Georgia O’Keeffe remains the guest who got away.
Terrell White had owned El Rey Inn on Cerrillos Road for only a year or so when he walked into the desk area and was greeted cheerily by the clerk. “Guess who almost stayed here?” the young man chirped. “Who?” “Georgia O’Keeffe. Herself.” White’s mouth fell open. “Why didn’t she stay?” “Well, she had her dog, and I told her we don’t take pets.” “You couldn’t make an exception for Georgia O’Keeffe?!” The desk clerk looked a little offended. “You know I don’t have the authority to make exceptions.” Rules are rules, even at El Rey. Arguably, Santa Fe’s best-kept secret — the place where the ballooning Abruzzos always stayed when in Santa Fe, the place Bill and Barbara Richardson chose to lodge when he was a congressman, and the place where many couples have been married, including the owners — is turning 75 this year. Sprawled across 5 acres off Cerrillos Road near the intersection with St. Michael’s Drive, El Rey is known for its lavish gardens and grounds, its superb free breakfasts, its winding roads and secluded room complexes, its intensively Southwestern decor and its immaculate cleanliness. By far the doyenne of yearly visitors was Ora Sorenti, who came from Farmington with her daughter to attend a week of operas every summer for more than 45 years, until she was 102 years old. “She was the matriarch of El Rey,” White remembered fondly. He also has memories of a couple from El Paso who would celebrate their wedding anniversary with a weekend at El Rey each year. Each year, they would stay in the room with the next-highest number. “I think they made it to Room 40,” White said. “Don’t ever change a thing; it’s just perfect” is the constant plea on lodgers’ comment cards, which is ironic because the history of El Rey is one of change. Route 66 The records don’t show who built the original adobe, 12 rooms with carports in a strip along the barely paved Cerrillos Road in 1936. For a couple of years, U.S. Route 66 hitched up her skirts and swung up through the Capital City and back down to Albuquerque, so the new motor court, as motels were called then, was a feasible economic venture. White thinks the same developer built El Vado Court in Albuquerque as a sister business. Unfortunately, El Vado has fallen on hard times. But El Rey has become more beautiful over the years. “The El Rey is an ongoing work of art, a tradition for 75 years,” White said. “People love it for what it is and what it represents.” White, who bought El Rey in 1973, was born into the hotel business. His parents, Edmund and Rena White, owned Colonial Terrace, a residential hotel in downtown El Paso that was known for its delicious board (breakfast and dinner with the room rent) and its lovely surrounding gardens. After an apprenticeship with his parents and further experiences in the U.S. Army and in Las Vegas, Nev., White decided to re-create his folks’ style in an old hotel in Albuquerque, but the deal fell through. “I kept moving north and went around Santa Fe looking at properties,” he said. “On the way out of town, the broker said he knew of a place I might like although it wasn’t really for sale. It was Indian Market weekend, so the place was busy. It just had good bones and a lot of potential. By Labor Day, I was taking over. It was the fastest deal I’ve ever done.” Those bones were pretty bare. In the 1950s, then owner Len Matthews had enclosed the original individual carports to become sleeping rooms. Matthews also had a swimming pool built to keep El Rey in step with the newer motels in Santa Fe. Neighboring Alamo Lodge, also locally owned, was built in the ’50s just northeast of El Rey’s property line. Many of the elements that make El Rey such a favorite were instituted by White over the past 38 years. The early-’70s oil crisis had a profound effect on travel, and White had to undertake the expensive and laborious project of replacing all of the hotel’s eroded gas and sewer pipes. Those were tough times, he recalled recently, even harder than the recent economic downturn. The gardens are also his doing, he said. “Having nice grounds was something that was always important to my parents, and I guess I brought that sensibility with me,” he said. “It’s always been a passion for my family to have a green environment that is welcoming. The lush grounds are our signature. I planted so many of the trees myself.” Since 1995, the inn has had its own greenhouse, where many of the potted (and basketed) plants are grown, maintained by a grounds staff of 15 or so. “Our grounds people are absolutely passionate about their work — this is their garden,” White said. “I always love the natural look of the hotel,” wrote a recent London visitor. The inn was awarded Backyard Wildlife Habitat status in 2003 by the National Wildlife Federation. Rooms were added in 1977, 1980 and 1983. In 1993, White and his wife, Hanneke, built a two-story, 10-room Spanish Colonial-style courtyard, influenced by the inns of France. Hanneke, a native of the Netherlands, brings a distinctly European consciousness to interior decoration, White said. Several of the furniture items in the Southwest-oriented lobby room are from old French chateaux. “We have a lot of items we’ve picked up at various civic fundraisers over the years, which has been good for the organizations and good for us, too,” White said. With the addition of the two-story building, the name was changed to El Rey Inn. In 1994, 20 years into their tenure, the Whites bought the neighboring Alamo Lodge. “We tore up the asphalt parking lot and created a big garden with a four-seasons fountain,” White said. El Rey Inn incorporated the Alamo’s 21 rooms into what he calls the North Courtyard. Connected by meandering walkways, the north courtyard features a sauna and outdoor whirlpool with a handcrafted fireplace. In 2005, one of the courtyard units was transformed into “El Agua,” a fitness room for guests. “It’s fun to see people congregated out there in the evenings,” he said. The flags The signature flags arrayed across the front of the hotel were pretty much Hanneke’s idea, White said. “We fly the Dutch flag often,” he said, “We fly the flags of neighboring states, because so many of our visitors come from Colorado, Arizona and Texas. And we fly other European countries because the European visitors just like seeing them.” Europeans seem to have a natural affinity for El Rey, he added. “They come to this country and everything seems to be so homogenous to them after a while. They are looking for something that tells them they’re in northern New Mexico, and that this is a special area with its own rich culture. I guess they find it at El Rey.” El Rey Inn now has 86 rooms and suites, each unique. Paintings and sculptures collected from around the globe adorn the inn. They include more than 100 paintings by White himself and many prints of work by his mother, Rena. Woody Crumbo and other well-known artists are also represented. Much of the décor dates from earlier decades, including post-Deco black-and-white bathroom tiles, Mexican tile murals along the portals that White had done by an artist from El Paso, and Southwestern furniture. The Breakfast Rooms, where Pete and Alice Salazar have presided for 25 years (the pair have won the New Mexico Hotel and Motel Association’s Star of the Industry award more than once), are done in what White insists is a European style. “We don’t change and re-do things just to be doing something,” he said. “If something’s in good shape, we’d rather keep as a treasure.” The result is a hotel often called “quirky” by travel writers, although White said he doesn’t know what’s so quirky about taking care of old things. Still, not every hotel has an endearing concrete donkey with big blue eyes— a souvenir of the Alamo Court — nestled into a lush side garden. A wonderful staff White said he knew he was in Santa Fe for good when a flood on the flatlands behind the property breached the back wall and damaged several rooms just before Indian Market weekend in 1980. He was desperately trying to shovel mud, clean and repaint when he suddenly realized his employees — whom he had not summoned — had appeared at his side in the wee hours of the morning. Luisa had called them in — that would be Luisa Lopez Garcia, who worked at El Rey as housekeeping manager for 45 years before her retirement a couple of years ago. At the end of a backbreaking day, White gave Garcia a bonus check to thank the employees for their extra help. She disappeared into a room where the workers were cleaning themselves up and returned in a few minutes with the check. “Keep your check,” she said, handing it back. “We didn’t come here to make money off of you in a bad time.” “That’s when I realized, this place is not like any other,” White said. “And as an employer, that’s a moment like none other I’d ever had.” White’s El Rey Corp., as the parent holding company is called, created a profit-sharing plan for employees in 1981 and has paid about $3 million in benefits to 31 employees. There’s an esprit de corps among the employees, who take an almost proprietorial pride in the place. “I’m as enthusiastic and smitten with the El Rey today as I was 38 years ago, and a big part of that is the wonderful staff we have,” White said.
