Lately I've been on a kick to discover historic buildings that remain in Phoenix. I know we've lost a ton to demolition through the years, but I've refused to give in to the notion that there is nothing historic left in Phoenix, or I refuse to believe I know every historic building or house still standing. There has to be more.
No one may give two shits about this stuff (my previous "discovery" of a possible horse hitching post remaining downtown didn't seem to matter to anyone), but it is interesting to me.
Looking over a 1930 aerial, I found what originally looked like 3 duplexes on the southeast corner of 7th Street/Whitton. There are some nice streets with remaining historic housing stock in the area, but not too much "multi-family" stuff, so they caught my eye. Here they are:
So I went to the existing aerial just to see what was there now, and there seems to be a new larger building - meaning the duplexes were demolished some time ago:
However, looking at the roofline, it looks like those duplexes might actually still be there. Going to streetview, I see that while some monolithic facade with an old mural is there, looking around the corner of the building you can see something more, with distinctive skinny arched windows (usually a dead giveaway of a pre-war building).
So a couple of those duplexes from at least the 1920s are actually still there, just hiding from view! I'll have to go in and check them out some day.
I also noticed this house just across the street on Whitton riding the streetview car:
Looks like some kind of territorial architecture to me, and it turns out this house/duplex was built in 1899-1900. Pretty sweet, considering how far from downtown Phoenix that must have been back in the day, and that it is still standing and that it is that old.