Phoenix in the fifties

Ask almost anyone who recalls Phoenix during this time and the fifties were indeed nifty. For most, it was the best time to have lived here.

This was also among the city's most sweeping eras of change. It saw the emergence of many of the trends that later turned unfortunate or worse. Below the gleam of Eisenhower peace and prosperity, much of the town was troubled.

To begin, however, it is easy to see why these years are remembered with fondness, and not merely with lazy nostalgia.

The fifties were the last decade when much of the city's life revolved around such sweet, small-town reveries as the Masque of the Yellow Moon, held annually at Phoenix Union High School's giant Montgomery Stadium. Although the Jaycees Rodeo of Rodeos would soldier on into the 1990s, it reached its pinnacle then, too. School let out for the rodeo parade day. Phoenix was not far removed from its roots of planting and cowboying.

They were the last time when some of the larger canals were still lined with trees, doubling as widely patronized swimming holes, and water-skiing behind cars was winked at by the Salt River Project. When most of the Project's footprint was citrus groves, the Japanese flower gardens and fields, not subdivisions. When this enchanting oasis was sheltered by shade and green, and beyond it was largely pristine desert and High Country. When mining, cattle and logging were the industries in the sparsely populated state.

Phoenix was the city. Every other town in the Salt River Valley was small and separated from Phoenix by groves, fields and desert.

No wonder the overnight lows were ten degrees lower than now and summers were shorter and less severe.

Phoenix was a perfect Happy Days town, coming of age with cheap gasoline and cars, where Cruising Central was perfected and local drive-ins such as Jerry's, Bob's and the Polar Bear — not chains, held sway. Significantly, however, businessman Neil Fox purchased a franchise drive-in from two brothers in San Bernardino. This first McDonald's franchise in the nation, complete with golden arches, sat on Central just south of Indian School for decades. Off the streets — and the widest was four lanes — Encanto Park was a lovely oasis and also offered concerts at its band shell. The Arizona State Fair and Rodeo of Rodeos Parade were at their wholesome peak, even when Marilyn Monroe dropped by during the filming of Bus Stop in 1956.

Sunnyslope was its own distinctive place, a desert town at the north end of Central Avenue, nearly becoming independent from Phoenix. The air was still clear enough that Phoenix was touted as a good place for people with lung ailments. At night, from almost anywhere in town, a canopy of stars and constellations was visible.

Downtown was busy, prosperous and interesting. You could shop, get a haircut, watch movies at six or seven theaters, see your banker, lawyer, doctor or dentist, check out life in the Deuce and, from Union Station, take a streamlined passenger train to almost any city or town of size in America. The Westward Ho wasn't merely the fanciest hotel and tallest building in town, it also added an annex for car travelers and a swimming pool. At night, neon ruled downtown.

The city itself was little more than 17 square miles in 1950. It was a real little city, cohesive, dense, walkable, human scaled, with mostly locally owned businesses in a real downtown — all the things Phoenix's little band of resistance fighters has been trying to rebuild in recent years. It had no freeways. It did have groceries that delivered.

Higher education in the city was Phoenix College, which marked its 25th anniversary in 1950. It was a "junior college" before the community college boom but it was dear to Phoenicians. In 1951, PC elected its first African-American student body president, Eldridge Gonaway. In 1955, it opened its Fine Arts Center. The football team, under the legendary coach Shanty Hogan, enjoyed an undefeated season in 1959 and played in Bakersfield's Shrine Potato Bowl.

Speaking of post-season college football games, Phoenix hosted the Salad Bowl from 1948 to 1952, played at beloved Montgomery Stadium.

We had to tell easterners that yes, we had dial telephones (and didn't suffer from Indian attacks). The 1950s saw the widespread use of exchange names rather than numbers: Alpine, Amherst, Applegate, Broadway, Crestwood and Windsow. Hence, 253-2511 was ALpine 3-2511.

Phoenix entered the national stage as one of America's 100 largest cities in 1950, barely. The population had risen to nearly 107,000, up 63 percent from 1940. More important for its leaders, Phoenix earned its first All America City award from the National Civic League that year.

We had been a notoriously corrupt city before this, including a City Hall where bribes were common.

But in the late 1940s, a group of civic reformers led by the likes of lawyer Frank Snell, merchant princes Harry and Newton Rosenzweig, banker Walter Bimson, developer Del Webb and Republic and Gazette publisher Eugene C. Pulliam launched the Charter Government Movement.

Charter replaced the old City Commission with a council-manager form of government, putting up a slate of business backed candidates to be councilmen. Charter ruled the city throughout the decade promising clean government and pro-business policies. Unfortunately, those policies didn't include mass transit. The buses that replaced the streetcars were underfunded and unpopular. Nor was it informed by good planning. Subdivisions leapfrogged and the city annexed them.

Among those Charter placed on council were the first councilwoman, Margaret Kober; the first Hispanic, Adam Diaz, and a department store executive named Barry Goldwater. As a sign of the city's progress, it dedicated the new Phoenix Civic Center (below) at Central and McDowell in 1950 with an expansive library, art museum and "little theater."

These and other business leaders saw the health of their companies and law practices inextricably connected to a clean, economically powerful and growing city. One of Phoenix's key goals was to overtake El Paso as the most consequential city in the Southwest.

They continued efforts begun in the late 1940s to attract "clean industries" to the area and they succeeded brilliantly. In addition to Motorola, which became the largest single employer, Phoenix landed Sperry, AiResearch, General Electric, Kaiser Aircraft, Goodyear Aircraft and Hughes.

This didn't merely happen because of tax breaks and the new "right to work" law. Phoenix leaders actively recruited companies through the civic organization called The Thunderbirds and the Municipal Industrial Development Corp. They worked to gain university status for Arizona State College in Tempe.

Government was also at Phoenix's back thanks to Cold War defense spending. In addition to seeding work at the city's aerospace companies, it provided Luke and Williams Air Force bases west and southeast of town.

Agriculture was still very big business, as the photo above, taken in 1956, attests. Almost every kind of produce was grown in the Salt River Valley, then prepared for shipment in the downtown produce district and in operations along Grand Avenue, then sent back east in refrigerated rail cars. The vision of reclamation had been achieved. Agriculture supported what is today called an economic "ecosystem" of processors, millers, suppliers, equipment vendors, feedlots, slaughterhouses, rail icing plants, banks, law firms, etc.

There was no 10,000-mile supply chain then. We were virtually self-sufficient in feeding ourselves and sending out oranges, lemons, grapefruit, beets, grapes, dates, lettuce, cabbages, beef, etc. to the nation. If you didn't have enough citrus in your back yard, roadside stands sold boxes of it. We made our own beer, too: A-1, with the brewery at 12th Street and the railroad tracks.

The result of these two prongs of economic strategy, along with the national forces creating the greatest middle class in history, was to make Phoenix rich in good jobs. Construction would be a big player, too, but it was not the dominant force that it would become in the 1990s and after.

Old and new. A steam-powered Southern Pacific freight train passes construction of an aerospace plant near Sky Harbor Airport in the early 1950s.

Phoenix was the capital of a frontier state. Only two generations had passed since statehood. In 1950, the state's population was less than 750,000, half of today's city of Phoenix. State government was conducted from the old territorial capitol, along with a statel annex nearby. That was about it.

Arizona had been a reliably Democratic state, often siding with the segregationist South in Congress. That changed in 1952 when City Councilman Goldwater, running as a Republican, narrowly defeated Sen. Ernest McFarland, the Senate majority leader.

This is an easy shorthand for the 1950s being the decade when Republicans rose to take over state politics, when the migration from the Midwest overpowered the old Arizona. Yet Mac was mostly dragged down by outgoing President Harry Truman, even though he wasn't on the ballot. It is difficult for Americans today to realize how unpopular Truman was. Goldwater benefited from a campaign appearance with Ike at Montgomery Stadium during the 1952 campaign.

Mac bounced back to become governor from 1955 to 1959. He was preceded by John Howard Pyle, a Republican who presided over the Short Creek Raid of a polygamous LDS community in 1953 — that may have cost him reelection. In any event, Arizona politics were already competitive and the priority of elected officials of both parties was to win Colorado River water. The influence of the far-right John Birchers was not appreciable — at least initially.

Mac made the single most important decision for the long-term future when, in 1958, he replaced eminent attorney John Frank (mentor of Janet Napolitano) with Mark Wilmer as lead lawyer in the long-running Arizona v. California water lawsuit. Wilmer, aided by a new team including the brilliant attorney Charlie Reed, changed Arizona's legal strategy, which prevailed before the Supreme Court in 1963. This prepared the way for the Central Arizona Project (and forever divided the legal community into Wilmer and Frank supporters).

In fact, for state and city, the 1950s were really two decades. Population growth was relatively slow in the first years of the decade, at least by the standards of later years. By 1955, Phoenix had grown only to 156,000, and that was with annexation.

Then the pace began to change. It wasn't only post-war prosperity and mobility, or the perhaps overtold tale of servicemen who trained in Phoenix during World War II wanting to live there, or the undertold reality that many middle-class whites, fearing integration, flocked to this overwhelmingly Anglo city. Refrigerated air conditioning became affordable for individual houses.

It was all this. But Phoenix also began to market itself as never before nationwide, and not merely for tourism. "The Valley of the Sun," a promotional term begun in the 1930s. was used widely. Typical advertisements promised an escape from the cold east, crystal clear days, outdoor pools, new houses and "the warmest, driest, sunniest resort area in the U.S."

The booster culture was born. So was the narrow metric of population growth equalling progress. Indeed, Pulliam published an annual Valley Progress Report with just such data.

Local builders refined and improved the Levittown concept of mass-produced housing. Variations of the Phoenix ranch house became standard — and they were both utilitarian and iconic, but so many were built. This not only filled the desires of newcomers, but helped finally ease a housing shortage that had plagued Phoenix through the 1940s.

In addition to Webb's work, Henry Coerver led development of expansive houses in Arcadia, preserving as many trees as possible in the former groves and farmsteads. John Hall's Hallcraft Homes and Ralph Staggs built across the Valley. And Phoenix City Councilman John F. Long opened Maryvale, built on former farm fields, in 1957.

The Parade of Homes in 1956 at Seventh Street and Hayward.

The Growth Machine was born, with government, utilities and banks working closely together. And it seemed to work as this perpetual motion machine. In 1959, according to historian Brad Luckingham, more construction occurred in Phoenix than in all the years from 1914 to 1946 combined.

With this came some delightful and even timeless mid-century architecture. Alas, more lookalike cartoon landscape resulted and worse was left to come when the metro area really began to sprawl in subsequent decades.

The baleful consequences of worshipping population growth above all were not immediately apparent to most people. No one would have even put it that way at the time. This moment in history combined a rising middle class with inexpensive resources. The development "ecosystem" was highly local, providing even construction jobs that paid well. In addition, the wider economy in technology and other well-paying sectors kept up.

The latter part of the decade witnessed the beginning of downtown's decline and office and mall construction moving north on Central (topics covered extensively on the Phoenix 101 columns). But downtowns nearly everywhere were faltering. Only a few visionaries saw the danger.

Only a few Anglos saw the terrible disparities in wealth faced by minorities, with African-Americans and Mexican-Americans mostly segregated south of Van Buren Street. The schools had been desegregated in mid-decade, including closure of all black George Washington Carver High School. But much de-facto segregation continued.

And even though City Hall had been cleaned up, Phoenix remained a big mob town. As Las Vegas grew, Phoenix's importance as a "back office" and cooling-off spot probably rose in the '50s. Many of the movers and shakers who weren't mobbed up themselves still liked to run with this crowd.

By decade's end, Phoenix had achieved its ambition. It was the leading city of the Southwest. To El Paso's 277,000, an impressive 112-percent growth rate, Phoenix clocked 439,170, growing an astounding 311 percent, something never matched since. Not only that, but Arizona State College had become a university, despite the rabid opposition of Tucson.

In 1959, Phoenix seemed to have it all. Few imagined all that would be lost when the practices and innovations that began in this momentous decade eventually took away the assets most Phoenicians of this era most cherished.

Gallery: The fifties in Phoenix (click for larger image):

A map of metropolitan Phoenix in the 1950s.

Downtown Phoenix looking north from the Luhrs Building. The revolving Valley National Bank sign atop the professional building didn't arrive until the end of the decade.

Here's Central north of Van Buren Street. The First National Bank building, which went on to be the APS headquarters and serve ASU downtown, is new.

A higher-elevation view of the intersection. These buildings on the northeast corner were demolished by the 1980s, another rip in the urban fabric. Aside from a Valley National Bank drive-through teller, it was empty and land banked until the turn of the 21st century. Now it's the site of the Freeport McMoRan headquarters and Westin Hotel (Brad Hall collection).

First Avenue looking north to Fillmore Street with the main post office and Hotel Westward Ho. In the distance is Trinity Cathedral.

This 1959 postcard offers an unusual view southeast, showing downtown, the railroad yards around Union Station, and the bands of agriculture before reaching the desert.

The future Midtown circa 1956, with the Phoenix Towers at Central and Cypress completed. At the lower right is the Palms Theater.

Looking south from Indian School Road on Central in the early years of the decade.

The first McDonald's in Phoenix, and the first franchise McDonald's in the nation, on Central just south of Indian School Road. It was also the first to have the golden arches.

Forty-Eighth Street looking northeast to Camelback, the Papago Buttes, and citrus groves in what would become Arcadia.

In 1951, the New York Yankees came for Spring Training at the old Phoenix Municipal Stadium at South First Street and Mohave. Taking a swing is team owner, Phoenix developer Del Webb.

A brand new Uptown Plaza at Central and Camelback Road.

The Huddle at Mill Avenue and University in Tempe. The decade began the golden age for coffee-shop architecture in Phoenix.

The 1954 Rodeo of Rodeos Parade, heading south on Central.

The oasis of the Phoenix Country Club at Seventh Street and Thomas, home of the Phoenix Open.

A promotional photo shows a typical Phoenix neighborhood in the '50s.

First Street and Adams downtown. Hanny's men's store is on the left and the Hotel Adams, with its addition, is on the right.

The first helicopter to land in downtown Phoenix touches down on the roof of Hanny's. We're looking east on Adams toward Dorris-Heyman/Goldwaters and Sears.

Central and Monroe looking north. Downtown Phoenix was the busiest shopping district in the Southwest.

Here's First Street and Washington facing west from underneath the roofline of the Fox Theater. Woolworth's is across the way.

A busy sidewalk on Washington Street west of Central. The Fox Theater is in the distance to the right.

Building the new JC Penney store on Block 23, Washington and Second Street. The building on the northwest part of the block was the Fox Theater.

A map of downtown in 1956.

Newberry's and Kress at First Avenue and Washington. Today it's where the Renaissance Square towers stand.

An overhead view of downtown. At the center is the Phoenix City Hall-Maricopa County Courthouse.

The iconic Read Mullen Ford sign at the used-car lot at First Street and Van Buren. Most of the city's car dealerships were located on Central from Van Buren to Roosevelt. Behind are the Republic and Gazette building and First National Bank. The latter is the main building of ASU downtown today.

First Street and Washington looking northwest in the heart of the downtown shopping district. This is later in the decade with Woolworth's sporting a new facade.

It's the late 1950s, the Penney's building is done, and downtown is full of shoppers and businesspeople.

The Citrus Haven trailer part at 43rd Street and McDowell.

Thomas Road and 32nd Street in 1952 with abundant shade trees and citrus groves.

Inside the main Phoenix Public Library, where the author spent many happy hours growing up.

The Arizona State Fair in 1959 (Ivan M. Henry photo).

Park Central Shopping Center was built in 1957 on the site of the old Central Dairy, at Central Avenue and Earll Drive. Goldwater's left downtown, beginning the gradual decline of downtown as the state's premier retail destination.

Construction on the Guaranty Bank Building began in 1959. When it was completed in 1960, the tower would take the crown as Phoenix's tallest building from the Hotel Westward Ho and begin the high-rise boom in Midtown.

———————————————————————————
 

My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

Comments

[kb]

The '50s in Phoenix; Great town, good times to be a boy!

[headless]

re kb -- $2 haircuts and all the back copies of 'Stag' and 'Outdoor Life' to read while waiting!

[headless]

http://pulpcovers.com/tag/stag/

This is a public service for nostalgia fans.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>:-/\

[soleri]

Even in my chilly outpost in Portland, it's easy to look out my window to see what went wrong. Cars. They have have been - and are - the single-most destructive element in modern America, in both its cities and towns. They changed the way we relate to our buildings and their relationship to the street. They coarsened us as well, making us care less about community and more about mobility for its own sake. Cars were destabilizing Phoenix even before the 1950s. But throw in prosperity, exponential population growth, white flight, and production housing, and the die was cast. Phoenix didn't lose all its charm in that decade but it created the template for today's misery.

Portland has great mass transit and the nation's best biking infrastructure and culture. But far too many people drive anyway. The city has prevailed because it was, in fact, a substantial city before cars could fundamentally change its character. Streets are necessarily more narrow here so there isn't that linear slum look that Phoenix has almost everywhere west of Central and south of Indian School Rd. Portland ultimately began to heal itself with good transit (even tearing down an existing downtown freeway). And it began to practice in earnest good civic values like historic preservation. The result is a city where citizens talk about the city with pride and love. In Phoenix, people talk about their houses and cars. The city itself is an afterthought. There simply isn't enough to love.

I grew up in Sunnyslope in the 1950s and there's a busy nostalgia industry built up around the town and its former quaintness. Sadly, it's a wreck today. Just about all of my former classmates have moved on, some to Prescott and Payson, others to Scottsdale and Carefree. We grew prosperous in the '60s and '70s and drove, needless to say, as fast as we could to the nearest exits. Our lives are materially richer but reek of anomie and regret.

I don't blame Phoenix for its bad choices now because I realize that it was an epic tide that swamped us. This happened all across the country but was particularly hurtful to small cities with weak bones. Phoenix became a car town in the 1950s when all that was fun. Today it's a horror.

A friend alerted me to a column that the right-wing doofus Doug MacEachern wrote in Sunday's Republic about the lack of freeways in Phoenix (!!!). I would read him with clinched teeth when I lived in Phoenix. I never believed him when he was playing the culture warrior - his biggest shtick - because I got that he was essentially a sociopath. For him the culture was white people living the good life in suburban zombiehoods while blaming liberals for black people. To think a newspaper in a city the size of Phoenix would inflict such an ideologue on its citizenry (he even blames Eugene Pulliam for not wanting Phoenix to look like LA!) is a kind of tragedy. This is what the 1950s has bequeathed us: a city not worth caring about and one of its leading voices doubling down on the strategy that created it.

[headless]

He's no Don Dedera -- or even Erma Bombeck.

[Petro]

Great storytelling, Jon, and a fantastic education for me (having only arrived here in the late '70's.) Thanks for painting these historical pictures (the book is writing itself, haha.)

And "hear, hear" to soleri regarding the destructive consequences of car culture.

(My first LTE, in the late '70's, was a lament against freeway construction. I recall that I was exhorting to let congestion reign, so that alternative (public) transportation would be more economically attractive. Yea, I'm sure it was just like that...)

[morecleanair]

How ironic that Doug has become a shill for transit! Time to get the retirement papers in order!

[B. Danielson]

A minor possible quibble.

As I remember, Bob Wian (the "Bob" of "Bob's") was an Angeleno - and "Bob's" was regional (albeit a rather small region) rather than strictly local.

Having grown up in Phoenix in the 50's and earlier 60's ... this is, as is normal for Phoenix 101, an excellent evocation. Thanks.

[Michael Goodman]

Wow, I grew up in this Phoenix. Small hospital back then called Good Samaritan, now a behemoth of buildings, home to a little street in Encanto called Cypress. (A home I strongly suspect was only a couple doors down from another historian and Sheriff Deputy named Mapstone but I digress)Then in 1957, out into that urban sprawl 3 blocks into the County north of Camelback off 36th Street. This was my town.

While the name is the same, the town isn't and I am grateful for someone who cares for my City and my State, Albeit at a distance to remind me of a life 50 something years ago. Thank you again Jon Talton.

[AzReb]

During this reincarnation, I harken back to the first time I passed through this valley. It was the 1540's and I was traveling with Coronado. We were mislead by a red haired native wearing a black hat, who took us all the way to what is now Iowa. It was a tough trip. No gold. I sure would like to find out what ever happened to that Iowa native.

[[email protected]]

The auto enabled the suburbs which hollowed out Phoenix to the point there is not a sufficient tax base to maintain the infrastructure for a city it's size. It's ironic that the same thing happened to Mesa, as the its citizens move out to Gilbert, Chandler, and Queen Creek. The retail center started in downtown Phoenix and moved to Park Central. It then shifted to Thomas Mall, then Los Arcos, to Fiesta Mall, to Chandler Mall and Superstition Mall.

Now gas is $3+ and it takes a good job to afford the $1,000 mo. average cost of a car. As the middle class incomes shrink, fewer and fewer will be able to afford the luxury of suburban living. As Kunstler says,it really is a clusterf&*k.

[cal Lash]

I am still here REB. And I got your grandmothers scalp on my belt.
Also you are in charge of the coffee klatch schedule for the fan club.

[cal Lash]

Jon, as Petro points out you have completed a lot of chapters on the book on Phoenix and really Arizona history.

I got here January of 50. I lived two blocks from Soleri. I remember well his house with a fish pond inside and outside the house his father built. I also remember North Mountain Hospital and was on duty with and riding with Phoenix police officer, Ed Shultz the night he shot and killed one of the North Mountain Hospital Chimpanzees. Sunnyslope, the home of Slope Kings and Queens. A place you could fight tuberculosis while living at the Walbash trailer court . A community, where as a kid I would sell you the “Real” Arizona Republic and doughnut holes by the bag. Or you could by heroin from the local Italian dope dealer. I loved Sunnyslope and its desert that no longer exists

Reference the old Democratic mob, there were kinda low life types concentrating on gambling and hookers. But Lefty and the boys did pretty much run the state. Harry and his charter government crew were really only interested in “cleaning up” the town so to have a good image when they went forth with “zoning”. And thus began the sprawl. In my opinion zoning has been a huge crime since 1950.

Doug MacEachern is a hanger-on with little credibility. He writes just junk enough to make a few pennies. He was never one of The Arizona Republics stars. Don Dedra and Paul Dean were much better writers. He doesn’t even come close to Bob Robb in intelligence.

“A minor possible quibble. As I remember, Bob Wian (the "Bob" of "Bob's") was an Angeleno - and "Bob's" was regional (albeit a rather small region) rather than strictly local.”

You are correct but it was still a great place to get a hamburger and malt and at least it was from a guy with an open shirt and no tie as opposed to the sharks in suits from the east coast. I got my first ticket at Bob’s “Pipes” from the legendary motorcycle champion and Phoenix cop, Jon Sellers. And a quieter spot was “The Three Palms Drive In on 7th Avenue and Highland.

I identify with Soleri’s Portland but I am a desert rat. I love the desert. I just don’t care for a lot of rats. I have respect for Teddy Roosevelt but he should have not built the dam and then more dams. Tempe is now spending millions to replace the condom dam on the Salt so they can sell more condos. I get to Downtown Tempe PD on occasion while investigating the latest bar fight where a drunken, out of money student has been tossed by the bouncers into the waiting arms of the police. The big income is furnishing students booze and old men young women. Interesting is the joints are run and owned by young men with business degrees from ASU. One of the best Smoke shops (translation Hookah bars) is in just a block or two off campus. You guessed right the owners are from the Middle East. And the local Muslim recruiting station is also just a couple of blocks off campus.

Regarding Oregon, if you really want a picture of Oregon the state of many rivers to the sea, I suggest Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion.” Personally my deep psychological problem with a lack of sun will keep me from moving to Portland, Seattle or New Port Beach.
Phoenix, once a great small town. No mas.

[soleri]

Cal, not a chimpanzee. A baboon.

Was that dope dealer a small grocer at 7th Ave & Mountain View? Santopietro? As I recall, everyone was afraid of that family.

A firefighter bought the old family house (be it ever so humble, there's nothing like a midcentury money pit). He's done a great job fixing it up but one of the casualties of that effort was the indoor/outdoor fish pond.

Like you, I'm a desert rat. The northwest is a foreign substance my body still wants to reject. But a late-life choice comes with its own implacable logic. I'll die here.

I just finished the biography of the former Oregon governor Tom McCall (Fire at Eden's Gate). He was Oregon's pivotal political figure of the last 50 years. Oregon, you find out, is not that different from Arizona! You have the usual suspects running roughshod over the political process from sheer greed and arrogance. The difference is that Oregon won its war with them and Arizona lost. That's why Arizona has the look and feel of an experiment gone horribly awry. You don't fix the Phoenix (the blob that's eating Arizona, per Abbey) of 2013. It was too late even in 1993. And by 2033, it will be unmistakeably dystopian. Politics, you also find out, matters. What happened in Arizona was a crime against the state. That's why this blog exists - to detail the depredations. We all know the story by heart now but we're compelled to tell it again and again. If you don't take this personally, you don't have a heart.

[Pat]

http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/
Because it's a fun site to waste time, if anyone doesn't know about it. Phoenix in the fifties was uniquely situated to become one of the world's great desert oases, and I wouldn't blame the impoundments on the Salt River for what occurred later. We coulda had a paradise, but with the passing of the swamp cooler and the advent of AC, all natural barriers to growth were removed, and people who weren't really willing to suffer the summers began flooding in. What potential Phoenix had was quickly squandered, and is irretrievable. Outside my house, a light snow is falling, and it'll be cold until May, but it's still the southwest, and unlike western Oregon and Washington(I lived in both states for years) there will be summer thunderstorms, summer nights(11 p.m. is a little late for daytime for my taste)and plenty of bright, beautiful days with that southwestern quality of light in the mornings and evenings. But no great city.

[Tom Marcinko]

Jon, I'm hoping you turn this series into a book.

[headless]

Anyone remember TV newsman/weatherman Art Brock?

[cal Lash]

Soleri, U R right on all counts.
Thanks for the quote from ED Abbey. (Postcards from ED?)
The "Good News" ( a Abbey novel) sets out the ending for Phoenix.
And Ed had it right on "impoundments" or dams. "The Monkey Wrench Gang."
Without them the Sonoran would have remained a quiet desert.

Pat, I remember houses with no cooling. Houses with dirt floors and cots with wet sheets and mom praying for a breeze.
Houses in "quiet" communities and void of freeways. John Jacobs fields of lettuce and grapes. The sweet potato sheds of Carol Arthur Farms.

Headless, you mean "short hairs" Brock.
Of course.

[Rogue Columnist]

Didn't Art Brock look a little like Max Headroom?

Anyway, Phoenix had its stars: Bill Close, Don Nickles, etc. in the '50s, future governor Jack Williams was big.

[Elaine Chiate Morton]

THE PICTURE OF LERNERS, My Mother (LILLION LAVIN) came to Phoenix from New York with SAM LERNER to open this store in 1931.

She then met and married my DAD. MAC CHIATE, who opened the #1 Package Good Liquor Store at 434 N. Central in 1938.
First Liquor License after Prohibition.

I graduated from West Phoenix High School in 1956.
Go T Birds! Elaine Chiate Morton [email protected]

[headless]

"Didn't Art Brock look a little like Max Headroom?"

A little bit chubbier than Max. He also ran for governor as a Democrat, but lost.

Jack Williams had a winning slogan when he ran: "Jack's got an eye out for you!"

[cal Lash]

Elaine I think I remember You from Nelsons pool.

[soleri]

headless, that's funny in a non-PC way. Williams was Arizona's first culture warrior pol. His tag line on KOY was "another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it". I was a hippie when he was governor and I loved hating him. Now I can look back on that period and miss all those bozos wearing plaid blazers and pants pulled up to their tits. This points out another limitation to nostalgia: anytime you think things used to be better, remember how people dressed.

Art Brock, another Greatest Generation glad-hander, would say "hum a ditty" for humidity. Other than that, he looked like the guy who would teach Shop in high school. He was a conservative, which back then meant one thing - no sex outside your pajamas.

[headless]

"...that's funny in a non-PC way."

Wallace and Ladmo were responsible for teaching the Phx. Boomers that kind of satirical bent. Seattle had 'Patches the Clown', but Patches was kind and gentle and did not scare children -- nothing like Mr. Grudgmier or the obviously gay, Marshal Goode.

There were many things about growing up in boomtown Phx that were irreplaceable and great. I don't think that this is all just a trip down memory lane. I spent the first eight years of my life in the Burbs of Long Island, NY and I can tell you that Phx was 1,000% better in every way.

What was it about those times that we can realistically hope to give back to future generations?

[eclecticdog]

I thought Marshal Goode was just sad and downtrodden! This isn't a teletubbies thing now is it?

[cal Lash]

Who deleted the video?
Speaking of conservatives with a crew cut and sex and funny pajamas.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/29/1259046/-Mormon-Bishop-Posing-As-Homeless-Man-Rebuffed-by-Congregation?detail=email
WJD

[dawgzy]

The actual campaign slogan : ONE-EYED JACKS ARE WILD! Tru dat. My brother told me so.

[cal Lash]

I sat in the downtown YMCA steam room with Jack Williams and Jesse Owens anmong others.
Both were quiet easy going honest and humble human beings. No clothes and steam comfort provide for a equal zone.

[soleri]

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

[headless]

I know how you feel, Cal.

Jack Williams could have adopted the look of a wild, black eye-patch pirate, but chose instead the friendly frosted lens over his missing eye.

Many who knew him wondered if they should look him in the one good eye with both of their eyes or would that look unnatural? Should they look at him in both eye(s).

I guess we'll never really know, because none of us had the guts to ask him when he was with us.

[wkg in bham]

Great article. Great comments. Really thought provoking.
I how I can articulate myself properly. The one thing that struck me was the level of local business/government in 1950 compared to today. Most business today is conducted by firms on a national scale. It’s very hard for a local business to compete (except in niche markets). I’m going to “blame”:
- The interstate highway system
- National TV networks (and their national advertising)
- Easy access to capital via “Wall Street” for the big national firms
-National banking consolidation
- National consolidation of the newspapers
- Others I haven’t thought of yet.
Here’s the worse news: it’s going to get worse as more and more of the economy is taken over by businesses operating at the international level. We’ve already seen this in cars, fast food, airplanes, banking, etc. I’m starting to see this at the retail level (think IKEA). We’ll all work for our lords and masters in New York, London, Tokyo and their lackeys in Washington. Furthering the problem is the internet/UPS which has already killed the local bookstore. Your local newspaper is probably on life-support.

[soleri]

wkg, spot on.

The erosion of local economies means communities that don't function well, and citizens that have less loyalty to one another because of that. Once every city and town looks and acts the same, there's less to cherish and protect. The more the business roundtable is peopled by so many branch managers, the stewardship class shrinks in its ambition and concern.

Phoenix tripped unconsciously into this set of arrangements and the results speak for themselves. But the trends have been the same for most cities. The difference for a city like Phoenix is that it didn't bring great assets and legacy institutions into this situation. It didn't have the great universities, endowments, and political muscle to reinvent itself. Nor did it have core community values that could protect the Sonoran desert, establish growth boundaries, and create an unique Phoenix ethos. Growth was the god, and the best of Phoenix was the virgin pushed into its volcano.

We look back in the 1950s as a golden era, but the paradox is that it was precisely then that hyperkinetic growth should have alerted us to the dangers before us. We didn't have enough imagination to wonder about the future. We were drunk on cheap success. And the hangover we have now is permanent. There is no road back.

[headless]

"There is no road {that we have yet seen} back."

Without the black plague, the forests of Europe would never have recovered. There is something(s) that will appear to restore balance, whether we consciously engineer it ourselves or if it is forced upon us by mother nature, is the choice that we have.

Fear not! Disaster is just around the corner....

[soleri]

headless, I tend to think disaster is inevitable. Even if we somehow evolve into some higher consciousness, climate change will crush us (that is, all of us). Take the long view, and you realize how vain our kvetching about the Phoenix problem is.

[AWinter]

What can't go on, won't.
Affordable automobility was the medium that allowed this Ponzi scheme development pattern where new growth paid for the cost of recent development. Those spread-out places are not productive (income per unit of area) enough to pay for their own upkeep, i.e. they can't afford to exist. So, things will crater (Hello Detroit!), or people will start to build differently:

http://youtu.be/52NhFMFgLEY?t=22m0s

In another video from Strong Towns (can't seem to find it), the analogy to the post-war US was royal Spain that blew its riches from the New World on an inefficient transport system, necessitated by the unfortunate siting of its capital Madrid in the dead center of the country. The result was a long bye-bye to a former world power.

The first wave of suburbia in the fifties was financed by real earnings and investments. The second wave, a generation later, was financed by debt right up until 2008. There will be no third wave. Everyone's heard about the trends: less driving, less suburban developments, ever more expensive city living, ...
But where does that leave all those places that have hung big nooses of asphalt around their necks? Absent any real core to fall back to, even our favorite bulldozer scenario is unlikely, too expensive, not worth it - there is no it. Instead, expect the Grapes of Wrath - Millenial Edition.

[AWinter]

http://youtu.be/52NhFMFgLEY?t=22m0s

What can't go on, won't.
Cars were the medium that allowed this pyramid scheme development pattern where new growth paid for the cost of recent development. Those spread-out places are not productive (income per unit of area) enough to pay for their own upkeep, i.e. they can't afford to exist. So, things will crater (Hello Detroit!), or people will start to build differently.

In another video from Strong Towns (can't seem to find it), the analogy to the post-war US was royal Spain that blew its riches from the New World on an inefficient transport system, necessitated by the unfortunate siting of its capital Madrid in the dead center of the country. The result was a long bye-bye to a former world power.

The first wave of suburbia in the fifties was financed by real earnings and investments. The second wave, a generation later, was financed by debt right up until 2008. There will be no third wave. Everyone's heard about the trends: less driving, less suburban developments, ever more expensive city living, ...
But where does that leave all those places that have hung big nooses of asphalt around their necks? Absent any real core to fall back to, even our favorite bulldozer scenario is unlikely, too expensive, not worth it - there is no it. Instead, expect the Grapes of Wrath - Millenial Edition.

[AWinter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NhFMFgLEY&t=22m1s

The pyramid scheme is over. Old developments that couldn't afford to exist in the first place will no longer be rescued by new growth. The future is rearing its head: less driving, expensive city living, slumburbia, Detroit Downfall, etc. And for Phoenix: The Grapes of Wrath - Millenial Edition.

[wkg in bham]

Another thing that struck me was that Phoenix was very much a city with only 100,000 to 400,000 people during the period in question. I had been harboring the idea that the best size for a city to be was somewhere between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 people. I need to do some thinking and research about this matter.

Jon doesn’t say anything about the matter, but I think the city was carrying around very little dead weight during the period. I suspect that workforce participation was very close to 100%. (Note: I consider “house-wife” to be workforce participation - particularly for the period under consideration). In boxing terms, the city was hitting way over its weight.

[headless]

Take heart. There is another version of Genghis Khan and/or the black plague that will hit us and pare the population down to manageable size -- and with it, all the bad side effects of our industrial civilization.

Maybe the best preparation for what is to come would be a re-reading of the Canterbury Tales.

[Petro]

headless, I tend to think disaster is inevitable. Even if we somehow evolve into some higher consciousness, climate change will crush us (that is, all of us). Take the long view, and you realize how vain our kvetching about the Phoenix problem is.

Ouch, and so true. Kind of makes one grateful for individual mortality. It's kind of preemptive, and that's all the rage these days.

[soleri]

AWinter, thanks for the link to the Strong Town videos.

I've heard it stated it before, probably by Kunstler, that suburban infrastructure is simply too expensive to maintain. And with burgeoning energy prices, the economic calculus behind it begins to implode. But as Dick Cheney said, "the American way of life is not negotiable", so we'll pretend our economy is strong enough to support something grotesquely out of proportion to our real wealth.

The blue vs red, urban vs exurban divide is partly unfinished business from the past but also a harbinger of the coming shake-out. Suburbs want cheap oil, subsidies, and the lingering if fading aroma of prosperity. They don't want alternative energy, higher taxes, mass transit, or any of those things they think of as "socialist" (meaning, support for the commons). The tragedy is that they've invented an entirely fictitious economy based on little more than wishful thinking. Denialism is their cognitive key to explaining reality.

A city like Phoenix is an anomaly, a huge city with low density and no real core. You don't retrofit it for harsher reality. There isn't the wealth for that, and as the city already shows, poverty is increasing year by year. The manifest destiny of a drive-everywhere society is finally meeting its brick wall.

[soleri]

Petro, hell is living too long. I know I'm close to overstaying my welcome. The best thing about growing old is realizing there's nothing you really need to fear.

[Suzanne]

It is my opinion that government and U.S. government alone that is behind the tremendous sprawl throughout the Salt River Valley. The government made lucrative deals with existing farmers to develop Roosevelt dam. The government built two air bases in the area to support Motorola and other manufacturers as a job base. And, (keep in mind that the government grids sections of land in a public/private checkerboard) after WW2 the government auctioned off , at give-away prices, every one of its sections across the Salt River basin (and beyond). It is this final fact that was the catalyst for sprawl.

soleri writes, Suburbs want cheap oil, subsidies, and the lingering if fading aroma of prosperity. They don't want alternative energy, higher taxes, mass transit, or any of those things they think of as "socialist" (meaning, support for the commons).

That may be true, but more specifically it is ALEC and their wealth influence and focus on state legislators to discourage change that is more difficult.

[soleri]

Suzanne, ALEC is one of the worst examples of concentrated wealth buying our political system in order to advance their own interests. This is why if you're a Republican/right-winger and reading this blog, I say verily unto you: stooge, they're using you. They whisper "nigger" into your ear and you reach for your gun. It's one thing to be a fool for love but don't be a fool for plutocrats. That is really dumb.

That said, do people have a legitimate interest in living the suburban idyll away from the tumult of cities and "others"? I'm an urban guy but I can't second-guess that choice. Granted, it's soul-killing and boring but I can understand why people want to live as stress-free as possible. Only problem: it's not sustainable. At some point, as AWinter's link shows, the edifice collapses from a weak foundation (read: Ponzi scheme). This is why the Republican Party exists: to disguise and deflect this fundamental issue so the "producers" can continue looting the public purse.

ALEC has no problem advancing the agenda of the oligarchy in red states because the average citizen really does feel entitled to cheap gas and expensive infrastructure. But even if citizens were a bit more sensitive to the environmental and fiscal costs, the oligarchs would still prevail. Money doesn't talk, it screams.

From the indispensable Charles Pierce:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/alec-trayvon-martin-case-120313

[Joanna]

Thank you for continuing to write Phoenix 101. I first met you in approx.2005 when you spoke to a large gathering at ASU of people who wanted the AZ Centennial to be a large scale success. There were some wonderful collaborative breakout sessions that explored all kinds of statewide program ideas. I later found out that there was never any intent to implement any of the proposals;all breakout session notes were destroyed after the conference. I ache for what might have been.

[cal Lash]

Per Suzzane: "It is my opinion that government and U.S. government alone that is behind the tremendous sprawl throughout the Salt River Valley. The government made lucrative deals with existing farmers to develop Roosevelt dam."

I m not saying I just been saying.

[cal Lash]

Soleri and the broad brush!"This is why the Republican Party exists: to disguise and deflect this fundamental issue so the "producers" can continue looting the public purse."
At 73 and on the rim of human existence I am not bothering myself with changing my party registration
Can U pick out a historical time period that this may not have been true. And then beam me back.

[cal Lash]

I m off to pet a Sajuaro so I will leave you with something that might brighten your day. a quote from Jim Stiles Take it or Leave it on Edward Abbey

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2012/04/01/take-it-or-leave-it-was-cactus-eds-last-joke-on-us-and-vice-versa-by-jim-stiles/

“What Abbey always hoped we’d take away from his writing and from his life was a sense of ourselves as individuals, as men and women who could take control of our own lives and our own destinies. Abbey spoke of a “nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses.” He longed for a people with dignity and courage and he loathed the mindless “bleating” that he found even in his own readers.
He once said, “ If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule. That was the American Dream.” Most New Westerners love Ed Abbey and have no idea what that means.”

[soleri]

Cal, I love Abbey's writings but he lived in a dream. There is simply no way 315 million Americans can be "self-reliant farmers, craftsmen....", etc.

Even in crunchy Portland, there are limits to the small-is-beautiful economy. What Portland does show is that it's possible to live better with less. That is, less crap, big-box stores, freeways, cars - the whole catastrophe of modern American life. I am impatient with doomers because while they do have important wisdom to impart, they ultimately can't explain how to transition to a dramatically smaller society. Well, a few of them can, but it would be both pointless and disturbing to relate their methodology.

I am alert to my "broad brush", btw. But if at this late date, the Republican Party doesn't disgust you, you have a stronger stomach than I do. The best defense against the equivocations of political life is the bright line: you don't demonize the weak. You don't intentionally sabotage the economy. You don't work tirelessly on behalf of oligarchs and plutocrats. You don't deny environmental issues as "hoaxes". A broad brush helps here because if we were to get caught up in the idea that Democrats can be craven as well, then the effectiveness of our outrage is diluted to weak tea. We're not going to change anything in this blog, but we desperately need to tell blunt truths with blunt language if we have any aspiration to bear moral witness.

[cal Lash]

Abbeys dream "Desert Solitaire"
Abbeys truck, not for sale but his red Caddy is. Contact Ken Sanders at his Utah book store. Hang in there Soleri " I have a dream"
That the Saguaro' s rise up and with the help of Wiley Coyote crush "manunkind."
U know the story Sahuaro crushes man with shotgun, to death.

[AWinter]

Sorry for the duplicate posts - the spam filter was not good to me.
There is a big cognitive dissonance when it comes to the issue of sprawl. While it is one instance where the idea of big government doing big damage has merit, you can see tea partiers inveighing against 'liberalized' zoning, property rights, less government spending on roads, market pricing for parking etc. The world is upside down and people are starting to fall on their heads. I don't think of it as much of severe hypocrisy but straight-up, self-interested politics - purporting philosophical purity while hanging on, hope against hope, to the fading dream.

Now I wonder if Phoenix had been better off not receiving the infusions of government water projects and interstate highways. What doesn't get bloated can't implode. But that gets into "Canticle for Leibowitz" territory.

Regarding climate change, a fun fact:
"Half of all the fossil fuels ever burned have been burned since Whitney Houston released her first album."

https://twitter.com/brookejarvis/statuses/397818289226657794

[headless]

Soleri -- "We're not going to change anything in this blog...."

I disagree with you a bit on this point. Prior to the blogosphere, free political speech for the average working man was more or less a pipe dream -- philosophically possible, but, in truth, not a reality.

At this point in time, the 'high wind' (I'm not trying to be funny here)that can emanate from blogs such as this one are indeed a political force to be reckoned with.

Republicans have paid trolls, some with over 100 handles, whose job it is to offer oppositional blather on blog sites such as this to any point the RNC deems harmful to their cause.

Bottom line -- Blogs like Rogue Columnist are a threat to the status quo because they hammer home viewpoints that are in strong and sometimes eloquent opposition to it.

Keep on keepin' on, Soleri, Cal, Emil, etc.... although sometimes I wish Emil wasn't so sensitive. I think that there are some high school 'wedgie' issues that he's still sorting through.

[Rogue Columnist]

The history and analysis this blog provides is highly dangerous to the elites that run the hustles that are today's Phoenix and Arizona. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been run out of the Republic and the state.

Will it ultimately make a difference for the better? I can't say. But I will claim some credit for some of the good things that have happened in the core. Beyond that, I'm not willing to let the bastards get away with their lies.

Forgive the special pleading.

[bearsense]

Just visited Phoenix for my 50th HS reunion (North '63).
Growing up there was a fond memory that Jon so often evokes.
…. and yes it took me years to get away from Art Brock's pronunciation of "humididy."

[dan kincaid]

Jon,

I really enjoy your columns and pass them on to friends who have lived in the Valley since childhood.

A question, if you have time: Do you remember a small branch library somewhere near The Projects and Paul West Market on 20th (?) Street. In 1959, shortly after arriving in Phoenix, my father and I went there. The elderly lady librarian said her name was Amherst or Applegate or Alpine, as in the telephone directory, and that she was (one of?) the last of her family. The library, I think, closed not long afterward. I checked out books on the star and constellations that had a powerful impact on me. dk

[Rogue Columnist]

Dan,
You know more than me about this specific case. Try posting it on the most recent column -- which I will post later today -- and maybe someone like Cal can give more information.

Thanks for reading!

[Tom G]

Sounds like Los Angeles in the '50s!

[Ginger Mattox]

Looking for a photo of the corner of Grand Ave. 15th Ave and Roosevelt in its early days. If you know that one exist, I would appreciate the info. Thx

[Tony LaSpina]

Thank you all! What wonderful memories of my boyhood home, a city that was just the right size.

[Jack Chance]

Does anyone remember the small Coney Island Hot Dog place on the west side of Central south of Monroe? They had the best chili dogs in the world. However this was in the very late 1940s and very early 1950s. I would like to see a photo of it if anyone has one.
Jack

[David Troy]

Some really interesting history on here.
I lived in New York City for many years before coming to Arizona, and took an interest in that urban history. We live in our neighborhoods in New York, not 'in the city', but the core(s) obviously are a lot sounder than many more recently constructed and expanded cities like Phoenix. But, in New York, things aren't quite the community harmony that many of us long for. I can't tell you how many times I heard the same story from the older people: "We used to sleep on the fire escape in the intense part of the summer, sometimes going to the park, with sheet and pillow. We didn't lock our doors, and were in and out of our apartments constantly. We took care of each others' kids, and if there was misbehavior at school, we'd hear about it, and the child would be disciplined again when he/she got home". People swam in the Hudson River, when it was many times more polluted than it is today. Barge captains have said they know to watch out for the kids, and knew their own could be out there, too. Today, you get fined if you swim in the river, clean as it is; and yes I have swum in it; several times.
New Yorkers are very friendly people, but you have to ask them first, and once you do they will open up to you like like no others. Being very interested in local history, I talked to many over the years, about the old days. What I heard shared is a constant, as is the timeline for when it all changed: most will say 'the sixties'. Finding out what went wrong is harder. What I heard from people is a mix of three reasons: Drugs, urban flight, and massive immigration into neighborhoods from poorer countries. And, no the people citing these reasons typically are not anti anything; New York has always been an immigrant city.
Though folks who you ask come up with any combination of the reasons above, they usually are still somewhat puzzled as to how it all really happened; what really caused it all to drastically change; but they are all sure that it did, and when it did.
I think the gentleman who posted the main article above is right in many ways, about the automobile being central to all this. However, in New York, the flight took place decades earlier, as soon as subway track was laid to the outer boroughs, and to Long Island, but the flight was not so drastic as to drain the cohesion from the city. I guess post war wealth and places like Levitttown (that the author also mentions) played a big part. People left because they could. They left good neighborhoods for open space and more bang for the buck; the same reasons Californians move to Arizona today.
New Yorkers have always lived on top of one another, in very multi-cultural neighborhoods; they still do today. Some neighborhoods were mono-ethnic, so to speak, but you were never more that a few blocks from another ethnic group. But when they left, initially, at least, they did not leave to get away from other cultures; far from it; they left their Irish, Italian, German, Puerto Rican you name it neighborhoods, for what they thought would be a better life in the suburbs. One can't ignore the cascading effect, I would imagine: the flight itself would cause a neighborhood to deteriorate, promoting more flight.
Before all this happened, you had Coney Island, local public baths, and several other beaches that truly were for everyone. By the '70s many of these places were a ghost of what they used to be.
So, the big established old cities with little winding streets are not immune to changing into places where no one knows each other, and everyone keeps their doors locked.
I don't think communities are built, despite what developers say; they aren't build by HOA-dominated homes, nor by nineteenth century carriage houses, as beautiful as those are. I have seen rundown neighborhoods, with a lot of problems in areas like Washington Heights whose buidings are palatial, and in areas with depressing housing projects, and have lived in both. It isn't money either: though that be strongly linked to crime rates. The people in the wealthier neighborhoods still don't know each other, don't hang out together and all keep their doors locked.
Community is something people build, not in their buildings but in their hearts; they take it with them when they move out, and they either succeed in passing it on to their children, or they don't. I personally think it may have been hard come by, perhaps nurtured by necessity, and cherished because it is such a gem.
God bless.

[A. Starr]

Fabulous stuff, Jon.
In the interest of meticulous (trivial) accuracy, it was "Polar Bar" . . . not Bear.
It shared the prolific drive in scene with "The Village" - just N. of Thomas on Central - The "Three Palms" on 7th Ave., north of Indian School and The Black Swan (affectionately called the "Dirty Duck") on about 15th St. and Thomas.

[John Shepherdson]

I'll be danged...There's poeplee even older than me still in this valley! We have a unique combination of stuff. Mountains scattered around our town. SRP canals. What's this....trains?

[James Rowland]

I, too, spent many hours at the Phoenix public library. It was such a beautiful building. Even as a youngster, every time I saw it, I was impressed. Why the powers that be insist on remodeling perfection is beyond me. I moved to Phoenix when I was nine, in 1955, and from then until the early 70s, although much changed, much stayed the same for the better. I miss the Phoenix those days.