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Old Posted Jul 19, 2019, 10:35 PM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Austin
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That fairly close range pan shot from NW to NE downtown PHX captured most of what was there at the time. Note that at about 26 seconds there is even a repeat of part of the pan shot to make it appear that there is more to the place. There were a few blocks to the south that contained one or two department stores (one was Goldwater's owned by Barry Goldwater's family) and some smaller stores. Most of those closed a few years after Psycho was filmed. Some relocated to a new shopping center built a mile or two out on North Central that also contained a hotel. That was a Del Webb project I believe. Even that is no longer operative, but the hotel might remain. Back downtown the Westward Ho Hotel with the radio mast on top was one of the two or three tallest buildings. My interest in downtown PHX arose from the fact that my grandfather spent his last night alive as a guest of the Westward Ho. He and my grandmother were driving from Texas to California and spent the night at the once famous hotel. They left early the next morning (to avoid the heat of the day) and drove west. My grandfather had an asthma attack and wrecked the car. He was killed instantly and my grandmother was seriously injured. This was in the late spring of 1937.
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