What is the Hilton Garden Inn Scottsdale Old Town?
On the surface it’s a familiar sight: a seven-story Hilton Garden Inn with about 200 rooms, a pool, a restaurant and bar, and the brand’s dependable business-traveler rooms. It opened in 1999 on Indian School Road, across from the north side of the Civic Center, in the part of Old Town where City Hall, the library and the museum blocks meet.
What makes it worth a closer look is the ground it stands on. For sixty years this was Scottsdale High School, the town’s only high school until 1959. It was also its meeting hall: the first Town Council met there after the 1951 incorporation, and congregations without churches held services in its rooms. The school closed in 1983, the buildings came down between 1987 and 1992, and the hotel went up on part of the campus. In 2011 the alumni put a bronze plaque on the hotel’s curved wall, mascot caricature included. It’s the only thing on the site that tells you what was here.
As a place to stay, it’s sensible and central. The Civic Center lawns are across the street, Scottsdale Stadium is about half a mile south, Fashion Square is a little over half a mile north, and the Stetson Drive bars are a few blocks away. Breakfast is generally an extra charge, which is the main thing that separates it from the free-breakfast hotels nearby.
It suits business travelers, spring-training fans and anyone who wants a big-brand hotel in the middle of town. Anyone looking for resort grounds or a pool scene should look elsewhere.
How to do the Hilton Garden Inn right
Walk to the ballpark. In late February and March this is one of the best-placed hotels in town for spring training. Scottsdale Stadium is about a ten-minute walk south through the Civic Center, which saves you the game-day parking scramble on Osborn Road.
Work out breakfast in advance. The restaurant serves a cooked breakfast, but it usually isn’t free. Check whether your rate or Hilton Honors status includes it. If not, the Breakfast Club on Scottsdale Road is a walkable alternative.
Use the Civic Center. Cross Indian School Road and you’re in the city’s central park: fountains, rose beds and sculpture around City Hall, plus the Civic Center Library, which is cool and quiet on a summer afternoon. The Little Red Schoolhouse, Scottsdale’s history museum, is a few minutes south.
Do the three-stop history walk. Start with the alumni plaque on the hotel’s curved wall. Then walk to the tall white pillars at Drinkwater Boulevard and Indian School Road, which copy the columns on the front of the school’s Old Main. End at the Little Red Schoolhouse, which has held the school’s yearbooks and trophies. It takes about twenty minutes and explains a lot about the town.
Parking and pets. Self-parking costs extra by the night, so check the current rate when you book. Pets are welcome for a fee and with a weight limit.
Dinner on foot. Fifth Avenue’s restaurants, including Citizen Public House and FnB, are a short walk west.
From the Beavers’ campus to a hotel lobby
For most of the twentieth century, growing up in Scottsdale meant going to school on this block. Scottsdale High School opened for the 1922–23 school year on ten acres donated by the family of Charles L. Miller. Its first graduating class, in 1923, had three students. Because the town had few large rooms of its own, the campus was used for everything: Mormon services in the 1940s, Episcopal services from 1953, the first Town Council meetings after incorporation in 1951, the Miracle of the Roses pageant every December from 1953 to 1966, and Scottsdale Community College’s first evening classes in 1969.
District enrollment was falling, and the school’s land on Indian School Road had become valuable. In January 1983 the school board voted 3–2 to close Scottsdale High instead of Arcadia. The last class graduated that May. The district got approval to lease the site in 1985, it was rezoned for development in 1986, and demolition began in 1987. Alumni and preservationists objected, but the City Council had no say over the school district. Old Main, the last building, came down in 1992.
The hotel came at the end of that story. Construction started in early 1998, and the seven-story Hilton Garden Inn opened in 1999, owned by CSM Lodging of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was part of a small wave of business hotels downtown at the end of the 1990s, alongside the AmeriSuites on Third Avenue (now Hyatt Place) and the Summerfield Suites on Drinkwater (now Hyatt House). The Civic Center next door and Fashion Square up the road made this a natural spot for one.
For years the site had nothing to explain its past. That changed in June 2011, during the city’s 60th anniversary, when a small alumni committee raised money and negotiated with the hotel to mount a bronze plaque on its curved wall, declaring the site the permanent home of the Beavers. A new stretch of Drinkwater Boulevard had already been named Scottsdale High Way in 1992, and the white columns at that corner copy Old Main’s.
It’s an ordinary hotel on an important piece of ground. Scottsdale didn’t save its high school, but you can still find it here if you look.