This was found in a reddit post that was asking people to describe the worst city in the US for suburban living. The top response was Las Vegas, but this didn’t look like Las Vegas. It looked like Phoenix, but the lack of easily recognizable landmarks thew me off. I thought recognized the tall grey building at the center of the photo but it’s has such a generic look it could frankly be anywhere. There was no City Hall, no stadium, no Hyatt regency…none of the usual buildings associated with downtown. I mean, I worked downtown for the last six years; I knew what it looked like. Yet this was a close-but-no-cigar moment.
Then I zoomed in and looked closer and it all fell into place. Toward the bottom I spotted the Hotel Westward Ho, a building that exists nowhere else in the world. This was Phoenix…circa 1970 or thereabots. The half-completed building just left of center is the Valley National Bank (Chase) building, completed in 1972. There was no towering City Hall building because it wasn’t built until the 90s. This photo was a slice of history.
Here’s a similar view today from Google Earth. Is it any wonder I didn’t immediately recognize that first photo?
The Chase building remains the tallest (and totally unoccupied at this point) in the city, but it’s now buried among its peers and not easily seen unless you look really hard for it.
I’ve never been to Arizona, and wouldn’t have guessed this city from the 1970 photo. But in the brief opening scenes in Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, you can see Phoenix as it was in 1960.