History
The El Monte Hotel at 925 First Avenue in Monte Vista was built in 1930 and 1931 by the contractors Dutton and Kendall, at a reported cost of roughly $112,000. It was designed in the Pueblo Revival style by the architect E. Floyd Redding, and it was financed in an unusual manner for a small San Luis Valley town: a local committee raised the bulk of the capital through public subscription, selling one-hundred-dollar shares to assemble about $72,600, which was combined with a bank mortgage to complete the project.
The hotel is a substantial Pueblo Revival composition of stuccoed mass walls, stepped and battered parapets, projecting wooden vigas, and recessed door and window openings that read as Spanish-Pueblo in idiom while concealing a modern framed and masonry structure. Pueblo Revival was, by 1930, the dominant civic and commercial idiom of the broader Southwest, popularized in New Mexico through the work of John Gaw Meem and others, and Monte Vista's El Monte Hotel brought that vocabulary into the San Luis Valley as a deliberate expression of regional identity.
The building was conceived as a community asset rather than a speculative venture, intended to give the agricultural town a respectable hotel for travelers, drummers, and visitors to the surrounding ranch country. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 7, 1990, under reference 90000870.
The property today operates as the Monte Villa Inn, continuing in lodging use under private ownership.
Within Colorado's Pueblo Revival inventory, the El Monte Hotel is among the more ambitious San Luis Valley examples, paralleling the courthouses, schools, and depots elsewhere in the state that adopted the Pueblo idiom as a visible link to the older Hispano building culture of the upper Rio Grande.
Common questions
What is the El Monte Hotel?
The El Monte Hotel is a historic Pueblo Revival hotel building in Monte Vista, Colorado, listed on the National Register of Historic Places under reference number 90000870. It is a representative example of Pueblo Revival commercial architecture in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley.
When was the El Monte Hotel built?
Construction records for the El Monte Hotel are incomplete. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Where is the El Monte Hotel located?
The El Monte Hotel is located at 925 First Avenue in Monte Vista, Colorado.
Is the El Monte Hotel open to the public?
The property is listed as a private residence in available records. Visitors interested in the historic structure should confirm current operational status directly.
What architectural style is the El Monte Hotel?
The El Monte Hotel is built in the Pueblo Revival style, a regional architectural tradition that draws on the forms of Native American pueblos and Spanish Colonial adobe construction, applied here to early twentieth-century commercial hotel design.
Why is the El Monte Hotel historically significant?
The El Monte Hotel is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places under reference number 90000870. Its Pueblo Revival design represents an important regional expression of revival architecture in Colorado's San Luis Valley.