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The job didn't begin as something that would plant a song in an architect's heart. The Prescott Chamber of Commerce building, which once had served as the town jail and firehouse, was a drab, two-story, stuccoskinned shoebox, and the chamber had budgeted a meager $40,000 for a face-lift. Nevertheless, Prescott architect Bill Otwell took the job because it was a high-visibility project across from the courthouse square. And now he was gamely crawling through the building's grimy attic with a flashlight, wondering what in blazes he could do within the budget's tight confines. Suddenly, chamber officials waiting downstairs heard an ecstatic whoop. "You won't believe what's up here," Otwell shouted. His light had picked out the back of a sweeping arch built of red tufa limestone, a part of the building's original Romanesque facade which no one had known was there. As Otwell explained later, "The building had been so covered with stucco that when the Yavapai Heritage Foundation did the original historic survey of downtown Prescott, they completely missed it." He did a bit of "destructive testing" to unmask the outlines of the hidden facade, then presented his client with a challenge: double the budget, and you can have your 1894 building back. The chamber winced but agreed, and another small but charming piece of Prescott's history was recovered. One by one, happy-ending stories like this are renewing Prescott's historic architectural wardrobe, returning it to the kind of town that rewards a long, slow, sight-seeing stroll along its hilly streets. Prescott has more Victorian architecture than any other community in Arizona, along with some great buildings in assorted revival styles from the first three decades of this century. There is an 1877 octagon house, inspired by the Victorian philosopher (and some say crackpot) Orson Squire Fowler. There is the 1916-18 Yavapai County Courthouse, a building of such immense moral gravity that it surely intimidates witnesses into telling the truth. There are a dozen or so Queen Anne mansions bursting with exuberance, symbolizing both the optimism and the ostentation of what Mark Twain termed the "Gilded Age." For anyone fascinated by American architecture and what it says about us as a culture, Prescott is an open-air museum. The exhibits, however, have had some close calls. In 1974, a fast-food franchisee acquired a 99-year lease on a choice piece of property on Gurley Street, Prescott's main commercial drag. Unfortunately, one of Prescott's most queenly Victorians, the 1877 William Bashford House, already occupied the lot. With demolition looming, Elisabeth Ruffner, then as now Prescott's most ardent preservationist, proposed a radical rescue: move the delicate monster six blocks west to the Sharlot Hall Museum. Incredibly, it worked, and the salvation of the Bashford house became the seminal event in Prescott's preservation efforts.

Text by Lawrence W. Cheek Others followed, just as important if not as public. In the early 1980s, the General Services Administration was thinking about abandoning the wonderful Renaissance Revival post office and federal courthouse on Goodwin Street. The building's courtroom has grand Palladian windows, a 24-foothigh ceiling, and a presence that can only be described as magisterial. According to Ruffner, then-U.S. District Judge Walter Craig told the GSA: "If you destroy my courtroom, you will replicate it in every single detail in whatever new building you build." Says Ruffner, smiling, "I think old Wally saved that building for us." Harry Hampton, Jr., a second-generation Prescott funeral director, saved a pair of Queen Annes by himself. One had been in use in the family business since 1955, and, Hampton laments, his father had "modernized" it with dropped ceilings and dark lumber-yard paneling. When Harry, Sr. died, his son stripped away as much of the 20th century as possible and refurnished the structure with antiques. "I've heard a lot of comments from people that all the sunlight and light colors in the house make them feel better. I believe it; it's a depressing enough time for them without coming to a dark and dingy funeral home." Hampton also renovated the 1893 house next door for his family home. This one was tougher. When he bought it, the building was not much more than a skeleton. The previous owner, a structural engineer, had already put $40,000 into a new foundation, but, says Hampton, "You could walk in the front door and see from one end of the house to the other; it was just studs. The architect who'd drawn up plans for the renovation warned me, 'You've got a tiger by the tail, and I don't think you'll ever complete it. It's just too tough.' I said, 'Well, you've just gotta persevere." Good word. Perseverance is the prerequisite for anyone taking on such a restoration. A Victorian house is a preposterously complicated affair, teeming with ornamentation and a variety of wall-surface treatments. Modern conveniences such as air-conditioning must be discreetly squeezed in, and the indiscretions of former owners preservationists call them "remuddlers" have to be peeled away. In Prescott, most of the big Victorian houses had been carved into apartments by the 1970s. John Coleman, a thoughtful and articulate building contractor, has been restoring his 1898 Union

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Street Queen Anne mansion since 1983. In a former life, he was an aluminum-siding salesman; today he may be Prescott's most determined purist. The house wears its original exterior colors of pea green, forest green, and red; the functioning kitchen appliances date from the 1920s; and nearly every wall and ceiling surface is lavished with wallpaper. Coleman has even re-created typical Victorian fantasies: on his second-floor landing, the wallpapers form a theme of water plants and pond ripples on the walls, dragonflies and butterflies on the ceiling.

The wallpapers are reproductions, but Coleman has tried to keep as much of the original house as possible. "You can easily do a replica, but having the real thing is like having ghosts living with you." He likes the ghosts. "I like to think that if there's a nick in a post on the porch made by a guy on a tricycle 90 years ago, he could come back today, and it'd still be there." Coleman refinished the porch, but he didn't fill in the nicks.

Some important Prescott buildings have been lost, tragically. The 1879 Goldwater Mercantile store, a two-story Italianate Victorian, was demolished in its centennial year because it didn't fit into its new owners' plans. Some others have been altered beyond restoration. Although Prescott now has more than 400 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, its local historic-district ordinance has been ineffective: only 11 buildings in town are actually protected. Preservationists say there is still a strong feeling in Prescott that a person's property is his castle, and nobody else has the right to say what he can do with it.

But another reason Prescott's architectural heritage was either ignored or remuddled for so long is a peculiar truism of architectural taste. Once a style becomes passé, the next two or three generations will view it not as historic treasure but as an albatross around the neck of progress. Never was this more true than with the High Victorian, which was the most picturesque yet undisciplined architecture our civilization has yet devised. This stylistic period, which stretched from the Civil War to the turn of the century, was, in a word, bedlam. It was a rebellion against order, a celebration of extravagance, a coast-to-coast architectural costume party.

An upwardly mobile Victorian family could leaf through a pattern book and choose a floor plan dressed in any of half a dozen styles, from Tuscan to Persian to French Second Empire. Architects breezed from one style to another, cloaking this church in Greek and that in Gothic. They mixed 'n' matched, often producing fantastic and outrageous hybrids; in Prescott, see the J.H. Robinson residence at 204 N. Mount Vernon, with its Greek Re-vival porch, chateauesque turret, and gables and pediments and bay windows sprouting in every direction.

vival porch, chateauesque turret, and gables and pediments and bay windows sprouting in every direction.

Essentially, Victorian architecture was protohippie: if it feels good, do it.

But while it could be ridiculous, it also was symbolic and idealistic. In one sense, Victorian architecture represented the best of the American character: soaring imagination, individualism, boundless self-confidence. This was a time when we were retiring old social orders, inventing new industries, claiming a continent; thus it was an appropriate time for architecture without rules.

The Victorian street, with each house displayed like a picture in a frame of grass and trees, also symbolized the idea of free individual expression within a formal and orderly social framework.

In Prescott, South Mount Vernon Street is a beautifully preserved example of vividly expressiveVictorian architecture and stately town planning. All but two buildings in downtown Prescott burned down in a fire in 1900, so here are the exhibits showing what happened to architecture in the decades after the High Victorian. Discipline returned in the form of classical revivalism - GrecoRoman and Renaissance but the buildings remained picturesque and symbolic.

First, the oddball: the Santa Fe railroad station, built in 1907 and newly restored by architect Otwell's firm for a second life in the retail business. This is Prescott's lone Mission Revival building, and it looks as lost as a Swiss chalet in Phoenix. But around this time, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad was planting Mission Revival ter-minals everywhere in the Southwest to recall dreamy Getting there: Prescott is 102 miles north of Phoenix; take Interstate Route 17 north to State Route 69. Prescott Municipal Airport has paved and lighted runways of 7,600 and 4,400 feet with scheduled commuter service to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. With an elevation of 5,354 feet, the climate is moderate year-round. Expect mostly light snowfalls in winter.

What to see: The Yavapai Heritage Foundation has developed an excellent walking tour of Prescott's downtown and residential core. A map and brochure detailing 35 important buildings is available for $1 at the chamber of commerce.

The Sharlot Hall Museum is one of Arizona's best historical museums, commemorating Prescott's brief stints as the Territorial capital (1864-67 and 1877-89) and life in early Arizona. The Smoki Museum displays a private collection of Native American artifacts.

The Prescott National Forest offers superb hiking and a "recreational" gold-panning area on Lynx Creek; visit the Forest Service headquarters at 344 S. Cortez St. for information and maps.

No other Arizona town of its size seems to have as many festivals and annual events as Prescott. A sampling: Territorial Days, crafts, entertainment, and historic home tours (June); Frontier Days and World's Oldest Rodeo (July); Bluegrass Festival (July); and Smoki Ceremonials, Native American artists and dancers (August). Horse-racing season at Prescott Downs is from late May to late August.

Where to stay: Prescott has an amazing number of bed-and-breakfast establishments, four of which occupy restored Victorian houses. There are numerous modern motels and three historic hotels: the Hassayampa Inn, the Hotel St. Francis, and the Hotel Vendome. The Prescott Chamber of Commerce can provide information: 117 W. Goodwin St., Prescott, AZ 86302; (602) 445-2000.

This was complete nonsense, of course, but the railroad was marketing the West to timorous Easterners by suggesting that the black robes had long ago made it safe for civilization. The fact that there never was a real Spanish mission within 200 miles of Prescott was not a problem.

Prescott's early 20th-century buildings generally wear classical dress. Prime among them is the county courthouse, which presides over Arizona's loveliest downtown park. While the High Victorians of a generation earlier were decked out as if for a long weekend's partying, this neoclassical-revival building thunders a sermon of righteousness, power, authority, and above all, order. More than any other Arizona public building of its time, it announced that the frontier was fini, that Arizona had grown up, and was now to be taken seriously as an adult member of the Union.

On its west side, the righteous courthouse still stares disapprovingly at notorious Whiskey Row. Of the dozen storefronts here, only a couple retain much of their original facades, but one, the Palace Hotel and bar of 1901, is another adept neoclassical-revival building. Its dignified columns with terra-cotta Corinthian capitals sent signals of reassurance to townspeople and visitors: this strip of saloons may look raunchy, but behind it all is a backbone of order. (The suggestion was not entirely honest: there are "historic" bullet holes in the Palace's ceiling.) After classicism came a brief surge of regionalism during which architects tried, in one way or another, to suggest some of the history or spirit of this land in their buildings.

Prescott has two lovely regional buildings: the Hassayampa Hotel at 122 E. Gurley St., designed by Trost & Trost of El Paso; and behind it, at 116 N. Marina St., the U.S. West Communications building.

The Hassayampa, which opened in 1927, is simplified Spanish Colonial Revival without the hyperactive exterior ornamentation that would have seemed rather undignified in this neoclassical neighborhood.

But look at the lobby, one of the loveliest interior spaces in Arizona. And look up, especially, at the painted ceiling, a commotion of interlocking curlicues, Wrightian geometry, starbursts, starfish, kachina masks, and profiles of Indians.

Next door, the late-'20s U.S. West building wears a style dubbed "Pueblo Deco" by Phoenix architectural historian Marcus Whiffen — Art Deco with Southwestern motifs. Notice the stair-stepped outline of an Indian pueblo in the portal and the abstracted mountain sunrises forming the cornice.

After 1930 the fun came to an end. Ornamentation and imagery became architectural crimes in Prescott as everywhere, and the historic downtown buildings seemed suddenly dated.

As in so many American towns and cities, elegant details were lathered over with expressionless stucco or hidden behind cheesy aluminum facades. Arched windows were hacked into rectangles, grand interior spaces were splintered into small ones, varnished hardwood was painted, and high pressed-metal ceilings were lowered and draped with acoustical tile. Remuddling is almost too kind a word; historic devastation describes it better.

For an example, look at the Wilson Block, which occupies the north side of Gurley Street between Montezuma and Granite. Beneath that plain, drab aluminum wall is an Italianate apartment building whose rhythmically decorative brickwork calls to mind Goethe's definition of architecture: "frozen music." Otwell has been hired to study the feasibility of restoration, and this is a job that has the architect humming happy tunes.

"I think we're definitely over the hump in preservation efforts in Prescott," he says. "I don't think anybody's going to be tearing down any more of these buildings. And I think that in 10 or 20 years we can look forward to a downtown Prescott with most of these [remuddled] facades stripped off."

When that happens, Prescott truly will fulfill the promise of an Arizona Highways headline a few years ago: "Everybody's Favorite Hometown." Our cultural heritage is our collective home, and nothing celebrates and explains that heritage so well as our architecture.