Main Street Arizona

Breathing new life into MAIN STREET ARIZONA

In 1980, a month after Mary and Charles Leighton moved to Willcox, Arizona, the town tore down its old high school building. The Leightons were astonished. Back in their Maine hometown, people revered America's historical heritage and labored to preserve and upgrade old buildings that embody our way of life. "We have to have roots," says Mary. "To know where we're going, we have to know where we're coming from."

The two dived into local politics, and Mary soon organized the Sulphur Springs Valley Historical Society, now about one hundred strong. She founded the Willcox Historic Preservation Commission and led the way in putting the Cochise Hotel, the Pearce Country Store, the Schwertner house, and the Willcox Commercial Company building on the National Register of Historic Places. Willcox's original business district, a row of frontier-town storefronts clustered along the Southern Pacific Railroad's main line, has also made the roll.

In 1981, Mary learned of a program that by now is making a difference not just to Willcox but to much of Arizona. Waiting for a friend in a physician's office, she happened to read a magazine article about the Main Street Program, a plan of the National Trust for Historic Preservation to revitalize small-town commercial districts. Like Willcox's, many have fallen into neglect. Using historic preservation as its primary thrust, Main Street offers a pragmatic grasp of what local property owners need and can afford. The program helps organize a community's business and civic (TOP) Now housing a craft shop, Globe's Gila Valley Bank and Trust Company building was originally ally a branch of what would become the Valley National Bank. The 1909 Beaux Arts Neoclassical structure is faced in white terra-cotta painted to resemble granite. (ABOVE) The Schwertner house, Willcox, was built in 1881 as a facility for Army officers en route to Fort Grant. (LEFT) Broad Street scene in Globe. On the left, the Hamill Building was once a post office. The Masonic Temple is at center, flanked on the right by the Old Dominion Commercial Company building, now occupied by the J. C. Penney Company.

In (RIGHT) In Florence, Darrell Jordan scrapes old beams in a pre-1879 adobe house, once the law office of Ernest W. McFarland-later U.S. senator, governor, and the state's chief justice. The roof is made of cottonwood beams supporting saguaro ribs, layered on top with earth.

The (BELOW) McFarland State Historic Park preserves the first Pinal County courthouse. Built of adobe in 1878, it is typical of Arizona's Territorial style of architecture.

leaders to work toward reviving their downtown, and brings in nationally recognized experts to advise them on subjects such as retailing, city planning, and historic architecture. The Main Street Program began in 1977 with three fading towns in Indiana, South Dakota, and Illinois. By the time it reached Arizona nine years later, it had touched 250 communities in 25 states. Main Street towns have proved to have an 85 to 90 percent chance of rebuilding their downtowns, even when shopping malls exist nearby.

The Leightons and their friends enlisted State Representative Joe Lane to sponsor a bill in the Legislature. They were joined by other history enthusiasts, notably Elisabeth (Bette) Ruffner of Prescott, who won a Governor's Award for her many contributions to Arizona's preservation efforts. On May 1, 1986, Governor Bruce Babbitt signed the Arizona Main Street Bill into law. Since then Bisbee, Buckeye, Flagstaff, Florence, Globe, Kingman, Prescott, Willcox, and Yuma have been selected for three-year stints in the program. As we went to press, officials were preparing to announce the 1988 participants. The towns hire their own Main Street managers, usually local people active in historic preservation, marketing, or economic development. Arizona Main Street Coordinator Rod Keeling and the local managers help organize community leaders and bring downtown renewal experts to special conferences. Towns must raise their own funds, although Main Street officials help property owners find private sources of money for improvements. One strength: investors who adhere to U.S. Department of Interior guidelines earn a 20 percent federal tax credit on the cost of rehabilitating a commercial National Register site.

Rebuilding the old downtown districts has a special appeal in Arizona, so recently part of the frontier. Florence, for example, seems to take you back a century into Southwest history. When you stand at the corner of Eighth and Main, you see the adobe Juan Avenenti House, several authentic cantinas, and McFarland State Historic Park, the first Pinal County courthouse and jail. Adobe homes and shops with original viga-and-savina roofs (fashioned of cottonwood beams and saguaro ribs) line adjacent streets. The town's sunbaked Hispanic atmosphere reminds you of Gus Arriola's popular comic strip, Gordo-and, indeed, Florence was the cartoonist's hometown. Florence has preserved more early buildings in more styles than any other Arizona small town, according to Harris J. Sobin, a University of Arizona professor of architecture who prepared an extensive historic study in 1977. “The entire history of Territorial architecture can . . be seen along the streets of Florence,” he writes. “Phoenix grew out of a community like this one,” says Rod Keeling. “When you look at the old pictures, you see Phoenix once looked just like this.” Florence increased its share of state sales tax revenues in 1982 by annexing the state prison, thus financing street paving, improvement in services, and automated trash pickup. The Ernest McFarland family renovated the original courthouse, and the Arizona. Entrepreneur Jo Dipple bought and rehabilitated the Florence General Store; Mandell's Clothing Store, still sporting its original interior fixtures, has a restored front. Each of Arizona's Main Street commercial districts has its own character. Whereas Florence's has a Sonoran flavor, Kingman's is Art Deco and Prescott's largely Neoclas sical. Bisbee, with its narrow streets and quaint, sturdy houses climbing the hills, so reminded transplanted Briton Valerie Miller of a European village that she fell in love with the place and opened the Big Ben Cafe there.

Brunenkant building, once a bakery in the American-Victorian style, now serves as the local Main Street office. Next door, on Bailey Street, a city-county visitors center occupies the Suter house, a Late Transitional building with adobe walls and pyramidal roof. The Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption is being renovated and has added a parish center that blends with the old structures, one of which was the first church in central Richard Hort, owner of Bisbee's restored turn-of-the-century Copper Queen Hotel, says that despite the town's depressed copper economy, more college graduates live there than in any other Arizona small town. Artists who moved to Bisbee during the 1960s and '70s looking for an alternative life-style now own businesses and have committed themselves to the community. Main Street has brought old-line businessmen and

This Old House Revisited

When Tom and Ellen Sawyer bought what they believed was an adobe house in Phoenix's historic Palmcroft district, they planned to renovate it a step at a time as they could afford the cost.

The 1936 structure had obvious promise. Hand-stenciled mahogany beams span a cozy living room whose focal point is a small fireplace ornamented in cast iron. Thick plaster walls flow in smooth, sensual lines, with an inset display niche gracing the passage to the family room. An arch opens into a formal dining room with an unusual recessed ceiling.

However.... The west-facing family room was once a sun porch, which some insensate owner enclosed behind sliding glass doors. No one who has lived through a Phoenix summer would care to visit the place on an August afternoon. In the backyard, overgrown oleander shrubs embraced a pool and barbecue but did little to hide the chain-link fence. A decrepit upstairs bathroom had the spaciousness of a closet, and the tiny secondfloor bedroom wasn't much larger. A traffic roar from adjacent Seventh Avenue assaulted the little house.

The Sawyers had begun cleanup and renovation when Ellen heard a radio announcement. The Public Broadcasting Service television show This Old House was coming to town, and its producer was looking for a remodeling project to feature. Ellen promptly submitted an application.

"In many ways, they were the ideal This Old House couple," says Executive Producer Russell Morash. "They had no distractions, and sufficient budget to meet the out-of-pocket demands. They were able to work with us in a professional way, and they had very good taste."

Like the Sawyers, Morash thought the house was adobe. Tucson architect Robert Barnes, an adobe specialist, cleared that up. "Turned out to be double-fired brick," he says. For the TV producers, illusion was as good as reality, and the project proceeded apace.

In seven weeks, from January 13 to March 4, 1987, Barnes, contractor John Mechem, and the Sawyers gutted and rebuilt the second-story bedroom, installing bancos (built-in plaster benches), a viga-and-savina ceiling, and French doors. They added a Mexican-tile bathroom and built a shaded balcony with an outdoor staircase, sheltering the renovated family room below. They bulldozed the backyard and paved the patio with Mexican tiles. A noise-blocking adobe wall was wrapped around the property, and the whole was given compatible desert landscaping.

The result, with its saguaro-rib balcony roof and stuccoed wall, has a distinct Sonoran flavor.

And that's where show biz crossed swords with history. The State Historic Preservation Office, which through an oversight commented on the project only after it was finished, was horrified. That office's historic architect, Joe Marra, said the house is not Sonoran but Spanish Colonial. The rustic character of the veranda and wall, he added, clashes with the structure's Progressive Transitional features.

The Sawyers, who had the Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission's approval, were as surprised in their turn as the state officers. "There's no communication between the agencies," says Tom. "We felt we had done a service to the city and to the state. The house is a major improvement over what we moved into."

And indeed, its Southwestern grace blends comfortably with the surrounding neighborhood. There were reasons for each design decision during the remodeling. Who is to say that, given the changed conditions of a halfcentury, the original architect wouldn't have done the same?

younger entrepreneurs together and has helped identify two potential sources of economic growth: tourism and retirement.

Old Bisbee's Main Street, the focus of commercial renovation, boasts an imposing post office and library, the stonecolumned Arizona Bank building, and the handsome Fair Building, formerly Wool worth's. The Copper Queen, with its red brick walls and shady veranda, is one of the town's most prominent landmarks, along with the Pythian Castle on OK Street. A walk up Brewery Gulch takes you past tumbledown boarding houses, old minHer's shacks shaded by chinaberry trees, and tidy homes of wood and stone. It all speaks of the time when Bisbee was Arizona's third-largest town, and many who rode the train west came through here. A nonstop procession of events, from bicycle races to wine-and-cheese parties, makes visitors feel at home today.

"We've identified two immediate goals," Hort notes. "First is to clean up the downtown area and establish a continuing maintenance program; second is to fill the unoccupied storefronts with something to make them attractive."

MAIN STREET ARIZONA

Bisbee's Main Street has its share of vacancies, despite several appealing shops and restaurants. John Timbers, an iconoclastic developer who has rehabilitated the Bisbee Inn, the Brooks Apartments, and several other properties, says a serious stumbling block for the program is the absentee owner who has lost interest in his property or hopes its value will inflate with no added investment. "For a Main Street program to be effective," he says, "everybody has to be involved."

Kingman has a similar problem, compounded by many property owners'

MAIN STREET ARIZONA

advancing age. “There’s been a flurry of owners wanting to get rid of the buildings,” says Cynthia McCafferty, Kingman’s first Main Street manager. “They feel something’s going to happen here, and they’re asking higher prices than they can get. You won’t get much of an offer for a building like that,” she adds, indicating an empty cafe. Through its dust-caked windows we can make out fancy enameled tin ceilings, but the paint is peeling, the skylight broken. The cost and effort involved in rehabilitating such a place is more than many proprietors can bear. As if to further slow downtown renovation, Mohave County owns many of the town’s historic structures, and rehabilitation is not in the budget.

A stroll down Andy Devine Avenueold Route 66, renamed after a hometown boy turned movie actor-takes you past several fine old buildings of brick and rugged tufa stone. They wear their names on stone markers at the rooflines: Thompson, 1909; Mulligan, 1909; H. Lovin Building, 1906.

Kingman's Hotel Beale, once owned by Andy Devine's parents, now belongs to a lively grandmother in blue jeans. Tedi Ronchetti inherited the dilapidated 72room inn, which once served passengers from the nearby Santa Fe Railroad depot. Charmed by its history and challenged by its potential, she began restoring it on a shoestring. The lobby, a two-story atrium with a winding wood-and-tile staircase, still sports such details as the original telephone switchboard, a big safe dating back to the turn of the century, and a shoeshine stand.

“Main Street pulls people together in the same direction,” says Mrs. Ronchetti. “Where before people were saying they wouldn’t put a dime in downtown Kingman, now they’re seeing that if they don’t, along with the old buildings go their history—and their roots.” Sometimes it’s hard to persuade a community that renovating an old downtown is better than replacing it with a shiny new mall. Old-timers often can’t see any sense to it: having lived with a deteriorating district, they view it not as “historic” but as “run down.” In Bisbee, observes Copper Queen owner Hort, retired miners accustomed to having the Phelps Dodge Corporation provide municipal services “have a hard time relating to the merchants” whose plans may hike taxes and the local cost of living. “But if we don’t grow,” Hort insists, “the costs will be even more. We can no longer afford to stand still.” In Prescott, Main Street volunteers have struggled to persuade merchants of the value of preservation. This is partly because, unlike many other small-town commercial districts, Prescott's downtown is alive and well. Yet activists worry that the wild-West Whiskey Row, with its abundance of antique shops and touristoriented businesses, may not support the central district over the long haul. "We may be stuck at a plateau," says Ken Kimsey, director of the Sharlot Hall Museum. "In Bisbee, anything they do is an improvement. We may start off at a

MAIN STREET ARIZONA

higher level, but will we accomplish anything?"

So far, Prescott Main Streeters have spearheaded a streetscape design as part of Valley National Bank's Action Arizona plan. New trees and planters will grace the downtown area. In addition, Brascor Development Company, a Scottsdale firm, is cleaning up the old Santa Fe depot for mixed-use occupancy, and downtown merchants obtained a federal grant to

design a historic walking tour.

Former Mayor Joe O'Betka of Florence tried to start a historic preservation movement there in the late 1960s, to attract investors seeking tax breaks. But efforts to enact a historic-zone ordinance caused so much uproar that, he says, "We had the city hall jammed, and the courtyard outside was jammed. These were the tar and feather guys!" Architect Harris Sobin adds, "a lot of the most interesting buildings were in the residential areas, and that was where the cookie crumbled." Hysterical rumors circulated: "They were saying the government was going to dictate to you; you're not going to be able to change the color of paint on your house without approval. They just generally created a lot of bogeymen that didn't exist," says Sobin. O'Betka's idea died, although historic zoning eventually passed. Florence's present historic district primarily includes businesses and gerrymanders out the few owners who still object.

Historic zoning may impose some constraints. But National Register status itself actually gives property little more than that: status. It might stop a federally funded project, such as a highway, from razing your building. But it does not prevent you from altering, selling, or even demolishing your historic structure. Registering a place confers prestige, helps raise community awareness and prideand just may increase the property's value.

In Willcox, Eileen Tucker has rounded up the town's youth to help restore the vintage storefronts on Railroad Avenue and Maley Street. They call themselves the Main Street Kids, and, together with volunteers like Mary Leighton, Dorman Brown, and Dick Seidel and community leaders such as Chamber of Commerce Director Ellen Clark, they're adding new impetus to a decade-old revitalization program. "Mary Leighton went to the Legislature and got Main Street passed on the state level," says Clark. "Our activities over the past 10 years helped bring the program to Willcox."

"Main Street is like a recipe with the key ingredients defined from other communities' experience," says Tucker. "We're growing on things that have succeeded in other places and have been tailored to what this community needs.

"That's why Main Street works."

Preservation Wish List

The National Register of Historic Places is the nation's official list of historic and prehistoric sites worth preserving. Whole districts as well as individual buildings may qualify if they have historical, archeological, architectural, or artistic significance, either local or national. Usually a place must be at least 50 years old, although some exceptions are made for candidates of special interest.

Many Arizona historic sites are already enrolled, but more remain to be nominated. Here's a "wish list" of places we think merit National Register status.

Pendley Ranch (ca. 1905): located near Sedona's Slide Rock, it was the home of Oak Creek Canyon's original homesteader.

La Paz (late 1800s): seven miles north of Ehrenberg on the Colorado River, this once-thriving gold miners' town was a candidate for designation as Arizona's territorial capital and was the site of the first Goldwater's store in Arizona. Little more than adobe foundations remain.

Maricopa County Courthouse (1929): an eclectic downtown Phoenix landmark unifying many architectural styles of the 1920s.

Cave Creek Dam (1923): an important example of a multiple-arch dam, this flood-control structure made posIron Springs Clubhouse (ca. 1910): center of a summer resort for refugees from the Phoenix heat.

Clarkdale (founded in 1914): model company town built around the Clarkdale smelter, which processed copper mined in Jerome.

Castle Hot Springs (1891): some parts of this Yavapai County spa remain, despite recent fire damage.

Luhrs Building (1923) and the Luhrs Tower (1929): on adjacent sites in downtown Phoenix. The tower was once said to be the tallest building between El Paso and Los Angeles.

executives visiting the company's cotton plantations nearby. In 1929 the company opened the 13-room Santa Festyle lodge to the public, and since then it has grown to 229 rooms, all architecturally compatible with the original structure.

The Lodge on the Desert (1936): Tucson resort in the Santa Fe style, owned and operated since its inception by the Lininger family.

Cottonwood Creek Ruin (ca. A.D. 700 to 1300): one of six Hopi ancestral sites in Navajo County's Homolovi Ruins State Park; built on a butte scattered with petroglyph-covered boulders.

Intaglios (dates unknown): along the lower Colorado River are huge rock "drawings" whose shape is discernible only from the air. Their makers are unknown, but the figures are believed to relate to Mohave Indian mythology.

Possible development of Phoenix west of Seventh Avenue.

Amerind Foundation Museum (ca. 1930): elegant home and museum built near Dragoon by a Connecticut copper magnate.

Hayden Flour Mill (1872): established by Charles Trumbull Hayden, who lived with his family at Hayden's Ferry, also sometimes called Butte City and now known as Tempe. The mill's prominent towers were added in 1952.

Arizona Biltmore Hotel (1929): designed by Albert Chase McArthur in collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright, the Phoenix resort had the state's first underground electric system, as well as its own water system, special vegetable gardens for guests' epicurean pleasure, elaborate landscaping, and custom Wright-designed blocks cast on the site.

The Wigwam Resort Hotel (1919): Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company built the Litchfield Park favorite for Tovrea Castle (ca. 1930): Originally intended as the focus of a residential development, this exotic "wedding cake" structure stands at the gateway between Phoenix and Tempe, surrounded by saguaro-studded grounds within a forbidding tumble-down wall. Since the Depression, it has belonged to the Tovrea family, historically prominent in Arizona's cattle and meat-packing industries.

For information about the National Register and the enrollment process for a historic site, write to the State Historic Preservation Office, Arizona State Parks, 800 W. Washington St., Suite 415, Phoenix, AZ 85007.