The tallest building in Phoenix in 1973 - Valley Center


Let's time-travel back to 1973 to see the tallest building in Phoenix, Arizona. It's the square block of Van Buren, Monroe, Central, and 1st Street. It's Valley Center, and it's now called the Chase Tower.

Valley Center was built as the headquarters for Valley National Bank, which had grown out of its older building, the Professional Building, which is across Monroe from it, and is the Hilton Garden Inn now.

If you lived in Arizona between the 1890s (no, that's not a typo) and 1992, you knew about Valley National Bank. Their headquarters in Phoenix in the 1890s was on Wall Street, which was the alley between 1st and 2nd Avenues south of Washington, and then they moved to Adams, then to the Professional Building, and finally into Valley Center.

Valley Center under construction in 1972, Central Avenue and Monroe, Phoenix, Arizona.

Contrary to popular belief, the building was never called Valley Bank Center, or Valley National Bank Center. It was simply Valley Center, said in the confident way that VNB always had, tying itself to the success and prosperity of Arizona. And there was never a Valley Bank logo on the building, the building itself was the symbol. The first logo, by the way, was a Bank One logo, which went up in 1994, while I was working there. I remember watching that. Before the actual sign went up on it, a projection was made to see how it would look. It was the Bank One Building until Chase acquired it in 2002.

In 1973 it must have been amazing to see that building. Downtown Phoenix was starting to fade away, and the fact that the most important bank in Phoenix decided to build the most important building in downtown Phoenix was very symbolic. Unfortunately, Phoenix, and Arizona, would have more troubles over the next couple of decades, but it was all about a progressive attitude, and optimism.

In 1973 that area was a decaying mess, long since abandoned by most people who were shopping at the malls. The people who lived downtown were, uh, well, kinda scary. By the way, take a look at the wall around the street level of Valley Center. That was designed specifically to discourage anyone from sitting on it, or even leaning on it. It's at exactly the right angle to discourage that type of behavior, and in the 1970s, that was a necessity. The number of people who "lounged around" on the sidewalks of downtown Phoenix in the 1970s was very high.

Valley Center is one of my favorite buildings in downtown Phoenix. If it just looks like a modern building, look again, and consider that it's over forty years old. And the design is even older, harking back to how buildings were supposed to look "in the future" in the 1960s. Go inside (yes, it's open to the public) and you'll see. To me, it reminded me of a spaceship, the way that science fiction artists drew space ships in the 1960. You typeface fans will recognize the font as the same one that was in 2001: A Space Odyssey - Microgramma Bold (Eurostyle).

By the way, if you're wondering what building is the tallest in Phoenix now, it's still Valley Center - Chase Tower.

Image at the top of this post: Chase Tower in 2017, Central Avenue and Monroe, Phoenix, Arizona. you're looking northeast, and up 35 stories. Photo by Mick Welsh.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

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