inch urethane foam coat was applied on the visitor center roof. Maintenance called for painting it with a latex protective coat and reseal every five years with a new foam covering every twenty years. Problems have developed with the foam coat with the result that a plan has been developed to re-roof the building by removing the foam and replacing it with a built-up composition roof. Because this building has been greatly changed in the past twenty-nine years to the extent that it no longer retains its historic integrity, it will not be considered for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. [3]

Figure 30: The Visitor Center