The Warehouse District

Railroad tracks running to Crystal Ice at Fourth Avenue and Jackson in the heart of the district. The plant not only provided ice deliveries to businesses and homes, but produced blocks to fill the bunkers of railroad refrigerator cars. The blocks were dragged and placed through roof doors in the railcars by workers on catwalks using hooks.  (McCulloch Bros./ASU Archives).

Phoenix's Warehouse District is finally seeing a payoff after years of destruction and false starts. How big a renaissance remains to be seen; coverage I've seen such as this doesn't quantify the new businesses. But something is happening. Most important, it involves creative firms and tech startups, not only restaurants.

The area saw an effervescence before, when artists discovered the historic buildings in the 1980s. But they were driven out by the arena, ballpark, Joe Arpaio's relentless jail expansions, Phoenix's ethos of tear-downs, and the city's lack of an effective preservation policy. The Job Corps moved into several buildings.

Some of the best buildings were lost. This helped fuel the successful fight in the mid-2000s to save the Sun Mercantile building, part of the city's old Chinatown. A few developers with stamina and perseverance, notably Michael Levine, refurbished some buildings. Another comeback attempt came with the opening of the unfortunately named Bentley Projects (the old Bell Laundry) in the 2000s, which included a restaurant, galleries, and a Poisoned Pen Bookstore. Too far from the core, that didn't take, either.

Phoenix never boasted a warehouse district with the size and great bones of, say, Denver, which has become a tremendous asset for an area anchored by the restored and expanded Denver Union Station. Phoenix was too small and limited in its economic heft. Still, what remains of the area is one of the city's treasures. It's one of the few places in Phoenix where you can find that coveted urban authenticity, with a variety of old buildings, narrow streets and density, that talented creatives seek.

 

This is the commercial heart of old Phoenix. Railroads moved most of the nation's freight in the early 20th century, so it was natural for warehouses, distribution centers, the produce sheds, and what amounted to industry in the city to cluster along the tracks of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe.

At its peak, these buildings ran from 16th Street, at the mouth of the SP yard, past 19th Avenue, and then along the Santa Fe up 19th Avenue past Mobest Yard and beyond on Grand Avenue. But the heart of what's now called the Warehouse District ran from around 12th Street to beyond Seventh Avenue.

In addition to the remaining rail lines south of Harrison Street (the old Hogan's Alley), the Santa Fe especially did "street running" with two sets of tracks serving warehouses along Jackson Street. Small switch engines would move boxcars and refrigerator cars to warehouses where they would be loaded or unloaded, then taken back to the yard to be made up as freight trains. Tracks also ran along parts of Madison and Harrison.

Both the SP and Santa Fe also operated their own freight stations — the Southern Pacific's at Central and the Santa Fe's at Sixth Avenue. Part of the latter remains, integrated into a county parking garage. These stations were primarily for "less than carload" freight, where shipments for individual business would be transferred to trucks for delivery. Strings, or cuts, of boxcars would be positioned parallel to each other on multiple tracks so the doors could be opened on both sides and the contents efficiently unloaded via spacers placed between the cars.

Both railroads also ran multiple spur lines to the south. Later, the SP developed the Arizona Interstate Industrial Center south of today's Maricopa Freeway. The Santa Fe's "sidewinder" was a street-running spur that went several miles south, including along 11th Avenue (I believe it is still in use). The Santa Fe had small rail yards east of Seventh Avenue at its freight station and, still in use, around Ninth Avenue.

The intensity of railroad operations — which I still remember from my 1960s childhood — explains the overpasses on Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street. Although only one track, now operated by Union Pacific, runs through downtown, a driver once had to cross (as I recall) nearly 20 tracks at Seventh Avenue. Trains often blocked traffic, including emergency vehicles, with only the 1930s Central Avenue underpass as an alternate. Hence, in the 1960s the City Council built the two overpasses, along with a smaller one at 16th Street.

This was the heart of agricultural shipping. Produce was trucked to shippers where it would be loaded on refrigerated boxcars. These were a boon, allowing perishables to make long journeys to markets in the east. Through the 1950s, these were kept cool from ice that was manufactured at ice houses along the line and shoved into bunkers from hatches in the car roofs. Since then, the refrigeration has been mechanical.

As you will see below, the district was also home to a variety of other commercial operations, from steel fabricators and small machine shops to grocery distribution hubs. Almost all were locally owned. All this industrial activity carried risks. For example, on July 13, 1936, two men were killed and several injured in an explosion at the Farmers Produce Co. on Madison between Third and Fourth streets. The source of the explosion was an ammonia pressure tank. Hundreds of spectators were taken ill by the fumes.

It was a major center of employment, including for minorities who were shut out of good work in much of segregated Phoenix. Ernesto Miranda worked nights at United Produce at Third Street and Madison. Central Arizona Light and Power, a forerunner of APS, had large natural gas tanks on Lincoln Street and a warehouse and substation were built across the street at Lincoln and Second Avenue.

For example, a 1956 City Directory includes this lineup on Jackson Street: Arizona Mercantile, Southwest Lumber, Mall Tool Co., Peerless Yeast, Arizona Hardware, Tanita Farms, Arizona Flour Mills, Southwest Envelope, Hammond Soap and Chemical, Safeway, Armor, Schubert Liquor Distributors, and Merchant's Shippers.

Few were large buildings, much less the handsome multistory structures that distinguish LoDo in Denver. Many were homely corrugated steel. Most were single story.

Yet the district was tightly integrated into the city. Bars and railroad cafes were there, including Pal's near busy Union Station. Madison Street was full of single-room occupancy hotels such as the Patio, along with a barber and eateries such as Sing Hi, the Silver Dollar Buffett, and Luz Cafe. Walk two blocks north, and you are in the city, with stores, movie theaters, hotels, doctors and dentists, banks, churches, and the offices of government and business. You could catch the streetcars at Washington Street. Especially before the late 1940s, there was vice, too, such as in the notorious Paris Alley. The Deuce began at the tracks and Second Street. Whether you sought virtue or vice, this was walkable Phoenix.

Changes in the way freight moved and new industrial parks spelled the death of the district for its original use starting in the 1970s.

As I've written before, I regret I lacked a camera on my treks to the train station and warehouse district when I was a child. I've found no photographs that really capture the energy and excitement of the place, even in the 1960s. But the next best thing is the ASU archive of McCulloch Brothers Photography. James Morrison McCulloch (1870-1945) and William Patrick McCulloch (1880-1971) ran a prominent commercial photo business and the archive number 4,562 digitized images. Below are memories, mostly thanks to this wonderful collection. Most photos are from the 1930s and 1940s.

Gallery — The Warehouse District (Almost all come from the McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives. Click for a larger image):

A rare view of the central part of the Warehouse District in its heyday, 1956. Note the strings of boxcars in the lower center. That's the Southern Pacific freight station. You can also see boxcars "spotted" at warehouses along Jackson Street. Union Station is out of the image, to the left. Click on the photo for a large view.

This late 1930s aerial view shows the west end of the Southern Pacific rail yards at Seventh Street. Cotton warehouses are in the bottom of the photo. Box cars and refrigerator cars are staged at several warehouses along Jackson Street.

The first shipment of Coors beer arrived in Phoenix in 1933. Railroads were opposed to these "billboard" reefers and after a long litigation, regulators ended the practice in 1937.

The Arizona Citrus Growers warehouse at Sixth Street and Jackson, showing the tracks that ran along the street. 

Looking north from the heart of the warehouse district on First Avenue. The "new" City-County Building is at left and the Luhrs Tower center.

Here's another angle, looking northeast over the dense warehouses and shops toward downtown, 1933.

Local A-1 Beer had its brewery at 12th Street and Jackson. This is in the 1950s.

Refrigerated boxcars ("reefers") lined up at the Arizona Citrus Growers warehouse at Sixth and Jackson streets in the 1940s. Shipping Salt River Valley produce nationally began in the Warehouse District of Phoenix.

At 11th Street and Jackson, reefers are loaded at Arizona Citrus Sales. (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives)

Boxcars beside the Advanced Seed warehouse.

Smart and Final Wholesale Grocers sits beside Apache Distributing, which occupies a building design common to the district.

The Cooperative Citrus Growers Association warehouse near Madison and First Avenue in 1940 (Lee Russell/Library of Congress).

Arizona Hardware had one of the most handsome buildings. It was renovated by Dudley Ventures.

Borden's, at Third Avenue and Jackson, in the 1940s. (McCulloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).

Remember Arizona's favorite root beer? This was its bottling plant.

You're looking north on Central from Lincoln in the early 1930s before the underpass was built. The building on the left beside the tracks is the old SP depot, which was turned into the freight station and later expanded.

Central Beverage at 32 S. Seventh Street was an example of the generally modest size of the businesses that occupied the district. But they were many, adding to the variety of the commerce and architecture.

The Chambers building, impressive compared with most in the Warehouse District in 1937, is still on Fourth Avenue just northeast of Union Station.

City Ice at 21 N. Fourth Street shows the rough face of most of the district, which was built for handling freight inexpensively.

A streetside view of Crystal Ice on Jackson.

Farmer's Produce at Third Street and Madison offers an arched flourish above the entry doors. Note the railroad tracks on the street to enable rail cars to be parked beside the warehouse.

Here's a rare view looking northeast from the district in 1933. Note the A.J. Bayless warehouse, which supplied the state's venerable hometown grocery chain, with a boxcar unloading in the rear.

With the Central Avenue underpass completed in 1940, this photo gives a sense of the density of the district. Note the Southern Pacific Freight Station, right, with the freight house added on to the old brick SP passenger depot, which was superseded by Union Station in 1923.

A new delivery van sits outside the Farmers Produce warehouse at Third Street and Madison circa 1940.

Central Arizona Power and Light's building on South Third Avenue, just south of Union Station.

This 1920 ad gives a view of the Arizona Egyptian Cotton Co. at 6th Street and Lincoln, south of today's ballpark.

Here's a rare view into the Warehouse District looking across Jefferson Street before the new Maricopa County government complex was built in the mid-1960s.

Looking west from around Fifth Street, this tangle of Southern Pacific and Santa Fe tracks shows the district still in use circa 1970. Its days are numbered. The tower going up is the First National Bank building (now Wells Fargo).

This building at Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street had several tenants, including Haas, Baruch & Co. wholesale grocer and Barrow's Furniture. Note the railroad tracks running along Jackson to allow boxcars to be spotted for loading and unloading. The structure was demolished in July 2020.

Partly saved by Maricopa County is the Santa Fe Freight Depot at Sixth Avenue and Madison, now attached to a parking garage. Into the 1960s, the station had a large "Santa Fe" neon sign on the roof and was served by multiple tracks, which handled mostly box cars carrying "less-than-carload" (LCL) freight for local customers. It also had a hoist for LCL containers.

A contemporary view of what remains, looking east across Union Station (Benjamin Dziechciowski photo).

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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

[Pat]

Check out the Fuller Paints sign touting its "Pioneer White Lead."
If only Ladmo had won his election bid and made good on his promise to put root beer in school water fountains, Barq's would be a titan in the industry today.

[Cal lash]

As would Arnold Pickles.

[Pat]

I like Arnold's pickles, you'll like Arnold's too, the only thing that's better than an Arnold's pickle is two!

[Dawgzy]

I wish that I had a few pictures of NW 13 th Ave. here in Portland. Repurposed warehouse chic. The roadway is narrow compared with, say, Jackson St in Phoenix, as is true generally for Portland Streets.
Someone recently told me that the word was that Bridgeport Brewing was crazy to repurpose an old rope factory building there 15 (?) years ago. The area was isolated and sketchy.
I'm neither young nor creative but I like those old buildings, too. The warehouse row in any city isn't going to be Rome, but they along with other old buildings do give me a sense that people lived there before there were cars, give a sense of the scale and means of what they did.
There's a new Ace hardware that's opened north of the newly active Lloyd district that had been a furniture store for decades, but was originally built as a dairy. In what's now the basement I'm told that the areas where horse drawn wagons were parked still shows in features that got preserved over the century, including bays used for feeding the horses. The store shows a lot of the original timber and brick. I wonder what the old Carnation dairy at Central and Indian school might look like today if left standing. By, the way, what's there now?

[Jochen Walther]

We at CCBG Architects are a strong advocate of the Warehouse district and are the leading firm of preservation, restoration and adaptive reuse of the Warehouse district. You can find more about our work here on our Website. http://ccbg-arch.com/work/adaptive-reuse/

[Robert H. Bohannan]

Busy rail freight traffic may have been the main reason that the 7th Avenue, 7th Street, and 16th Street overpasses were built, but not the only one.

Number Three used to arrive around Midnight every night--about the time many folks were driving home from the area bars. Motor vehicle/"Golden State" grade crossing crashes were so common that I was actually returning home on the train when we hit a car--at 16th Street, I think. New Year's Eve, 1957. We were delayed quite a while and my Grandmother, who didn't make the trip with us and was waiting at home (on West Roma Avenue) was really worried.

Of course, the completion of the overpasses more or less coincided with the cessation of "Golden State"** service. Wish we had those trains now!

**Names of passenger trains should be in italics; quotes is the closest I can provide here.

[Mary Tooley]

Wonderful photos that exude a sense of pride. Now only immediate profits for shareholders count.

[Matt Silverman]

My agency recently renovated one of the warehouses pictured here. The Smart and Final building at second and Buchanans Streets. It's now owned by R&R Partners, the Arizona office of a national advertising/marketing agency. Would love to give you a tour, John.

[James]

Thank you for the images, as they're so difficult to find.

While the "revitalization" currently occurring within the District is making more use of the area than what was there just a few years ago (almost nothing), but there doesn't seem to be a cohesive strategy that focuses on how to leverage the Warehouse District's main assets: its connection to Phoenix's past, it's potential to link downtown and South Phoenix, buildings that are affordable for the creative class, large warehouses isolated enough to be used as live music venues/clubs, proximity to the sports venues, and land that is affordable for affordable/moderately priced housing to support those small businesses.

Instead, the focus seems to be on selling the affordability factor to businesses in order to encourage them to relocate. That's great if these companies arrive as part of a larger plan, but that's not the case. The Sun Merc is being turned into a medical facility; the old Jackson's on 3rd is now a dental training school. Jackson's potential comes from its link to Chase and Talking Stick; it should be lined with bars, restaurants, music, art, etc. Who is going to walk to Cooperstown at night along 3 blocks of offices who shut their lights at 5pm?

There hasn't been ANY retail-type establishments opened in the District; the kind that help make an area alive throughout all hours of the day. Bentley Projects down-sized, the McGinnis factory which housed a furniture craftsman was bought by a Church...

Phx economic director, Christine Mackay, was quoted in an article within the last year saying she had just been the District for the first time recently. How can someone with so little knowledge of the area's history properly plan its future? Why would she respect properties she has no attachment to - or knowledge of?

Attracting creative businesses, again, should be one part of the plan. But, acknowledging its multicultural past should be, as well - ASU, now located on 7th St/Grant could lead the way toward a project that celebrates the Hispanic and Chinese cultures who once were the economic backbone of the District: a Museum, art gallery, library, and affordable housing perhaps. And, they could work with the GWCarver Museum to extend its hours and make it a true attraction.

Encouraging an active street life on Jackson should be another priority. Adding infrastructure like sidewalks and lighting throughout should be another. Housing beyond luxury condos and SROs is needed.

Lobbying for a light rail stop between Jefferson and Lincoln should be another. Lincoln is way too far to appropriately service the heart of the District. Why not build underground platforms beneath the overpasses with elevators up to a transit center, park-n-ride, and affordable housing development?

This doesn't even begin to touch Union Station. The County destroyed the potential of that part of the District when they moved in and it's a damn shame.

[Parker West]

This is great, even though I moved to Phoenix much later on 74, I recall many of the companies with names painted in the sides of the buildings. I expected to see the Goettle warehouse (I am clueless on the spelling) which I can recall passing on south 7th St and you crossing over the bridge. Maybe the company had not started up or located to that part of town when the images were taken.
I would love to know some history about all the businesses that abandoned their facilities which then sat for years. On the west side I came across a very large industrial building maybe the largest I had seen, I was impressed anyway. I was told it had been an Alcoa plant. Further out there was a dog track that looked to be in good condition but it just sat year and after year. In 1974-77 when I moved to Denver, there were dog tracks on the Apache Trail as well as near the airport and Horse Racing off the 17 north of the city. Did they all close at about the same time? Did it have anything to do with the end of the Snowbird exodus that used to took the East Valley over come October? I love your stories

[John Clark]

Sir, Thanks for writing about an area I had a familial connection to. My grandfather and two of his sons (one of whom was my late father and the other is my 99 1/2 yr old uncle) owned J. H. Clark and Sons Produce Co. at 334 E. Jackson St. until after a fire in Jan. of '64. They then moved to E. of 3rd St on Madison.
We moved here in early '52 and never left. I have many memories of the area commonly referred to as the Duce (not Duece) short for pro(Duce) district. I am also a model railroader and am looking for any photos of the rear of what was called the Central Wholesale Terminal which was located between 3rd and 4th Sts. and Madison and Jackson. In my research I have acquired a very few photos of the rear of the CWT and would like to find more. I did notice that the photo shown above of Farmers Produce at 3rd and Madison (I.D.ed as such would be the NW corner of the CWT) is in reality the SE corner because I believe the photo is reversed. I would enjoy any other photos of the rear of the CWT that you may have or know of. I would like to communicate with you for some of the other buildings I'm interested in in the Duce also. I do love old buildings. Thanks for your column. John Clark

[John Totten]

Some of these photos I've seen before, but Jon hit it out of the park with posting the photo shot from across Jefferson Street.

But I need some help identifying a couple of the buildings. The first is the white building directly to the left (east) of Crystal Ice. Some sort of furniture warehouse, but I'd like to know the entire business name.

The other is on the far left of the photo. Light colored building, with nine windows and two rows of skylights. Does anybody know the name of the business occupying this building post-WW2?

Great work as always, Jon.