If you were a banker with Pioneer Bank of Arizona in the mid-1960s in Phoenix, your commute to work might include a drive up or down Central Avenue and a turn near Osborn Road. You’d pull into the parking lot on the northeast corner of the intersection, grab your briefcase from your car, and enter a brand new building called the Phoenix Financial Center designed by architect Wenceslaus Sarmiento.
The (then) 10-story tower and two adjacent, mid-century rotundas were state of the art. Heat resistant glass. Reinforced concrete columns with steel pan concrete floors. A massive refrigeration system in the basement. And on the tower, 292 12-inch wide slot windows in a random pattern covering the tall southeast facade.
To many, the building with slot windows resembled an essential, everyday work item used to clock in and out at the beginning and end of a day. The building at 3443 N. Central Avenue became known as the "Punch Card Building," though Sarmiento said he was inspired by falling raindrops.
“I think a good building should look like a happy marriage of engineering and sculpture,” Sarmiento said about the Financial Center in 1970.
A few years after it opened, Sarmiento was asked to add nine more stories to the main tower and a bridge. And 50 years later, the building is being reimagined into a hotel, private residences and mixed commercial use.
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