After the official conclusion of the Mission 66 program in 1966, Cecil
Doty received the Department of the Interior's distinguished service
award and transferred to the Eastern Office of Design and Construction.
His main project during this time involved working with Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill on the fountains around the Mall. Doty retired two years
later. Two oral history interviews were conducted in the mid-1980s,
when Doty lived in Walnut Creek, California. [45]
In 1990, the year Doty died, he described one of his "pet peeves"the
fact that as a Park Service employee he was always considered a draftsman,
not an architect. [46] Many of the buildings
he designed were constructed without his presence; some without his
ever seeing the finished product. But in his old age Doty could rest
assured that he had made a significant, if largely unheralded, contribution
to the National Park System. Doty is the individual responsible for
the consistency of design that is the Park Service Modern style. The
hand of Cecil Doty influenced nearly every visitor center built, including
three of the five featured in this study. In the same way that Doty
closely imitated Herbert Maier's work, admiring Park Service architects
copied his designs. As we evaluate Mission 66 visitor centers, we should
not become too preoccupied with whether or not a building is an original
Cecil Doty design. The Park Service Modern style, like Park Service
Rustic, was the choice of its day and the work of its generation.