Visiting Crossroads Plaza, which was built in 1986 in Peoria, Arizona


I don't have any photos of when the sign for Crossroads Plaza was new, in 1986, but I'm guessing that it made as little impression on people going by then as it does today.

My interest in architecture often causes me to see things that most people never look at. I've talked about this all of my life, and usually I'll just get a puzzled look. Because I can see Crossroads Plaza, which is just across from Brittany Square, and Peoria Station. And those signs, which have been there since the 1980s, are still up, still very large, and mean absolutely nothing to most people.

If you see the same things that I see, you know that Crossroads Plaza is in Peoria, and Brittany Square, right across the street, is in Glendale. In fact, the center of 67th Avenue there is the dividing line between the two cities. I've lived in Glendale for a long time, and I will often see the Glendale police cars turn back into Glendale (east on Peoria Avenue) and the Peoria police cars turn west. Of course, in the event of an emergency they cooperate, and are well-respected for it, but otherwise they stay in their own cities.

For the last couple of months I've been meeting a friend of mine over at Crossroads Plaza, and have breakfast at the McDonald's, which is in their parking lot.

As of this writing, that sign has been there for over thirty years, and I'd be willing to make a bet that most of the people who've driven past it have never seen it. The font, by the way, is Microgramma Bold, also called Eurostyle, which was very popular in the 1960s and '70s, but seems an odd choice for the mid-1980s.

Thank you for visiting Crossroads Plaza with me today!

If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 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

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