Renaissance hotel decor salutes Phoenix history through stamps

During a recent work trip to Arizona, I stayed at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel. Although I didn’t have time to do any exploring, my room did contain an interesting piece of decor which included an oversized reproduction of an air mail special delivery cover from the 1930s.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything philatelic in my room, so this was quite a surprise. The cover reproduction’s corner card identifies it as originating at the Hotel Adams, which, it turns out, no longer exists.

According to a Wikipedia article, the Hotel Adams was built in what is now downtown Phoenix in 1896. The hotel burned to the ground in 1910, killing two people, but a replacement was built the following year and served the Phoenix area until 1973.

It was in that year that the second Hotel Adams was demolished, to be replaced by the Adams Hotel that opened in 1975. Since that time, the hotel has been through several name changes, the most recent of which made it the Renaissance.

Considering that the original Hotel Adams and its replacement, which was in operation at the time the envelope on which the artwork was based would have been mailed, originally stood on the site of what is now the Renaissance, I thought this piece of decor was a lovely salute to the past—and for a stamp collector far from home, it was a lovely connection to my hobby.

Published 2024-07-30