Rogue Columnist

Downtown's pivotal 1970s

Between the long series of civic missteps that murdered downtown Phoenix and its recent rebirth of sorts, the 1970s loom large. As the decade began — shown in the photo above — much of corporate Arizona and the energy of the city had shifted to Midtown. 

The city opened the brutalist Phoenix Civic Plaza (so named because the Phoenix Civic Center was at Central and McDowell with the library, art museum, and "little theater"). The new complex offered a convention center, Symphony Hall, and sun-blasted open space. It was intended to revive downtown, but its "super blocks" destroyed the fine-grained, human-scale of the old urban fabric, including much of the Deuce. That fabric was characterized by eight or nine steps between doorways to shops or offices shaded by awnings.

Walter Bimson of Valley National Bank gave downtown a vote of confidence, insisting the new headquarters tower be build there rather than at Central and Osborn. The other big banks followed. Two new hotels were also built. But it was a catastrophic 10 years for historic preservation. The gallery below tells some of the story. Click on a photo for a larger image.

A rendering of Phoenix Civic Plaza. The shade trees in the foreground of Symphony Hall never happened, leaving an uninviting frying pan. It did show the concert hall's signature lobby chandeliers to advantage, lost now to the new Convention Center.

Arizona putsch

Carl Muecke illustration

If you've been following the daily links here on Phoenix and Arizona news (left), you know the GOP-controlled state Senate is conducting an "audit" of Maricopa County's 2020 presidential votes. It was here that President Biden pulled out his narrow victory.

As the Washington Post reported, the review "has been undertaken using an opaque, often inscrutable process, outside of the close view of objective third parties and with the assistance of obviously motivated actors, such as a former legislator who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6." Republicans now say 40,000 ballots were flown in, including from Asia written on bamboo. I am not making this up.

The most obvious insular lesson is that Arizona's status as a blue or purple state is unsettled as long as the Republicans control the Legislature, the most powerful branch of state government.

But what's happening here has profound national implications, too. Amid a push in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and other states to suppress voting, Arizona is taking it a step further. If an election's outcome is not what the GOP apparatchiks desire, the Legislature will intervene post facto. The goal is to overturn the result or, failing that, sow doubt about the election's legitimacy. Never mind that this was the election that put these lawmakers in office, too. Meanwhile, the GOP raises money and keeps the base ginned up for the critical 2022 mid-terms.

We can't have a functioning experiment in self-governance if the losing side refuses to accept the results of elections. John Adams was angry over the 1800 election but he peacefully transferred power to his bitter rival (and former and later dear friend) Thomas Jefferson. This path leads to civil war. Discuss.

 

 

Early Phoenix mapped

One of the most interesting sources of information on early Phoenix can be found on the Library of Congress' Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Sanborn Map Co. produced detailed maps of 12,000 U.S. cities and towns, detailing not only buildings but in many their construction materials so insurers could assess their risks.

Below I have some views of Phoenix, one in 1911 and the remainder from 1949, focused on Union Station and the Warehouse District. Click for a larger image.

Russell Lee's Phoenix

In 1940, photographer Russell Lee visited Phoenix. His main task was taking pictures of Farm Security Administration projects in the city. He joined such distinguished federal photographers as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein.

The FSA was created in 1937 to help ease rural poverty. Among its signature Phoenix operations were Camelback Farms, northeast of downtown and intended to create a stable environment for displaced farm families, and the United Producers and Consumers Cooperative, with about 12,000 members, mostly farmers.

But the trip yielded much more, including some iconic images of Phoenix as the Great Depression was loosening its grip and war was looming. Born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903, Lee died in Austin in 1986. 

I've written about Phoenix in the 1940s here. Below is some of his work from the Library of Congress. Click on an image for a larger view.

Welcome sign outside of town, with the meeting days, times, and places of service clubs.

Central and Washington, with Lerner Shops, movie theaters, and streetcar tracks.

The famous saguaro streetlamp across from the Hotel Westward Ho. Only one was made, outside the Chamber of Commerce.

'See me AZ'

This is the name for a new campaign to reduce pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on the streets of metropolitan Phoenix. As KTAR reported, “ 'See Me AZ' aims to educate people on research that indicates most crashes occur when drivers, cyclists or pedestrians don’t see each other."

I'm not hopeful.

However it's counted, Phoenix and Arizona rank high among the most deadly places for pedestrians. Fifth worst in the nation in 2018, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Deaths totaled 106 for the first six months of 2020 (Colorado 39; Washington 47). The federal Traffic Safety Administration ranked us fourth worst in 2018. A compilation by the Arizona Republic found a stunning 1,202 pedestrians killed by motorists between 2014 and 2019.

From the late 1940s onward, Phoenix streets were widened, especially to move vehicles quickly out of downtown (collateral damage was the loss of thousands of real shade trees). McDowell Road, shown above in the 1960s, is now two lanes or wider. This remains one of the scariest avenues for pedestrians or watchful drivers, especially between 56th Street and 24th Street, where the night swallows the inadequate illumination from too few street lamps.

The result today is that metropolitan Phoenix is a collection of real-estate ventures connected by wide highways called "city streets." Where Thomas Road crosses Central, it's about twice as wide as a major downtown street in Seattle. The "walk" signal lasts barely long enough to accommodate those wishing to cross and drivers frequently turn without looking. On any given day or hour, the Phoenix Fire online regional dispatch log shows "962 w. pedestrian" (a 962 is the radio code for auto collision with injuries).

Police and fire in early Phoenix

Henry Garfias, the son of a Mexican general, was elected Phoenix's first town marshal in 1881. Already famous for apprehending the stagecoach "ghost bandit" as a county deputy, Garfias (above, courtesy of Duran Lugo) was said to have shot dead several outlaws as marshal and brought order to Washington Street's Whiskey Row (16 saloons and four dance halls). Thus was born the Phoenix Police Department.

The department operated out of the old City Hall until it received a more modern space in the City-County Building in 1929. Call boxes were used throughout the city for officers to check in. Phoenix equipped its squad cars with radios in 1932. You can learn more about PPD's history from the Phoenix Police Museum, located in the 1929 Police Headquarters at 17 S. Second Avenue. My new novel, City of Dark Corners, is set in the Depression-era department.

The Phoenix Fire Department came from passage of a bond issue in 1886 to establish a volunteer fire service with modern equipment and an improved water supply. Still, two hose companies (one Anglo, one Hispanic) competed until Frank Czarnowski joined them together as the Phoenix Volunteer Fire Department in 1888. By 1922, it was a paid, full-time department.

Here are some early photos (click for a larger image):

Horse-drawn apparatus at Fire Station No. 1, First and Jefferson streets, in 1908 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Locked and loaded

Carl Muecke illustration

America's, er, national conversation follows a predictable trajectory every time some psycho shoots up a place leaving multiple innocents murdered.

From the media and everyplace to the left of center: Finally we'll get gun control! Why does anyone need a gun, much less an assault rifle?!? America is the only country where anywhere near this level of Gun Violence happens! What was the motive — white supremacy, systemic racism? Why can't we have a leader like New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, who quickly implemented strict gun control after the 2019 shootings in Christchurch?? Don't dare send 'thoughts and prayers' when we need to be passing legislation! The Second Amendment is about the states' militia, not an individual's right to own a gun!

From the right: Mostly crickets (except for this National Review broadside). And except at election time, when the prospect of Democrats "taking away their guns" makes the right vote for the likes of Donald Trump.

Then we go back to the status quo ante until the next mass murder, forget, and the cycle repeats. If we can't get even modest gun restrictions after Las Vegas (58 innocents murdered) in 2017, Orlando (49) the year before, Virginia Tech (32) in 2007, and Sandy Hook Elementary School (26, including 20 children) in 2012, it ain't gonna happen.

Toward a desert aesthetic

Once upon a time defining beauty in Phoenix was relatively easy. The old city was shady, grassy, and well landscaped. From there moved circles of citrus groves, flower fields, pastures, and farms in one of the most fertile alluvial river valleys in the world, and finally stark beauty and abundance of plant and animal life in the wettest desert in the world. No other city looked like Phoenix. It was magical and lovely.

Now this is largely gone. Even in the historic districts ahistorical desert landscaping is creeping. For most of the metropolitan area, built an acre an hour, the look is concrete, asphalt, gravel, and shadeless palo verde trees. Oh, and "shade structures" that provide little shade. Lookalike faux Tuscan tract houses in "master planned communities" offer postage-stamp lawns and wide driveways (the old driveways in Willo were two strips of concrete). Tens of thousands of shade trees have been felled, whether by diktat of the Salt River Project or to create the six-lane-plus highways called "city streets."

Curiously, these single-family houses are built on the same layout as most American homes. But with gravel instead of a lawn. No wonder the temperature has risen 10 degrees over the past 50 years and the summers last longer. When I was given a tour of Verrado — where David Brooks saw the future — the developers bragged how they had copied Palmcroft, for that was the kind of living their surveys showed buyers wanted. But it doesn't work, for this sunblasted development in Buckeye lacks the real Palmcroft's beautiful trees, grass, hedges, and flowerbeds.