Visiting the Lemon Hotel in 1884, Phoenix, Arizona


I enjoyed reading the book "Territory of Arizona", which was originally printed in 1884, and reprinted in 1964, which I found at the Glendale Main Library. Well, I can't say that I actually read it, more like skimmed over the text, mostly I just looked at the pictures. I saved them as high-resolution images, and with the help of my top history adventuring friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, I identified the exact locations. Today we're going to time-travel back to Washington and 3rd Street, and visit the Lemon Hotel.


Although the caption of this drawing says A.D. Lemon and Son, Proprietors, that's definitely not his son there. I'm assuming Eliza Lemon is his wife, but I haven't done the research yet, so I don't know. It could be his daughter? If you know, please tell me and I'll update this post. By the way, I apologize for the fact that the top of this photo curves, it's a big book and that's as flat as I could get it without risking any damage to it. I'm sure that these people were much more attractive than it shows here, although I'm thinking that A.D. could have smiled! Maybe he's just looking thoughtful.

This hotel was on the southeast corner, so I'll go take a look at Google Street View to see what's there nowadays.


There ya go. Looks like things have changed since 1884, but that's to be expected. Anyway, now that we know where we are, let's visit the hotel.


I checked with my history adventuring friend that there was no electricity there at the time, so at night it must have gotten dark. Real dark! The streets were unpaved of course, but Phoenix doesn't get much rain, so it probably wasn't much of a problem most of the time.

The population of Phoenix in 1884 was over two thousand people, which surprises me, as fourteen years earlier there was nothing in what is now downtown Phoenix except desert, and a tangle of mesquite trees. I guess I thought that back in 1884 Phoenix would be mostly adobe buildings with thatched roofs and tumbleweeds rolling around, but it was a happening place, with a fairly luxurious hotel, which is what we're visiting right now.

What's that? Air conditioning? Electric fans? Wifi? No, just some peace and quiet, and no traffic at night.



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

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