Wow this is awesome!

why? :shrug:

I'm asking a serious question, why is this awesome?

It's not big enough to have any relevance to the world.

Did you guys know that there was a plan for phoenix created in the city beautiful style in 1921? I took a few photos of maps given in the plan. These were taken from a thesis comparing the 1921 plan of phoenix to daniel burnhams plan for chicago. if any of you want to take a look at it, the thesis is available in the architecture library at asu. the architecture library also has a photocopy of the original plan in special collections but being that it is a photocopy and that the original was not in great condition it can be difficult to read at times.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6087/...42154e14_b.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6201/...08f93db4_b.jpg

^Wow, I had no idea, thats awesome. Look at that density, droooollll.

Phoenix desperately needs a modern day Houssmann/Burnham/Law-Olmsted type to re-imagine the City for the 21st Century and beyond.

way to fuck that one up, Phoenix.

I'm also drooling at the lack of pedestrian-squashing superblocks. It's got such a wonderfully consistent, fine-grained grid structure!
Thanks for fucking that up too, Phoenix.

^I wonder what those square shapes in the middle of the grand boulevard (Van Buren?) are supposed to be. At first I thought it was a big green median, Commonwealth Avenue style, but I don't see any trees (there are trees in the drawings). I wonder if it was maybe reflecting pools of some kind....?

You guys are just torturing yourselves now...what Phx could've been.

I doubt Phoenix could have ever been anything like this.

This looks like the center of Paris or some other major old-world style European city at about this time. When this was made, Phoenix was still quite suburban with single family homes being the dominant architecture type for the most part amidst a smattering of one- and two-story commercial buildings (warehouses, retail with flex space on top). Almost every single one of these midrises would have required largescale demolition of the built environment, removing a dozen structures at once. I think a lot of people would be frustrated at that just as much as we are today.

Maybe, maybe if we had a 100' height limit all across downtown, *something* like this would have arisen over time, but I think we'd still be filling in the holes left after decades of neglect. Buildings like this without any parking were all obsolete by 1950. To maintain this level of carrying capacity and to have preserved something like this intact for the modern era had it ever been built in the first place, Phoenix would have also had to have kept its streetcar network and embraced heavier rail far earlier on its history.

We would have had to have different civic leadership going back decades from before Gordon--Hance, Rimsza, Driggs et al were not compatible with this municipal style. We would have to have been spared the crack epidemic of the 1980s. The entire sprawling outward paradigm would have to never have been as influential as it was. There would have to have to have been different industries dominating the city besides high tech and aerospace and strip/shopping-mall retail in the 1950s on, as massive sprawling auto-oriented exurban developments (Motorola on McDowell, Sperry/Honeywell way north, Park Central, etc) wouldn't have "worked" on this sort of template.

These two areas were the proposed locations of Phoenix's twin capitol/civic areas: one for the City, one for the State, both wrapped around park land.

Downtown Phoenix in the 1920's, when this template was created, was mostly mid-rise architecture. Almost all of the mid-rise buildings downtown were destroyed by the 1970's and the primary reason why no one recognizes that the template shown isn't far off from how Phoenix started and was in the 20's. If these beautiful buildings were erected the Phoenix streetcar system would have likely survived beyond 1948.

The City Beautiful template would have required demolition of many old buildings but that is something that happened anyway. Example of some City Beautiful Movement buildings in Phoenix that have survived are Kenilworth School, Monroe School (Children's Museum of Phoenix), Luhrs Central Building, Luhrs Tower, Historic City Hall/County Courthouse, Orpheum Theatre, etc...

^Downtown has lost a handful of midrises over the years, but to call the area "mostly midrises" by the 1920s seems quite the overstatement.

http://www.fcd.maricopa.gov/Maps/gis...tion/index.cfm has aerial maps dating from back then, but I'm not on a Windows box.

Actually it is not at all...if you get a chance to look at the aerial of 1930 Phoenix you can see that downtown (which historically has been defined as between the 7's, Jefferson north to Fillmore) was in fact mostly low to mid-rise buildings. There were no single family homes in this area and single story was rather limited as well. The template of the City Beautiful design also only focused on this area of downtown (7's; Fillmore to Jefferson).

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office to relocate in 2013
6 comments by JJ Hensley - Aug. 28, 2011 09:16 PM
The Arizona Republic

The demonstrators who populate the corner of First Avenue and Washington Street most days in protest of Sheriff Joe Arpaio will have to relocate in a year and a half when the Sheriff's Office moves into a new $80 million headquarters in downtown Phoenix.

Sheriff's officials and county administrators are finalizing some details of the six-story, 140,000-square-foot building to be constructed on the northwestern corner of Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street. The sheriff's 911 call center should be moved into the building by late 2012.

Arpaio and his administrative staff will follow in early 2013, vacating two floors of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Phoenix that cost Maricopa County an estimated $900,000 a year to rent.


County officials had been looking for a place to relocate the Sheriff's Office for several years, a process that became more urgent after Wells Fargo offered to waive early termination fees if the Sheriff's Office could move out of the building before the lease expires in September 2013.

Finding new headquarters for Arpaio and his administrators was not easy.

County administrators put down a $500,000 deposit last year on a former Internal Revenue Service building in midtown Phoenix. But plans to move Arpaio's headquarters to that building near Second Street and Earll Drive fell apart, with county administrators accusing the Sheriff's Office of being uncooperative and an Arpaio spokesman citing security concerns as the reason the deal was scuttled.

Maricopa County officials had also previously suggested the Sheriff's Office move into a building in the county-owned Grace Court project along Seventh Avenue, but the $20.5 million deal was derailed with concerns over security and space.

"I support using county financial reserves for critical capital improvements like moving the sheriff's headquarters from the expensive Wells Fargo building and into new, county-owned space, replacing the old 911 call center that's falling apart and for catastrophic, unforeseen emergencies or disasters," Andy Kunasek, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said Friday afternoon.

The facility that county officials and sheriff's administrators have settled on was originally supposed to house the sheriff's 911 call center. That center is currently located in the basement of the 49-year-old First Avenue Jail, which also houses Arpaio's animal-crimes unit.

Both parties agreed plans for the new call-center building could be expanded to include administrative offices.

The new facility is expected to house about 400 employees of the Sheriff's Office. It is expected to be more publicly accessible than Arpaio's current headquarters in the downtown Wells Fargo building, 100 W. Washington St., where a series of intercoms and video cameras through which the public must pass to reach a tiny waiting room can make for a daunting experience.

"I just want a place that's accessible to the public, and yet have enough security to protect our people," Arpaio said.

County supervisors approved funding for the building within the county's annual budget. That June vote also included more than $100 million for the Sheriff's Office to upgrade a records-management system.

Presupposes the outcome of an election that has not been held yet.

Well played pbenjamin!!!!!!!!!!! :)

So the article left out some important details:

I'm not sure what's going on with the call center. Is it part of this structure, going to be another structure, or going to be part of this structure later?

There were some interesting factoids presented at the Hance Park meeting Aug 24 by Don Keuth who was brought in to Phoenix to manage finishing I-10, including the Park:

-Express buses were originally going to drive up via I-10 east and westbound into a cavernous bus depot space underneath the Deck Park between 3rd Ave and 3rd St for commuters to disembark and embark.
-They were going to ride an elevator up Central Ave to catch local buses north and south or down to catch the Express buses back home
-There were going to be restaurants underneath Central Ave for these commuters - a sortof Penn Station idea I guess
-That project ran out of money
-The cavern still exists
- Don Keuth thinks it will never be completed because the access lanes could be used to create one additional lane east and west-bound - that the tunnel now represents a choke point for growth in vehicular traffic along I-10.

Hance Park load bearing etc
 

I've been told the Deck portion of the Park can't handle 5,000+ people and associated structures for that - so it isn't a truly major event venue.
Also, there's a cavernous space under Central Ave that was originally intended to be a subterranean bus depot, but funds ran out to complete it.

I wonder if anyone else remembers the "SITE OF FUTURE EXPRESS BUS STATION" signs that apparently "fell down" according to ADOT...