Heritage Square²

A couple Fridays ago we went back to the Heritage and Science Plaza. This time we went to the Phoenix Museum of History. With all the other history-related places we have been lately, it was actually a bit of a lack-luster museum. There were a few Indian artifacts to start with, then a few pieces from the early days of turning the desert into a sleepy farming community, next a showcase of the town’s rapid growth to a thriving metropolis, and lastly a display about how it is the duty of all of us to continue to preserve the past for those that will come after us. All in all, a very standard little history museum. That is not to say that there weren’t a few interesting things in the museum. One of our favorite items was Phoenix’s first jail – the jail rock. It’s a set of shackles, set into a rock. That was more effective then walls made of mesquite branches or adobe. The frontier was so brutally efficient. It’s just sort of amusing to look back on now, but what a hard life it must have been.

Life got a lot easier when the railroad finally connected Phoenix up with the rest of the country. After that, anything that could be had, could be had here. There was a whole section of the museum detailing the various specialty shops that imported these goods and supplied them to the Victorian-ear Phoenicians. That’s right, according to the signs in the museum, residents of Phoenix are slash have been called “Phoenicians.” This is not something we have encountered anywhere else. We don’t hear it on the street, on the news, don’t read it in the papers. To put it in Maya’s exact words: “Phoenicians are dead – all of them.”

In the lobby of the museum was a very large and detailed model of the USS Phoenix (CL-46). The ship’s service record is extremely interesting. She was built in the late 1930s and was stationed in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor. She suffered no damage in that attack and became one of the ships to undertake a search (unsuccessful) for the Japanese carrier fleet in the immediate aftermath of the attack. She saw a lot of action in the Pacific, but was never heavily damaged. In one engagement, she managed to dodge two incoming torpedoes! After the war she was decommissioned and sold to Argentina in the 50s. She was re-named ARA General Belgrano and was still in service in 1982 when she saw action again against the British in the Guerra de las Malvinas (Falklands War). When HMS Conqueror struck her with two torpedoes on 2 May General Belgrano became the first (and so far, only) ship be sunk by a nuclear submarine. Somewhat ironically, the type of torpedoes used had been in service since 1925. The 323 lives lost in the sinking accounted for half of Argentina’s casualties in the conflict. So it goes.
Across the plaza from the museum is Phoenix’s only reaming Victorian mansion. The doctor at the nearby military fort, one Roland Rosson, retired to Phoenix in 1879 to start a medical practice. He was successful and also got into local politics. About the time he became Mayor, he build a house on the very edge of town. Literally, the edge: there was nothing past 7th Street. He didn’t live there long because a dispute with the city council lead him to leave the mayor’s office, then Arizona, as he felt Los Angeles offered better “educational opportunities” for his children. The house then became the home of several upper-crust “Phoenicians” through the years. Eventually, as the city center crumbled a little the house was converted to a flop house and later rooms rented mostly to collage students. Our tour guide said that this was all actually good for the house because wall paper was covered up, linoleum was put down on top of the cherry-inlaid floor and the pocket doors in the dining room were just plastered inside the new dividing wall. It was “out of site, out of mind” for the tenants, but when conservations got hold of the house all that cool Victorian decoration was still there underneath - and in perfect condition!

Some interesting things about Victorian live and times we learned at the Rosson House Museum: If you called without being invited you got no further than the lobby until someone decided whether of not they wanted to see you. No guest ever went up stairs; that was family only. The huge stair case was a mail-order item, shipped in on a train in three giant sections. The kitchen was almost as decorated as the parlor, because while your guests for parties and such wouldn’t see the kitchen or panty, delivery people coming to the back door would. Red glass panels meant wealth because the glass gold dust was sued to make the glass red. Nails were not driven through the expensive wallpaper, but into special “picture rails” mounted just below the crown moldings. Nearly every room had a large window that went all the way to the floor and would slide up out of the way to reveal a doorway out onto the porch or balcony. These windows were as close to climate control as you got in 1890s Arizona.

This post is almost two weeks out of date. This is mostly because Matt is deeply into his efforts to write a novel in just one month. He spends a lot of his time working on the novel and blogging about the process. That’s right, there a whole month worth of posts, one for everyday! If you are longing for more The Longest Commute, try some Words Are My Sword. He’s got 30,000 so far and that’s right on schedule.