Author and historian Robert Melikian wants Phoenix’s future to look more like its past. In his new book, “Forgotten Phoenix, Or The Art of Hotel Management,” Melikian takes readers back in time to a version of downtown Phoenix many of us wouldn’t recognize.
There’s nonstop foot traffic, vintage architecture, shops and restaurants open all night long, and to hear Melikian tell it, a happier, healthier existence for everyone who lives here.
Melikian joined The Show to talk about his vision for the new old Phoenix.
Full conversation
ROBERT MELIKIAN: Being from New York, I, I love the hustle and bustle of people on the street interacting. It's good for the city, good for people. So we wanted, I wanted to carry that moving from New York City to Phoenix and, and save historic buildings so they're very pedestrian oriented.
SAM DINGMAN: In New York, it seems like, maybe just because of the pop cultural presence of it, it's hard to forget about the past.
MELIKIAN: People are from there. Here they're from somewhere else, so they have a loyalty to somewhere else more generally speaking.
DINGMAN: Well, in this book, you're particularly focused on downtown Phoenix, right? Why focus on downtown specifically? What, why use that as kind of a petri dish?
MELIKIAN: Downtown is the center of everything. It, for first 90 years of Phoenix history, it was everything, shopping, living, movies, bakery shops, ice cream parlors, restaurants, hotels, it was everything. And that's what Phoenix should go back to, and I wish they would reintroduce people to their wonderful center of downtown, not, not just sports, not just government, not just convention centers.
It should be a day to day city, not a special event city. They've made these monolith non-walkable buildings that have no shade. The test of the downtown’s success is people strolling.
DINGMAN: Well, speaking of strolling, part of the origin story of this book is these night walks that you like to take. When did you start doing that? Tell me a little bit of the backstory there.
MELIKIAN: My father bought an old hotel in downtown Phoenix, and in that hotel, there was a sealed door that no one had known what that was from, so it must have been sealed in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. We bought it in 1973, the hotel.
So the, my father made us free labor work as, as teenagers in the, in the hotel, and one day we said, “Dad, we bust through this, we see what's on the other side of this thing because at the bottom it was like a step coming at them. It could have been a staircase behind it.”
We busted through and there was a staircase behind it. It went up to this a mezzanine from the 1920s that went along Central Avenue. We found a lot of paperwork, bills, ledgers.
DINGMAN: How well preserved was it?
MELIKIAN: I mean, it was very well preserved because it was sealed in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s. So from 1928 when it had opened. There was a matchbook there that represented 24-hour downtown Phoenix. It said: “a free meal if you find this cafe without a customer, day or night,” with exclamation points after it.
So it proudly and boldly claimed that downtown Phoenix was a 24-hour downtown, and they dare you to challenge that and if you can find them without a customer, you get a free meal.
So I walked in the middle of my graveyard shift, which was 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. At 3 in the morning when there was no business, I just get and walked the streets dark and quiet. Imagine what the trolleys used to sound like, the canals, the horse and carriages, and go to this old coffee shop that was long torn down, unfortunately.
And, and just imagine what it was like in the old days in downtown Phoenix, and that's why I started studying 1920s downtown, was when most of the seeds of downtown were planted.
DINGMAN: So you find this matchbook and that prompts you to start taking these walks.
MELIKIAN: See downtown history by night and learn about it by day, right?
DINGMAN: And you're imagining these old scenes, even as you're walking through newer Phoenix. What was that contrast like in those moments? Because It strikes me that the life inside your mind at that time and what you were actually seeing at 3 o'clock in the morning on the streets of Phoenix, there must have been, I'm imagining there was a contrast, but maybe, maybe it wasn't as as wide a gulf as I'm, as I'm guessing.
MELIKIAN: The historic buildings were still there, thank goodness. So I can imagine what activities, restaurants that used to be there, the, the, the Flame, the Grand, the American Kitchen. Wonderful old places that drew people to the Fox Theater. People used to shop during the day, take their groceries to the theater, put it in a dumbwaiter to cold storage and spend the afternoon and evening watching movies.
It was all, downtown was an all day affair, and that's what I would imagine walking around. One day we could get back to that.
DINGMAN: That speaks to the word forgotten in the title of your book. This idea in the very spirit of it, that something is in danger of being forgotten. Is that a fair framing?
MELIKIAN: It very is, yes. And for 90 years from 1870 to 1960, it was everything. Phoenix people have loved Phoenix. It, it was there, they were born here generally.
But since 1960, so the last 65 years, it's just been spread out, very thinly to all these outlying areas and people stay home and watch, the streaming shows and there's just not the public interaction that it used to be.
DINGMAN: But there's such a contrast between that image of people sitting at home watching something on TV and you walking through the streets in the middle of the night running your own streaming show in your head.
MELIKIAN: Oh, absolutely, and I was way ahead. I was the richer for it. It's healthy. It's like being in the, near the ocean or mountains or forests. Every historic building tells a tale. It's like a coded book and if you take the time to read about it, you'll learn what the person's motivation was to build it.
Was it out of a, the, the loss of a child like the Bruno Clinic on McDowell? Was it out of the feeling of, bravado like Dwight Heard in the Herd building, tallest building in the state.
DINGMAN: Is the Heard building the one that also has the old radio tower on the top?
MELIKIAN: It used to, but it moved over to the Westward Ho, but that was the, he owned both newspapers at the time, and he was the king of Phoenix. He wanted to prove it by building the tallest building. So he owned the Republic and the Republican and the Gazette.
DINGMAN: And so he wanted to prove it by building these, these giant structures.
MELIKIAN: He was the king and then he ran for governor and lost and then the Heard and the Luhrs built their Luhrs building and took the, the title away is the tallest building.
DINGMAN: And what's the story of this clinic that was built out of grief for a lost child?
MELIKIAN: The Bruno clinic was parents whose, daughter, I believe, was misdiagnosed. It was a horrible tragedy. And in the memory of their child they built this beautiful building, 10th Street and McDowell across from Good Samaritan Hospital.
The detail work, the murals, it's just a piece of art just to walk through if you get a chance. Winnie Ruth Judd worked there. So it's a lot of Phoenix history.
DINGMAN: Another great Phoenix historical story.
MELIKIAN: So a lot of Phoenix history, if you search for it, you can decode these books and learn history and it's really good for you.
DINGMAN: I love this description that you gave a moment ago of treating life in the city almost the same way as you would a natural wonder, like a forest or a beach. And I heard somebody say once about experiences in nature that what's beautiful about them is they ask nothing of you. You just take yourself to them and it, it gives you this bounty of gifts.
And the way you're describing life in a bustling downtown in a city with a rich history like Phoenix has, it strikes me that the same opportunity is available to you. If you just go put yourself there.
MELIKIAN: You realize that you're part of something much bigger than you, which is a wonderful freeing feeling. Seeing the ocean, mountains, forests, downtowns, you realize that you're part of a connection to all life, all buildings, trees, everything. And it's, it's a comforting feeling.
DINGMAN: Well, that strikes me as something to remember.
