Phoenix history in the making - Block 23 in December of 2017


I've been watching Block 23 for a long time now. The designation is of the square block between Washington and Jefferson and 1st Street and 2nd Street. It goes back to when Phoenix was originally platted, and laid out with numbered blocks. Actually, there really no Block 23, just the block between 22 and 24, which had been set aside as the Plaza. Whether the city promised that it would always be a public space I really don't know, but became just another business block in Phoenix in 1931 when it was sold off. It's where the old City Hall was, if you remember before 1931, which I sincerely doubt you do. The truth is, most people have no idea that Block 23 was the Plaza for over sixty years, as a place where families gathered for picnics under the trees, and watched parades going by. Memories in Phoenix are short.

Block 23 in 1893. From a Sanborn map.

In my experience, Block 23 has just been an empty space - another parking lot in downtown Phoenix. And it's been that way for so long now that most people have no memory of what used to be there, which was the Fox Theater, and JC Penney's. Even the buildings that erased the old Plaza have long since been erased.

Block 23 in 1932. The Fox Theater.

But Phoenix changes, it grows, and I'm OK with that. A lot of people who know that I'm interested in history think that I want everything to stay the same, and that the old buildings should be frozen in time, with what I call "velvet ropes around them". But that's simply not the way I feel. I like Phoenix to be dynamic. I get a big kick out of seeing new construction, which Phoenix has been doing non-stop since 1870. When I time-travel in my imagination, I can see the canals being built by the Swilling Company, the roads being paved for the first time, the introduction of air conditioning (now THAT must have been nice!).

So this is what I see as of December of 2017 on Block 23. The foundations for some very big buildings are being dug. It's an exciting time, and it's history in the making. In the future you'll be able to say that you were there when the block was nothing but a big hole in the ground.

Image at the top of this post: Block 23 under construction on December 26th, 2017. You're looking west over 2nd Street between Jefferson and Washington from the Collier Building. Photo by Mick Welsh, used with permission.
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) 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

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

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