Bonnie Henry: For 75 years, Arizona Inn has said: 'This is Tucson'

"We have to replace it once during the season," says Patty Doar, proprietor of the Arizona Inn, founded by her grandmother, Isabella Greenway.

Of course they do. Fake Christmas trees may adorn other hotels. Not the Arizona Inn.

On Sunday, Tucson's grande dame of hotels will quietly celebrate her inn's 75th anniversary.

Somehow, a glitzy splash would seem out of place.

"We'll be putting historic photos up in the lobby and rotating them throughout the year," says Doar's son, Will Conroy, who is now president of the inn, with Doar serving as chief executive officer.

Like Doar, Conroy has a firm grasp of the inn's storied past, which earned it a listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

"We don't have to react to market forces," says Conroy. "We have a true sense of who we are."

The same could be said for Greenway — congresswoman, philanthropist and founder of the Arizona Inn.

Widowed twice before she turned 40, Greenway moved to Tucson in the late 1920s and started up the Arizona Hut, a furniture factory for disabled World War I veterans.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a close friend of Greenway's, had done something similar near President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park, N.Y., says Doar.

But when the Depression hit, people stopped buying the Hut's furniture. So Greenway opted to build a hotel in the Mediterranean-Spanish Colonial Revival style — two private homes and 86 rooms and suites spread across the 14 acres she had bought in 1927.

All of it filled with furniture from the Hut. And all of it slathered in bright pink. Doar swears the story is true that her grandmother told the painting contractor to paint the inn the same color as her forehead.

"But I think maybe paints are brighter now," Doar concedes.

Greenway also insisted that each room have a mountain view — which she assured by lying down during construction on a plank-and-sawhorses "bed" in the middle of each room.

Such attention to detail failed her at least once. After the Arizona Inn opened with a dance on the evening of Dec. 18, 1930, one of the male guests pointed out the absence of a men's room.

"The next day, my grandmother called to her Ajo miner friends, and they blasted out underneath what is now the concierge desk and made a men's room," says Doar.

Built in three months at a cost of $150,000, the inn doubled in size the following year, for an additional $125,000.

"We've never expanded," says Doar. But there has been plenty of restoration. While the Hut gradually faded away, two full-time cabinetmakers still keep busy, lovingly restoring everything from guest furniture to the check-in desk.

Once surrounded by desert, the Arizona Inn now sprawls in the heart of Tucson on Elm Street, east of a bustling Campbell Avenue. Even so, all is soothing oasis within these walls and throughout its many terraces.

After Prohibition ended, one of those terraces became a bar. And in 1937, Greenway added the swimming pool and tennis courts.

"We have photos of Gary Cooper and Clark Gable out by the pool," says Conroy.

True to tradition, he and his mother will name-drop only guests who have died. Among them: Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and Katha-rine Hepburn, superstars of another age.

Every so often, someone will offer to buy the place. "I just put it in a drawer. The inn is not for sale," says Doar.

"We live in a virtual world now," she adds. "You can visit the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. But this is real. For four generations, people have walked in here and said, 'This is Tucson.' "

● Buy reprints of Bonnie Henry's 1992 book, "Another Tucson."

● Available for $29.95 from cafepress.com/azstarnet

● Or call 1-877-809-1659. The product number is 13596486.