Week 68: Getting to the Bottom of Downtown Chandler’s Tunnels
The San Marcos hotel opened in November 1913 with great fanfare, national media attention, and a VIP guestlist a full 500 names long that included leading businessmen and politicians of the time. The luxurious hotel was certainly the gem of early Chandler, despite only being open during the cooler months of the year. It took an awful lot of steam heat to keep the big concrete building warm, especially on the coldest nights of the year. In order to make sure that the wealthy guests at his hotel stayed comfortable, Dr. Alexander J. Chandler had a massive oil furnace installed in the basement of the San Marcos.
The giant furnace, in shape and size not unlike a steam locomotive, was installed more than 20 feet below ground in a subbasement of the hotel, and the rest of the structure was built around it. The smoke stack measured 8 feet by almost 10 feet wide, and towered 30 feet above the rest of the hotel. Clearly this was a machine designed to produce an enourmous amount of steam heat, more than was required of the original 30 guest rooms. In fact, it had been designed to support a hotel more than twice the size of the San Marcos. Original plans for the hotel called for several stories. Only the first two were built in 1913, with the intention of adding more later. But the original furnace had to be large enough to accommodate the entire building, as it would be impossible to expand it once the hotel was built around it.
The size and strength of the furnace was never mentioned in newspaper articles or literature promoting the hotel. This was most likely because Dr. Chandler was promoting the hotel as the place “where summer spends the winter.” He didn’t want his out of state guests to think about cold desert nights, only sunshine and warmth. Nonetheless, a four line note in the January 2, 1914, edition of the local Chandler Arizonan newspaper stated that the 2 month old hotel was installing a concrete oil tank to store fuel oil for the furnace. The new tank would be 18 feet deep.
The furnace heated not only the main hotel building, but also buildings on other properties which belonged to the San Marcos. The Suhuaro Hotel, built across Buffalo Street from the San Marcos, was heated by the furnace. Tunnels under the street carried hot air to the Suhuaro.
Advancements in technology made the San Marcos’ oil furnace obsolete after 20 years. By the mid-1930s, natural gas was popular and had made its way to Chandler. Private residences, businesses, and even the beautiful San Marcos hotel converted to natural gas.
In a June 1936 article, Carl Eckholm, who had taken over operations of the Chandler Improvement Company from Dr. Chandler, crowed about the progress made by installing natural gas. He stated “The inconvenient method which is now necessary to heat the boiler in the San Marcos heating plant will be eliminated. This year with the advent of clean and convenient natural gas. Almost since the founding of the San Marcos it has been necessary to burn wood, coal, and kindling for nearly 24 hours in the hotel’s furnace in order that it might be heated to a degree to handle fuel oil. This year, with natural gas, the entire job can be done in an instant. And that is not all. The worry of the fuel supply will be over. The capacity of our fuel tank is limited. The supply of natural gas is unlimited. We’ll light the furnace about November 15 and forget it until closing time in the spring.” It would have the additional benefit of keeping the hotel clean –soot build up from the oil furnace had ruined furniture on the sun porch on numerous occassions.
The oil furnace was never used again after natural gas was installed at the hotel in 1936. It was far too large to be removed, so walls were built around it. To this day, however, it sits in the basement of the hotel, a forgotten monument to the founding of the San Marcos.