A Mayan Temple on the Mother Road

Somewhere between Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains, on a stretch of Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia, California that was once part of the original U.S. Route 66 alignment, there is a building that stops people cold the first time they see it. The stepped rooflines with their square spires rise above the commercial strip like something transplanted whole from the jungles of the Yucatán. Geometric glyphs cover the facade in dense, repeating patterns. Cast concrete forms carved to resemble Mayan pyramids frame the entrance. A restored neon sign blazes the building’s name across the California sky: AZTEC HOTEL. And then you read the year it was built — 1925 — and the full weight of it lands. This building was standing here before Route 66 existed. It is the first commercial building in the United States to be designed entirely in the Mayan Revival architectural style, a fact that the New York Times confirmed in its coverage of the opening: “The first building to be completed in the Mayan style in the United States.” The Los Angeles Times called it “a daring architecture attempt.” The local Monrovia press was even more direct: “The only structure like it in the world.”

Nearly a century later, that assessment remains defensible. The Aztec Hotel at 311 West Foothill Boulevard, Monrovia, California 91016 is a National Historic Landmark and a property listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978. It is one of only a few surviving Mayan Revival buildings in the entire country. It is the most visually striking landmark on California’s Route 66 corridor and arguably the most architecturally significant single building on the entire 2,448-mile Mother Road. Its history — a century of financial crisis, speakeasy rumors, celebrity visitors, Vice raids, hauntings, foreclosures, restoration battles, and the perpetual question of what comes next — is as extraordinary as its facade. Even shuttered, as it currently is, the Aztec Hotel is one of the essential stops on any serious Route 66 journey through Southern California.

Where Is the Aztec Hotel?

The Aztec Hotel is located at 311 West Foothill Boulevard, Monrovia, California 91016, in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia is the original 1926 alignment of U.S. Route 66 through this section of the San Gabriel Valley — the pre-1931 routing of the Mother Road that ran along the foothills before the highway was realigned to Huntington Drive further south. The hotel sits on the north side of Foothill Boulevard, conspicuous from the street thanks to its extraordinary facade.

Monrovia is located approximately 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, bordered by the cities of Arcadia to the west, Duarte to the east, and the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. It is accessible from the 210 (Foothill) Freeway via the Myrtle Avenue or Mountain Avenue exits; from either exit, Foothill Boulevard is the main commercial street and the hotel is within easy walking distance. The Metro Gold Line (A Line) Monrovia station at Myrtle Avenue and Duarte Road is approximately half a mile from the hotel, making the Aztec one of the most transit-accessible Route 66 landmarks in the Los Angeles area.

The Genesis: A City’s Ambition and an Architect’s Vision

Monrovia’s Hotel Project: 1923–1924

The Aztec Hotel was not the product of a single patron’s vision — it was the product of civic ambition. In 1923 and 1924, a committee formed by the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce set out to build a landmark hotel worthy of the growing city. The original concept was modest: a hotel modeled after the famous Mission Inn in Riverside, California. When that proved too expensive, a second idea emerged — an Indigenous-styled hotel on a hill outside Monrovia, accessible by ladder. That proved impractical. The committee’s third iteration would prove both practical and extraordinary.

To fund the project, the committee conducted a public stock sale — an early form of community crowdfunding. Monrovia residents bought shares in the future hotel, ultimately raising close to $138,000 (the project ultimately cost approximately $250,000). The committee required that 95 percent of the capital be raised before a building site could even be selected, a financial discipline that reflected the seriousness of their intentions. With funds in hand, they sought an architect who could bring their vision to life.

Robert Stacy-Judd: The Architect Who Brought Maya to Monrovia

The architect the committee connected with was Robert B. Stacy-Judd (1884–1975) — an English-born architect who had recently relocated to Los Angeles and was developing a passionate obsession with Mayan and pre-Columbian architecture. Stacy-Judd had recently acquired John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood’s landmark 1841 book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan — the foundational text of Mayan archaeology for Western audiences — and had become, in his own words, consumed with the idea of applying Maya architectural principles to modern American buildings.

Stacy-Judd presented the committee with two competing designs: one in the Pueblo Revival style, another in his emerging Mayan Revival approach. He pushed aggressively for the Mayan version, believing it represented an authentic architecture of the Americas — a new style rooted in the hemisphere’s own pre-Columbian traditions rather than borrowed from European precedents. The committee accepted his vision, and what followed was the first commissioned work in the United States utilizing ancient Maya art motifs throughout — a fact Stacy-Judd proudly inscribed on a photograph of the building under construction: “First structure ever erected utilizing Ancient Maya Art Motifs throughout.”

Why “Aztec” When the Design Is Mayan?

The hotel’s name has puzzled visitors for a century. The building is named Aztec but designed in the Mayan style — a deliberate decision by Stacy-Judd that he explained directly in his own words: “When the hotel project was first announced, the word Maya was unknown to the layman. The subject of Maya culture was only of archaeological importance, and at that, concerned but a few exponents. As a word, Aztec was fairly well known, [so] I baptized the hotel with that name, although all the decorative motifs are Maya.” It was, in essence, a branding decision — using the more culturally familiar name to attract an audience while delivering the architecturally distinct Mayan aesthetic Stacy-Judd had envisioned.

The Architecture: Mayan Revival in Concrete and Neon

The Exterior: Stepped Spires, Geometric Glyphs, and Cast Concrete

Working on a modest budget, Stacy-Judd made a strategic architectural decision: he concentrated the ornamental resources of the building on the elements most visible to passersby — the rooflines, building corners, and entrance structures. The result is a facade that reads as one of the most elaborately decorated buildings in the San Gabriel Valley, despite the economic constraints under which it was designed.

The exterior features stepped projections and square spires that evoke the terraced silhouette of Mayan pyramids. Geometric patterns derived from Maya art cover the facade’s surfaces in repeating designs of extraordinary intricacy. The building corners are treated with particular care, receiving the most concentrated application of cast concrete sculptural ornament in the Mayan vocabulary. Around the entrance, Stacy-Judd deployed his most elaborate compositions — the threshold of the building is framed as a portal to another world, a deliberate theatrical effect that worked then and continues to work on every visitor who encounters the hotel for the first time today.

The architectural style of the Aztec Hotel is technically a blend. While the dominant vocabulary is Mayan Revival, scholars have noted the presence of Art Deco and Spanish Colonial Revival elements woven into the composition — not surprising given that all three styles were active and overlapping in Southern California during the mid-1920s. Stacy-Judd was not a purist; he was an expressionist, using historical sources to create an architectural experience rather than an archaeological reproduction.

The Interior: Murals, Mosaics, Reliefs, and Mayan Furniture

Stacy-Judd did not stop at the building’s skin. The interior of the Aztec Hotel was designed as a total environment — every element contributing to the Mayan experience he was creating. The lobby features cast concrete doorways and a fireplace surround ornamented with Mayan-derived forms. The walls carry faux-Mayan murals, mosaics, and relief sculptures depicting figures and symbols drawn from pre-Columbian iconography. The staircase leads to private dining rooms for the restaurant above. Even the electrical fixtures were designed to express Mayan motifs — a level of comprehensive design thinking that was remarkable for a hotel operating on the modest budget the Monrovia committee had available.

Stacy-Judd designed the lobby furniture himself, drawing on Aztec, Toltec, and Inca design vocabularies alongside the primary Mayan source material. The hotel was advertised as a place where no two rooms were alike — another expression of the architect’s rejection of standardization and his commitment to creating a genuinely singular building. The original promotional materials for the hotel emphasized its unique character as both a visual destination and a lodging establishment: this was not merely a place to sleep, but a place to experience — something different from any other building in Southern California.

Among the hotel’s more controversial interior features was a mural reportedly depicting a Mesoamerican deity associated with lust and fertility — a piece of iconography that prompted local religious and women’s groups to refuse to patronize the hotel in its opening years, a development that contributed significantly to the financial difficulties the building experienced almost from the beginning.

The Neon Sign

One of the Aztec Hotel’s most immediately recognizable contemporary features is its neon sign — the illuminated lettering and decorative neon elements that blaze the hotel’s identity from the Foothill Boulevard facade. The original hotel did not have an electric sign at all when it opened in September 1925, a significant commercial liability: passing motorists could not see the building at night, and the hotel had no address on its promotional materials due to a civic dispute over what the street should be named. Both handicaps contributed to the early financial crisis that nearly ended the hotel before it found its footing. The neon sign was eventually installed in 1927, and the restoration of the neon became one of the conditions of the city’s Certificate of Appropriateness issued to later owners undertaking repairs. The restored neon sign remains one of the most photographed elements of the Aztec Hotel today.

A Century of Turbulent History

A Star-Studded Opening and Immediate Financial Crisis: 1925–1927

The Aztec Hotel opened to the public in September 1925 with a star-studded debut party. Among the celebrities attending was Sid Grauman of Grauman’s Chinese Theater — Hollywood royalty in attendance at a building that Hollywood would later return to repeatedly as a filming location. The menu that night featured items including “Salad Montezuma” and “Fancy Ice Cream Aztec.” The hotel offered curbside service to drivers — an early form of the drive-in service culture that Route 66 would help popularize across the country.

Despite the glamorous opening, the Aztec ran into serious financial trouble almost immediately. The cost overruns from construction — the project had exceeded its original $138,000 budget by more than $100,000 — left the hotel burdened with debt before its first guest had checked in. The main builder placed a lien on the property for unpaid work. Even Stacy-Judd was forced to sue for his final payment. And the hotel’s most visible liability — no electric sign and no address on promotional materials — meant that the nightly potential of the building went largely unrealized. By 1927, the Aztec Hotel had been repossessed by the bank.

Route 66, the Speakeasy Era, and Recovery: 1927–1930

What rescued the Aztec Hotel from its first foreclosure was a combination of two things: a new management director and the designation of U.S. Route 66 — which ran along Foothill Boulevard past the hotel’s front door — in 1926. Route 66 brought traffic, and traffic brought business. By 1927, after the bank repossession, a new director had taken charge and the hotel’s fortunes improved substantially. Weddings, parties, and formal dinner-dances began taking place in the lobby and courtyard. The hotel attracted a celebrity clientele, aided by the opening of the nearby Santa Anita racetrack, which drew Hollywood stars and wealthy Los Angeles society figures to the San Gabriel Valley.

The late 1920s also brought the hotel its most persistent and colorful legends. Prohibition was still in effect, and the Aztec Hotel was widely rumored to harbor a speakeasy in its basement — rumors given credibility by the sudden popularity of the hotel’s New Year’s Eve parties, which were described as suspiciously well-attended for an establishment that had previously struggled to fill its rooms. Organized crime connections, gambling, and vice were all murmured about in connection with the Aztec in this period — rumors that contributed to the hotel’s mythology even as they complicated its reputation.

The Great Depression, Route 66 Realignment, and Closure: 1930–1937

The Great Depression brought the second bank repossession in 1930. The following year brought a blow from a different direction: the 1931 realignment of Route 66 through Monrovia. The new alignment shifted the highway south to Huntington Drive, bypassing Foothill Boulevard — and the Aztec Hotel — almost entirely. The hotel, which had benefited enormously from its position on the main cross-country highway, now found itself on a secondary road that carried only local traffic. The hotel closed in September 1932 and remained in limbo for five years.

Nellie Jamieson and the Wartime Years: 1937–1945

In 1937, with Prohibition finally over, Nellie Jamieson reopened the Aztec Hotel. The addition of a cocktail lounge helped revive business, and the hotel prospered into the early 1940s, aided by the proximity of military personnel from installations in the region during World War II. The wartime prosperity, however, came with its own complications: the hotel was reportedly used as a brothel during this period, serving military personnel, which brought enough notoriety that at least one branch of the armed forces forbade its personnel from patronizing the Aztec Hotel. The glamour of the 1925 opening had, by the 1940s, curdled into something considerably darker.

The same wartime period brought a separate blow: the opening of Santa Anita racetrack as a Japanese American incarceration assembly center following the attack on Pearl Harbor effectively ended the celebrity racetrack clientele that had sustained the hotel’s better years. After the war, the hotel’s decline resumed.

Decades of Decline and Partial Revivals: 1945–2009

The postwar decades at the Aztec Hotel were a slow deterioration punctuated by periodic attempts at revival. The building cycled through various operators, none of whom could sustain successful operation of the challenging property. Dark rumors continued to accumulate: organized crime connections, gambling operations, suspicious deaths, and the persistent ghost stories that eventually gave the hotel its additional identity as one of the most reportedly haunted buildings in the San Gabriel Valley. Historian Craig Owens, who has spent decades documenting the hotel’s history and leads public tours of the building, has described the Aztec’s paranormal reputation as having grown directly from the layers of genuine human drama — joy, violence, addiction, loss — that accumulated in the building across its troubled century.

The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1978, and subsequently designated a National Historic Landmark — formal recognition of its architectural significance as the first Mayan Revival commercial building in the United States and one of the few surviving examples of the style anywhere in the country. The designation brought some protection but did not resolve the building’s fundamental operational challenges.

The 2000–2005 Restoration

The most significant preservation intervention in the hotel’s recent history was the 2000–2005 restoration undertaken by owner Kathie Reece-McNeill, with funding from the National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, the State of California Office of Historic Preservation, and the National Route 66 Foundation. Project Manager Glen Duncan and Historic Architect Joe Catalano oversaw the work. A key element of the restoration was the removal of stucco that had been applied over the original facade, obscuring the Mayan glyphs beneath. Using water pressure, workers stripped the stucco to reveal the original cast concrete ornament — restoring the visual character of the exterior that Stacy-Judd had created in 1925. The work focused on preserving as much of the original ornamentation as possible, following the principle that the building’s architectural significance resided precisely in those original surfaces.

Foreclosure, New Ownership, and Continued Closure: 2009–Present

The Aztec Hotel went into foreclosure again in 2009 and was purchased in 2012 by Qin Han Chen, who closed the building for renovation. Chen undertook substantial repairs — a new roof, handicapped-accessible parking lot redesign — but also installed period-inappropriate replacement doors that brought him into conflict with the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, which ordered their removal as a condition of continued approval. The city designated the hotel a Monrovia Local Historic Landmark in 2003, adding municipal protections on top of the national designations.

In 2020, the Monrovia City Planning Commission approved conditional use permits for the hotel to reopen as a lodging establishment with the Mayan Bar and Grill restaurant — a moment of apparent progress that raised hopes for the building’s revival. However, the hotel did not reopen. As of July 2025, the Aztec Hotel was listed for sale at an asking price of $15 million, raising new uncertainty about its future. The listing describes the property as sitting on four parcels encompassing approximately 58,432 square feet of land and 24,329 square feet of building, with 44 rooms, a liquor license, five retail frontage units generating rental income, and a charming rear courtyard with water fountains in need of restoration.

The Aztec Hotel’s Architectural Legacy

The Aztec Hotel did not stand alone for long as an example of Mayan Revival architecture in the United States. The enormous publicity generated by its 1925 opening — covered by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the local Monrovia press — triggered an immediate response in the American architectural community. New companies began manufacturing furniture, tile, fixtures, and other items of Mayan design. Buildings directly influenced by the Aztec appeared across the country within years of its opening, including:

The Mayan Theater in Los Angeles (1927) — the most prominent example of Mayan Revival architecture in the Los Angeles area, designed by Morgan, Walls & Clements and featuring an extraordinary facade of terra cotta ornament in Mayan motifs.

The Beach and Yacht Club in La Jolla — an early adopter of the Mayan Revival aesthetic in the Southern California coastal context.

The Mayan Hotel in Kansas City — evidence of the style’s spread beyond California into the broader American architectural market.

Stacy-Judd himself went on to design additional Mayan Revival buildings, including the Philosophical Research Society headquarters in Los Feliz (with Manly P. Hall), the North Hollywood Masonic Lodge #542 on Tujunga (co-designed with John Aleck Murrey), and the First Baptist Church in Ventura, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places. But the Aztec Hotel remains his most celebrated work — the building that, in 1925, introduced Mayan Revival architecture to the United States and set a design direction that, however brief, left a permanent mark on American architectural history.

The Haunted Hotel: History’s Other Legacy

The Aztec Hotel has carried a reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in the San Gabriel Valley for decades. The nature of that reputation is, in some ways, a direct product of the building’s actual history: a century of financial crisis, social complexity, wartime vice, and the accumulated human dramas of guests who experienced genuine hardship, joy, crime, and loss within its walls. Craig Owens — the hotel’s official historian, author of Haunted by History Vol. 1, and founder of Bizarre Los Angeles — has spent decades separating documented history from legend at the Aztec, and his public tours of the building have become one of the primary ways visitors engage with the hotel in its current closed state.

The specific haunted claims at the Aztec center on several locations within the building: particular guest rooms associated with reported unusual deaths, areas of the lobby and bar where staff and visitors have reported unexplained sounds and presences, and the basement spaces linked to the Prohibition-era speakeasy rumors. Whether one approaches these claims with credence or skepticism, the Aztec’s haunted reputation has served an unambiguous preservation purpose: it has kept public attention focused on the building during the long years of its closure, ensuring that the hotel remains a destination for visitors and a subject of community concern even when it cannot be checked into.

The Aztec Hotel on Film

The Aztec Hotel’s extraordinary visual character has made it a recurring film and photography location since the mid-20th century. The building’s most prominent recent screen appearance was in the 2009 romantic comedy Spooner, which filmed scenes both in front of the hotel and extensively in the interior — lobby, bar, hallways, and individual rooms. The production documented interior spaces that are rarely accessible to the public, making Spooner a valuable visual record of the hotel’s interiors as they appeared in the late 2000s. The building’s unique combination of Mayan Revival architecture, historic patina, and evocative spaces has also made it a frequent subject of architectural photography, documentary filmmaking, and the haunted-history genre of television and online content.

Visiting the Aztec Hotel Today

Current Status: Closed but Visually Essential

As of 2025–2026, the Aztec Hotel is not open to the public as a hotel or restaurant. The building has been closed since approximately 2011–2012, and while various renovation and reopening plans have been announced and pursued over the intervening years, the building remained shuttered as it was listed for sale in mid-2025. Visitors should check current local news sources and the Route 66 community’s social media channels for the latest information on ownership and any potential reopening before planning a visit expecting interior access.

The exterior of the Aztec Hotel, however, is fully visible from Foothill Boulevard and absolutely worth a stop for any Route 66 traveler regardless of the building’s operational status. The facade, the neon sign, the entrance ornamentation, and the overall visual impact of the building are completely accessible from the public street and sidewalk. There is no other building like it anywhere on Route 66 — or, for that matter, anywhere else in Southern California.

Haunted History Tours

Craig Owens of Bizarre Los Angeles has offered public and private tours of the Aztec Hotel interior for years, providing access to the lobby, Mayan Bar, former supper club, and guest rooms that are otherwise closed to visitors. These tours are the primary way to experience the building’s extraordinary interior — the murals, mosaics, cast concrete ornament, and the spaces where the hotel’s century of history played out. Tour availability varies with the building’s ownership situation; travelers interested in interior access should check bizarrela.com for current tour offerings.

Photography

The Aztec Hotel is one of the most photogenic buildings on the entire Route 66 corridor. The exterior facade is best photographed in morning light, when the eastern-facing elements of the ornamentation catch direct sun and the geometric details read clearly against the sky. The neon sign is best documented in dusk or evening light when the illumination is active. Wide-angle lenses allow the building’s full facade to be captured from street level; tighter lenses reward exploration of individual ornamental details — the corner spires, the entrance glyphs, the roofline treatment — that repay close attention. The surrounding streetscape of Old Town Monrovia provides additional context for the building’s history as a Route 66 commercial strip landmark.

Practical Information

Address: 311 West Foothill Boulevard, Monrovia, California 91016

Phone: (626) 358-3231 (historic number — verify current contact information before calling)

Current Status: Closed. The building was listed for sale as of mid-2025. Verify current status before visiting if planning interior access.

Exterior Viewing: Free and fully accessible from the public street and sidewalk at any time.

Tours: Check bizarrela.com for availability of Bizarre Los Angeles interior tours led by historian Craig Owens.

Parking: Street parking on Foothill Boulevard. Additional parking available in the surrounding Old Town Monrovia commercial district.

Getting There: From the 210 (Foothill) Freeway, exit at Myrtle Avenue or Mountain Avenue. Metro A Line (Gold Line) Monrovia station at Myrtle Avenue and Duarte Road is approximately half a mile from the hotel.

Best Time to Visit: Year-round. Monrovia has a mild Mediterranean climate. Morning light is best for exterior photography.

Nearby Route 66 Highlights in California

Route 66 in California — Complete Guide — The full overview of California’s 314-mile Route 66 corridor, from Needles on the Arizona border through Monrovia, Pasadena, and Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier.

The Wigwam Motel, San Bernardino — Approximately 40 miles east of Monrovia via the 210 Freeway, the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino is one of the most iconic overnight stops on California’s Route 66 — 19 teepee-shaped rooms operating since 1950, a California Historic Place, and a Route 66 essential.

Route 66 in San Bernardino, California — The Original McDonald’s Museum site and the Wigwam Motel make San Bernardino a critical stop on California’s Route 66 corridor.

Roy’s Motel and Café, Amboy, California — The most photographed landmark on California’s Route 66 desert corridor. The 50-foot Googie neon sign, restored in 2019, anchors a Mojave Desert stop that is as visually extraordinary, in its own way, as the Aztec Hotel — just from a completely different architectural tradition.

Santa Monica Pier — End of the Trail — Approximately 20 miles west of Monrovia, the Santa Monica Pier is the symbolic western terminus of Route 66. The End of the Trail sign on the pier marks the completion of the 2,448-mile journey from Chicago.

Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66 is November 11, 2026, with centennial events planned across all eight states. The Aztec Hotel — built one year before Route 66 was commissioned — will be celebrating its own centennial alongside the highway’s in the years ahead.

Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to all 2,448 miles of America’s Mother Road, from the Begin sign in Chicago to the End of the Trail at the Santa Monica Pier.