The different eras of the city of Phoenix, Arizona


When I moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1977 I was seeing just the latest of the series of “rebirths” of that city. Cities, like people, grow and change all of the time, so creating a label for a particular era is just arbitrary, but it does help to visualize it. And the city of Phoenix has had some amazing rebirths, beginning with the rebirth of the city over the Hohokam ruins. So, at the risk of over-simplifying it, I have tried to create labels for eras. The modern era, of course, is when I arrived (this is my blog, after all!) and spans the 1970s to present. The oldest era that I am going to deal with is the territorial era of Phoenix, which spans from 1870 to 1912. Come along with me and let's take a look.

• The Territorial Era. Territorial Phoenix is from the founding of the city in 1870 until Arizona's admission to statehood in 1912. There are a lot of old documents, and old photos, but most of it is gone if you want to visit it "in person". The best you can do is visit old cemeteries, or a few old buildings that got left behind. Actually Territorial Phoenix lasted until the 1920s if you look at how dramatically the city changed then.

• The prosperity of the 1920s. In the 1920s, before the stock market crash of 1929, there was a lot of money to spend in the U.S. Here in Phoenix it's reflected in the boom of business buildings built then, and some especially nice luxury neighborhoods, too. Most of this was built over territorial Phoenix, which were old adobe and wooden buildings that were mostly about ready to fall down, anyway. And, of course, farms and ranches were converted into subdivisions then as they are now. Air-conditioning was coming into use.

• After The Crash. The stock market crash of 1929 plunged the entire world, including Phoenix, into a depression. Money dried up and the extravagance of the 1920s led to the lean years of the 1930s. Sure, the rich were still getting richer, but most of the world was suffering. Building slowed down in Phoenix. This era goes through the 1930s right up until the end of World War II in 1945.

• Post World War II. This is the era that most people in Phoenix are aware of, and it's mostly what this city looks like today. It's the huge boom in the economy of The United States that we consider "the 50s". In Phoenix, there was an explosion of new houses. And the businesses moved away from downtown and started the march uptown. Maricopa county continued to grow and expand tremendously, making for some serious "growing pains" related to infrastructure, such as roads, freeway, and schools. This boom time continued through the 1960s and 1970s.

• The Modern Era. During the 1970s, Phoenix realized what a tangle this valley had become. By the 1980s there were plans to start revitalizing downtown, build more freeways (there had only been one - the Black Canyon, I-17), and upgrade public transportation. Downtown Phoenix had especially suffered from neglect between the depression era and the modern era. The city planners took a look at the ashes and were determined that the Phoenix would rise again. It has.

Image at the top of this post: Drawing of a Phoenix bird, an ancient symbol of rebirth, rising from the ashes of fire.
Thank you to my patrons on Patreon who help support History Adventuring! If you like these blog posts, and would like to make suggestions for future ones, please go to patreon.com/PhoenixHistoryAdventuring where you can show your support for as little as $1 a month. Thank you!

What Patreon is http://bradhallart.blogspot.com/2016/03/supporting-creators-on-web-with-patreon.html

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