For our Culture Cap series, we take a pressing issue in Phoenix culture and dissect it. To do that, we invite two people who’ve immersed themselves in the questions that seem to be reverberating in the collective consciousness of the Valley to the studio.
To talk about historical preservation, The Show at down with Robrt Pela, a longtime KJZZ contributor who’s been reporting on these issues as well as undertaking his own preservation and restoration projects for over 30 years, and Julia Taggart, president of the Sunnyslope Historical Society and Museum and the youngest museum president in the state of Arizona.
Conversation highlights
SAM DINGMAN: Good morning, Robrt.
ROBRT PELA: Hey Sam.
DINGMAN: And I'm also joined by Julia Taggart, who is a relative newcomer, excuse me, to the world of historical preservation, but who has thrown herself into a wide range of projects all around the Valley. She is, among other things, the president of the Sunnyslope Historical Society and museum, and the youngest museum president in the state. Julia, good morning.
JULIA TAGGART: Good morning.
DINGMAN: Thank you both for being here. To start, I wanted to ask you both, and Robrt, we'll start with you to share some physical structure in Phoenix that for you represents your perspective on Phoenix's relationship to its history.
PELA: Sure, so I am fortunate enough to live in an Alfred Beadle building in Midtown Phoenix called the executive towers. And beautiful I mean, Alfred Beadle really redefined architecture here in the valley in the middle of the last century. Beautiful high rise building full of Alfred Beadle touches, including a water feature.
So Beadle did this thing where he would incorporate a water feature in the front of his building so that they appeared to be floating. We have a beautiful water feature that has a reflecting pond that has a water feature that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. And some people in the building who are on a design committee, there a committee that I am also working with decided it would be a good idea to remove our water feature and replace it with a garden of plastic plants. And I thought otherwise.
DINGMAN: Yeah.
PELA: So I objected. But you know, I'm lucky because we have a really wonderful historic preservation office in Phoenix, and I was able to call them and say, "hey, you know, what are my options here. What can you help guide my conversation with these people that I have to live with?" Alongside we have activists like Roger Brevoort And Alison King who could also advise me and say, "you know, here are the limitations of replacing Alfred Beadle's beautiful architectural details with a bunch of philodendrons made of spun petroleum."
DINGMAN: So, Julia, what about you? You were agog when Robrt brought up the plastic flowers. What is, what is an object for you?
TAGGART: An object for me would be PV Mall. So that was my childhood mall growing up. It's not PV mall anymore, as I know you guys just reported about the new restaurants coming in, but the carousel, the Three Graces sculpture, the stained glass pieces, trying to preserve those when it was getting demolished of, you know, finding a good home for them and keeping that history alive and going down the rabbit hole of, you know, what was the meaning behind these different art pieces that affected generations?
Because that was my childhood carousel, you know, I always saw that sculpture walking into the mall, or the cube, which everybody remembers, that iconic cube. So trying to see what we can preserve with this new development.
DINGMAN: So I'm curious to know for both of you, I mean, obviously you have these wonderfully specific relationships with these old pieces of Phoenix architecture. What would you say are the obstacles that you face when it comes to identifying something that needs to be saved, just from a really practical standpoint.
PELA: A lot of times it is a lack of knowledge. People don't know what they don't know. So they drive by a really interesting old building, and either they don't see it, or they think, oh, that's an interesting old building, and that's kind of where the conversation ends. And that's just human nature. I'm not demonizing that thinking.
But if you don't care about historic architecture in a general way, and if you don't have a relationship with the building, then the obstacle begins there, because you have to begin by educating people.
TARRGART: To follow that. I would say developers. We have many developers coming from out of state that don't know what our history is. They don't know what they should be saving or what the certain pieces mean. And the public sometimes doesn't know, you know, to ask the Historic Preservation Office, you know if it can be saved or to work with the developer. A lot of people don't know that there is a city of Phoenix Historic Preservation Office or a State Historic Preservation Office, and you have to educate the developers as well as the public on the history of these pieces and why we need to save them, or at least compromise and save what we can.
DINGMAN: Yeah. I mean this, this phenomenon of Beadle, I think which you brought up, Robrt, is a really interesting way of thinking about this. I was in a restaurant over the weekend, and on the wall they had these three paintings, and one of them was White Gates. Robrt Beadle house, I'm sorry. Al Beadle house. Your name is Robrt.
PELA: It is.
DINGMAN: And then they had two other paintings that showed the work of two other architects. And it struck me that, you know, Beadle, as well as a number of other architects from here in the Valley, are part of the iconography of the West. But there is this appreciation that we should put the work on the wall and think about what the work evokes. But then there's this practical concern of how to actually keep it in the actual landscape of the West.
And Julia, I wanted to ask you about this, if I could, because you, even though, as we mentioned, you're still in your 20s, you've only recently just gotten involved in all of this, but you have recently had a number of breakthroughs. And I wonder if you could talk about those and how you feel, you were able to make some progress where for decades there had not been so much progress.
TARRGART: It's really funny, because I just don't believe in giving up. I was taught not to give up, so I am very, you know, optimistic, and I'll keep going at it. But not Marion Blake, she had tried for 45 years. She's the owner of the Sunnyslope Rock Garden, and she couldn't get a historic status. And she was sending petitions to the city. She didn't know there was a form she needed to fill out. She doesn't have Wi-Fi or a computer, so we were able to get that after 45 years.
Wallace and Ladmo Way, I guess, some people from the cast and coup had tried for a street sign for 35 years, they didn't know that there's a form you're supposed to fill out and get it approved by that district office. And I just did that within a couple of months, and we got it, you know, just recently. And just other properties trying to get a historic just talking with the business, talking with the business owners and letting them know what actually historic preservation is, and what the overlay is and what the benefits are to it.
You know, so it's it's a lot of work, but it's really fun, and someone has to do it. And I don't mind doing it. And I get to hear different stories all the time and meet very interesting people and learn about architecture, the culture here, what we used to have, I just recently toured the first TV studio building KPHO, which is now the First Studio, which is an art gallery. And I got to kind of see the behind the scenes of what it was like to have a TV station here, and it was really small. But no, it's really fun to keep going. And I think it's just that you can't give up. You got to keep going for it.
PELA: Speaking as someone who's been covering this for decades, she has done more than many historic preservationists and many other activists, just in the past two years than they've done these very hard working people have done in 20 and 30 years. It's kind of astonishing, and she doesn't give up. She is that proverbial dog with the bone on some of these things.
DINGMAN: Well, let me ask you a little bit more about this, Julia, because I hear you saying that some of this is very practical a matter of fact, there's forms that have to be filled out, and some folks might just not know that that is a piece of infrastructure that exists and that they need to deal with. But there are also these conversations that you alluded to, and I'm struck, Robrt, by what you said about the phenomenon of the water feature in a Beadle apartment building like the one you live in, is not just the fact that it's pretty, but it has this effect, as you said, of making it look like the building is floating.
And that's a different way of communicating than I think a lot of people have a facility with. So is there anything you could think of Julia in these conversations you've had where you felt like you were able to convey something about, for lack of a better word, the soul of something like the rock garden?
TARRGART: Yes, No, we did conversations multiple times because there was kind of a concern of, you know we don't know if we can save this rock garden with the HP overlay. That was the discussion. And I said, it doesn't matter if we can't save it. It matters that she's tried for 45 years, she's dedicated her life to this, that she gets to see this through, and she gets to see the city of Phoenix, recognize it, and to finally get historic status. And we were able to, because the rock garden wraps around the house. But it's having those conversations has such an important significance, you know, and reaching out with the public.
Whenever we do a property for the city of Phoenix to try and get a historic status my museum, we engage the public and say, send your comments of support, you know, for Hanson Mortuary, for the Sunnyslope Presbyterian Church, Eye Opener, the Rock Garden, even for other properties, and letting people know that they can voice their opinion and that their opinion does matter. Because your voice does matter, and people love to hear the stories of you know what Hansen Mortuary means to them or what the rock garden means to them. And it's just having those conversations with business owners and property owners of there are, you know, benefits to historic preservation and your property does matter, that history does matter, and we want to help you preserve it.
DINGMAN: Something, I heard a lot when I moved to this city that I'd love to get both of your takes on, is this idea that Phoenix is a place where people come to reinvent themselves. And implied in that is this idea that it's a place where people want to dissociate from their past, which in my mind lends a particular urgency, perhaps, to the idea of keeping the past alive. Do you agree with that framing of Phoenix as a city, and how does it impact your work?
PELA: I’m probably splitting hairs here, but I don't think it's that we or that preservationists are trying to keep the past alive. I think what we're doing is we're trying to keep the past part of the story. And if you knock it over and put up something new, that part of the story is gone. We have really significant architecture here, not all of it, but we don't want Phoenix to look, I don't think anyone wants Phoenix to look like it rose out of the desert four years ago or 20 years ago. We don't want it to reflect just one style of architecture.
And if you knock down every single pueblo building, if you knock over every single mid century house in Arcadia and replace it with a Tuscan, whatever those things are, then you don't get the full picture of Phoenix, and I think that is distinct from keeping the past alive.
DINGMAN: Yeah, that makes sense.
TARRGART: I think we're trying to preserve what we have left. We've lost a lot of great buildings, like the Fox Theater, which I believe is now a Fry’s Marketplace. And how are you supposed to know the history of Phoenix? I know it's a young city to some people, but how are you supposed to know the history of Phoenix if you don't have Phoenix if you don't have these properties to show you, if you don't know where we started to how we got to here now, because now we're the fifth-largest city in the U.S., or the fourth, I can't remember, you know, and we have this great history of it was a desert, and people didn't want to live in the desert. And now everybody wants to live here.
So we have to have these properties that can show you the different periods of time in Phoenix's history, whether it's mid-modern century or Victorian or pueblo. I mean, you have to kind of be able to look back at your history and your past to know what your future is going to be.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, the Joni Mitchell lyric about paving paradise to put up a parking lot is running through my head.
PELA: Right.
DINGMAN: But I'm sure you have both dealt with the reality that in some of these cases, you have to compromise, and I think that's sort of contained in what you were alluding to, Robrt, this idea that you don't want to lose the story. The story has to move forward, but you want that, you want it to be a complete story.
So I wonder if, if both of you could share moments where you had to compromise a little bit and a project you've worked on, and how you decided where the points you were willing to give some ground on were?
TARRGART: I'll let you take that first Robrt.
PELA: OK, so I think for me, as someone who covers historic preservation, I can't, you know, I can't participate actively because I'm writing about it, and the ethical question comes up. My contribution is that I cover the Beatrice Moores and the Alison Kings and Sherry Rampys and Julia Taggarts, people who come to me and say, "Hey, here's the story, and this is happening." And what I've learned from watching them is you really have to pick your battles. My favorite example of this is the Duke Photography building.
DINGMAN: Yes.
PELA: Seventh Avenue and Thomas, right. So many of us remember that building because it's where we all went to have our senior portraits taken, our mothers, our sisters. Are all generations of us, or family portraits, when everybody got together to do that moment in time on film.
But the building itself is not interesting or significant, and when the owners sold it a couple of years ago to a developer who I think wanted to put a fried chicken franchise there, my thought was "it's not an important building, it's an important memory," and that is where you have to draw the line.
DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah.
TARRGART: I would say, for me, there's some properties that are too far gone that wouldn't be eligible if the city so Angel House, which is from 1919 an old mining cabin with a fence on it that's behind a business, you know that can't be saved, that's going to go into the ground one day. I mean, it's over 100 years old. Or Cloud Nine on top of Shaw Butte, certain properties you won't be able to preserve, but you can preserve that history, whether it's with an exhibit or doing an interview of KJZZ, or even doing signage there, which we're doing, you can have that sort of compromise.
But like he said, You can't save everything, and you're not going to win everything, but it does matter to fight and just to try. I think that's what really matters, is that you gave it your all, you know, and that you didn't give up. And people see that, and they see it as you know, I should try to even if I don't win, at least I tried.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, in that vein, one of the reasons I'm really excited to have the two of you in particular, to talk about this today is that, as we've alluded to a couple times in our conversation, Robrt, you've been doing this for decades. Julia, you're newer to it, but you both have, if I may, really active, reverberant passion for this.
And I'd love to have you compare notes a bit on what it was like to get. Involved in preservation, restoration work here 30 years ago, versus what you felt like you encountered Julia coming to it more recently. Robrt, maybe we'd start with you for that.
PELA: Well, the awareness is what has primarily changed. People are more aware today that we have architectural history and that we have significant architects working now and having worked in the past. So when I started covering historic preservation, people didn't necessarily know about Ralph Haver or Alfred Beadle or even Eddie Jones or Wendell Burnette or Jack Black, or people who are working currently.
And that has changed thanks to people like Beatrice Moore who decided to invest her own capital in preserving the warehouse district on the west side in downtown Phoenix, and people like Janet Traylor who took on the beautiful property at Central and is it Maryland or Missouri? I can never remember.
TARRGART: It's Maryland.
PELA: Maryland, the Olympus, which is a gorgeous mid century building, and that is her beat. So the awareness was not there when I started doing this, but thanks to people like Julia, there is a greater awareness, and people know that the buildings are there, and what they mean.
TARRGART: For me it was our small museum, the Sunnyslope Historical Society. It was close to closing. They didn't have many volunteers. People weren't coming in, and one of the founders of the museum spoke out to me and was very concerned about it, so I said I would do whatever I could to help, because it's a part of my community. And then seeing all these properties that hadn't been given historic status, or even, you know, the light of day of their history. I really wanted to preserve that, and then go down to Phoenix and see how else we can help, because that was the whole mission of Sunnyslope. Was not just helping people in Sunnyslope, but helping people in Arizona.
So whether it's helping with the Clare House in Gilbert or the Velma Teague Library in Glendale, you know, we want to help preserve anything that we can and give our advice and our support to people. And you know, reaching out to the media and working with people like Robrt and KJZZ and other TV and news stations has really helped kind of change the narrative and gotten more people involved.
I've had people who have listened to KJZZ say, I heard you talk about Cloud Nine, and I was hoping you could help me with this property in Cave Creek. And I'm like "Ok, sure, yeah, you know, I didn't I, I'll try and help however I can." And we were actually able to preserve that property in Cave Creek, too. So it's interesting to see how small the world is.
DINGMAN: Well, that speaks to what Robrt was alluding to, this idea that if you keep the conversation, you keep the story alive, there's more of an awareness in a place where there is so much development and newness all the time, it just keeps the awareness of the past being part of the story involved.
We have just a couple minutes left, and I wanted to ask you both, you know, this is sort of a high stakes question, but would you say that you're fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic about the future of preservation in the Valley?
PELA: I've been frightened for a little while because I see that we are people of a certain age, the historic preservationists, and who will we pass this mantle on to? But I'm taking some real hope lately from things like new organizations or newish organizations like Preserve Phoenix and new activists like Julia Taggart, you know, I have a gig at Phoenix Home and Garden, where they let me write about important buildings.
And I was recently interviewing a very young architect who redid a Beadle building that had been vacant for 20 years, and he had more than foundational knowledge. He knew everything that he needed to know to rework and renovate this building so that it still looked like Alfred Beadle. And by the way, the developer renamed the building the Beadle, so things like that, that a 30-year-old is taking me through a building that he helped design and talking to me about Alfred Beadle, and then the developer, who probably didn't really care about anything other than developing, renamed it the Beadle. Yes, I'm hopeful now.
DINGMAN: Julia, what about you?
TAGGART: I'm hopeful. I'm still young. I'm 25 so I still have the energy to keep going, and I'm fairly healthy, but no, I want to keep going. And I see more people getting involved, and more people are getting hope from stories like the Rock Garden or Wallace and Ladmo and it's just it takes time, but I think we're getting there. The public cares. The public's coming to meetings. They're voicing their support. We have a lot more to do, but we're going to get it done.
DINGMAN: Well, thank you both for joining me today to talk about all this. I've been speaking with Julia Taggart and Robrt Pela. This is our Wednesday Culture Cap.
