How to tour the Rosson House in Phoenix, Arizona


If you're interested in beautiful Victorian mansions, and find yourself in downtown Phoenix, I highly recommend touring the Rosson House, which on Monroe and 6th Street. I've gone there more times than I can count, but I go in an unusual way. I'll describe how I do it, which seems perfectly natural to me, but has gotten a lot of strange looks from people over the years.

My experience is that most people who tour an historic place like this, no matter what their age, immediately revert back into when they were kids in school. They stand in line, then gather together in a group, listening to someone at the front of the group talk. They might read something, whether it's a handout, or a sign somewhere, and quite possibly try to memorize the information, such as the dates and the names of the people, you know, in case there's a test later on. And if that's what you do, relax, it's what I've seen the vast majority of people do. But I don't do that, and it causes many looks of confusion, and many frowns.

I like looking at the building. And most of the building is visible from outside, so I stay outside most of the time. Yes, I'll go inside, but inevitably that leads me to someone who will talk to me, or maybe point me to look at something in an antique cabinet, which I could see at any high end antique store. But when I visit a building, I'm not interested in looking at antiques that may or may not have been there at one time - I'm interested in the building. So I smile and edge away.

If you do that, be prepared to be hassled a bit. I like walking around a building, standing on the porch (only where I'm supposed to go, of course!). I like looking at the architectural details, the moulding around the doors, that sort of thing. I like to time-travel back to when the building was new, to imagine the people who lived there, what they saw. I imagine the kids playing on the porch, the dogs and cats, maybe someone leaving a pie on the windowsill to cool off. I imagine... and then someone says, "Are you looking for the door?" -sigh-

I will have to politely ask people that I don't want to go inside, or go into the gift shop, or listen to tour guide talk, many times when I do this. I just want to go there and sit and dream, and that's been something that I've enjoyed for years. I try to go to these places with friends that I call "my diplomats" - they'll go inside, talk to people, accept brochures, go to the gift shop. If anyone asks about what's wrong with their friend, they'll assure him that "Brad just wanders off."

Of course you should pay for the tour, maybe even donate a couple of extra bucks, when you go the Rosson House. You should thank the volunteers, and be polite. But if you can sneak away from the madding crowd, there's a experience well worth doing, and I recommend it. Chances are you'll see me sitting on one of the benches there. And I'm not bored, I'm not waiting for anyone, I'm history adventuring.

Image at the top of this post: The Rosson House, photo courtesy of Mick Welsh.
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) with Brad today on Patreon!

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring posts are shared there daily including "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona. Discounts for seniors, students, teachers, and veterans.

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