Why the intersection of Van Buren, 7th Avenue, and Grand is called Five Points


If you shopped at the many places that were on Van Buren and 7th Avenue in 1913, like the ones shown in the ad above, you probably called the area "Five Points". I've lived in Phoenix for several decades, and even though I worked downtown for a while, it wasn't until I started collecting old images of Phoenix that I learned about Five Points.

If you're wondering why the intersection of three streets would be called "Five Points", stand in the middle of the intersection of 7th Avenue and Van Buren. Well, in your imagination. This is where Grand Avenue begins, which runs at a 45-degree angle. Now count the different directions that you can walk. You can go 1) west on Van Buren 2) east on Van Buren, 3) north on 7th Avenue, 4) south on 7th Avenue, and 5) northwest on Grand.

If you're wondering why Grand Avenue doesn't go the other way, it's because it was built to go northwest to the brand new towns of Glendale and Peoria at the turn of the century. 7th Avenue and Van Buren was at the city limits in the 1800s, and so it was just the most direct route. Grand Avenue was privately funded by William Murphy and his company that built the Arizona Canal in 1885, by the way, and was there years before the railroad was built alongside of it.

So, if someone tells you that they'll meet you at Five Points, you know where, and you know why. Nowadays, of course, it looks just like any other busy intersection in Phoenix, but if you squint your eyes a bit, and you can time-travel!

Image above from the Library of Congress
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more