Who designed the San Marcos Hotel?
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Arthur Burnett Benton was a Peoria, Illinois, born architect who started his career designing depots for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads. He moved to California with his family in 1891 and quickly developed an affinity for the Spanish missions that dot the California landscape. In 1896, Benton, Charles Lummis, and Sumner Hunt founded the California Landmarks Club, dedicated to preserving and restoring the missions. Benton’s architectural designs were heavily influenced by the historic missions, and he became one of the foremost architects of the Mission Revival style of architecture.
Benton’s most famous work, the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, and several of his works in Los Angeles, caught the attention of Dr. Alexander J. Chandler. Chandler, who lived in LA at the time, was looking for an architect to make his dream of a new Pasadena of the Salt River Valley a reality. He commissioned Benton to design a town with a grandhotel at its center; the town would become Chandler and the hotel would become the San Marcos Hotel.
Despite being a prolific architect in California, the San Marcos Hotel is Benton’s only known work outside of that state.