When walking through downtown Mesa, the relatively small-scale streets and buildings have a quaint feeling that does not hint at Arizona's largest arts center sitting squarely downtown on Main and Center Street.  However, once you get within a block of the Mesa Arts Center, the site becomes apparent from any direction.  With tall glass canopies, blue border walls, rows of trees, and large theaters standing at its heart, the Mesa Arts Center cannot be missed.  Aside from its architecture, the art banners, show advertisements, and people milling about are sure to garner any attention the complex may not have gathered on its own.  The Mesa Arts Center is a massive complex covering seven acres, with four theaters, five galleries, and fourteen art studios.  The center is 212, 755 square feet encompassing all of the theaters and studios, with about 5,500 square feet of art exhibit space.  The five galleries compose the Mesa Contemporary Arts (MCA) Museum.  The four theaters are the Ikeda Theater, the Virginia G. Piper Repertory Theater, the Nesbitt/Elliott Playhouse Theater, and the Anita Cox Farnsworth Studio Theater.  The Mesa Arts Center hosts various events, from classical music concerts to art classes, lectures, and cultural celebrations, across their campus. The presence of the Mesa Arts Center in the middle of downtown Mesa is not by convenience or happenstance; it was chosen to be an integral part of creating a new Mesa.  The term 'revitalization' frequently appears in discussions about the city's changes, and it has for the past two decades.  Mesa was once one of the most successful downtowns in Arizona.  It hosted the largest movie palace in Arizona just down the street, a plethora of businesses and restaurants, and more and more people every year.  However, after the Second World War, the population growth that brought the city more people also brought those people further out.  The historical boundaries of downtown Mesa are relatively small, only about a mile each.  After World War II, the proliferation of suburbs pushed people further and further away from the city's center.  The effect on downtown Mesa was devastating.  By the 1950s and 1960s, businesses had closed, and shopping centers designed for the newly thriving suburbs threatened most businesses that had managed to stay afloat.  These effects changed the culture and reputation of Mesa for decades, and only recently have they begun to see change.  The implementation of the Mesa Arts Center was designed to bring people, life, and activity back into the city.  It was strategically placed at the exact place people get off the light rail, and it is accessible from every side of the street.  It not only plays a dominant role in its immediate surrounding landscape but has also shaped the changing dynamics between the people of Mesa and the idea of what the city should be.  The Mesa Arts Center does an undeniably excellent job of advertising itself.  The center is a work of art that is evident from the street.  This is not by accident.  Every aspect of the arts center was designed to be inviting, artistic, and stimulating.  Martha Schwartz's idea for the landscape was a shadow walk, "a place where the rich interplay of overlapping shadows, trees, and architectural canopies creates a cool and inviting environment." Colored glass canopies, boulders, a water system mimicking southwest waterways, banquet tables, textured trees, and other features were chosen to make the arts center not only accessible but intriguing.  Just walking the grounds without ever going into any of the buildings that make up the complex becomes an artistic experience.  Designing the entirety of the Mesa Arts Center was a major artistic project, combining the work of Auerbach Pollock Friedlander, McKay Conant Brook Inc., Paragon Structural Design, Martha Schwartz Inc., and Lowry Sorenson Wilcoxson. The entirety of the complex was designed with the goals of accessibility, functionality, and sustainability.  The art galleries and studios were placed around the edges of the center to put activity on the main streets, and the theaters were placed at the heart of the campus to draw people into the center.  The Mesa Arts Center was also designed to be as sustainable as possible, using thick walls, solar shading, placing the museum below grade, and even the exterior water feature reminiscent of arroyos works to temper the climate.  The center took inspiration from several natural features to become a more sustainable complex, from the arroyos cooling component to using angles of the buildings to mimic the cooling characteristics of desert canyons and shade canopies.  Even within the buildings, like in the ceramic studios where artist Jeff Reich helped to design a sloped studio floor to trench drain and shade sails to protect the kilns to create state of the art facilities and a modern, efficient, and sustainable complex. It is not only the physical aspects of the center that make it accessible but how it interacts with its community, which has become one of the central focuses of the center.  Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center, Cindy Ornstein, described this, saying "My view of the arts is that it is fantastic to offer exhibitions and performances... but that if you don't look to figure out how you create accessible points for all different people, if you don't figure out how to welcome the community in and give them ownership over some of the programming, if you don't make sure there are different ways for people from different ways and walks of life than you end up not serving the community needs as you should." The center's interaction with the community has significantly increased in the last eleven years, going from limited interactions of community engagement to a thriving dynamic of programs, festivals, and classes designed to give the people of the city ownership of the Mesa Arts Center.  Building this complex was a vast project and required funding of about 90.8 million in construction costs and about 95 million total, a massive expense with what should be an even greater payout.  The Mesa Arts Center is an intelligently constructed and booming art complex.  Still, it represents something even bigger, a rebirth of Mesa, with arts at the center.  One of the architects of the project, Michael Tingley, explains the larger implications of the center, "A fundamental strategy for the Mesa Arts Center project was to create a new image and identity for the city of Mesa in the twenty-first century that would spur economic investment in the downtown core.  Transitioning this suburban community into a sustainable city for a new millennium requires establishing a sense of place, pride, and identity".  The Mesa Arts Center is the culmination of this idea for a new Mesa, an economic and cultural renovation designed to reinvent the city's image and reputation.  A project this significant physically and economically always has conflict.  Still, it took almost no time for the center's impact to become apparent.  From 2000 to 2005, the local economic impact of arts and culture went from 18.1 million to more than 47.57 million.  In five years, the event-related spending from visitors outside of Maricopa County grew tenfold. The Mesa Arts Center is clearly one of a kind, utterly unique in its design and architecture, and impact on the surrounding landscape.  Unlike other cities in the valley, the face of downtown Mesa has not been dominated by skyscrapers and office buildings.   Mesa has a complicated history, a once thriving downtown slowly dying down as suburbanization pushed people outwards.  As people return, the downtown is reminiscent of the old-timey downtown.  Still, it has begun to see the changes of urbanization.  The Mesa Arts Center is a part of this phenomenon of returning life to downtown, but rather than overwhelm its landscape; the center is designed to add to it.  The center looks incredibly different from its surrounding buildings, but rather than look out of place, it appears as a focal point.  Its wide breadth and posture over its neighbors are eye-catching but not so large that it seems out of scale.  Whereas the opaque glass of the rectangle buildings that dominate other downtowns are uninviting, every possible entrance to the Mesa Arts Center is designed to bring people in, with pathways to guide you and colorful panels to beckon you forward from the streets of Mesa and into its immersive experience of art and culture. 

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In 1978, almost forty years after the Desert Botanical Garden (DBG) opened to the public, the Garden introduced its first Las Noches de las Luminaria. The celebration has evolved beyond candlelit desert paths; the annual event now includes bell choirs, bands, dancers, and light shows. In creating Las Noches de las Luminaria, the DBG drew upon a cultural form that had taken a new meaning in the American Southwest in the early twentieth century. Lighting luminaries during the Christmas season originated in the American Southwest, specifically in northern New Mexico. It grew out of the efforts by Anglo leaders in Sante Fe to create a distinctive identity for the town and to promote that sensibility to Western travelers. Early twentieth-century Anglo leaders of Santa Fe had redefined the city's history by appropriating Native American and Mexican culture and traditions. Through its art, architecture, ceremonies, literature, and pageantry, the town established a mythic identity that has drawn tourists for more than one hundred years. These efforts included highlighting the city's architecture during the Christmas holiday season through the use of luminaries lining the parks, streets, walls, and flat rooftops of Santa Fe. Beginning in the 1920s and through the '60s, use of luminaries spread through the Southwest, including to Arizona. For example, in 1939, an article from the Arizona Daily Star encouraged Tucson residents to adopt the use of luminaries in their homes. It described how, in the previous year, the author saw the use of luminaries in Old Pueblo, Arizona and stated that the flat roofs of Southwestern style homes, such as in Santa Fe, Old Pueblo and Tucson, made excellent places for luminaries. Years later, for Christmas 1950, Tucson's Desert Garden Club members urged homeowners to use luminaries and "other beautiful decorations" to beautify the city for the holidays. Luminaries were again encouraged the following year as a way to capture the desert holiday spirit. In an article the next year, they added additional incentives, appealing to children with the argument that luminaries may help direct Santa Claus to their Tucson homes. If the use of luminaries in the Southwest has become a winter holiday custom over the past one hundred years, the precise origins of the use of luminaria have been obscured by that twentieth-century mythmaking. Santa Fe historian Pedro Ribera Ortega promoted the luminaria tradition in Santa Fe by linking it to the hills of Spain and Italy. Around the city of Belén, Spain, shepherds lit small, contained fires at night to stay warm, and in time these became known as luminaries. According to Ortega, it was during Spain's conquest of the Americas that luminaries traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, where they became popular in Mexico during winter nights. As Christian missions spread around the Mexican territory, indigenous peoples who converted to Christianity displayed luminaries to help lead the infant Jesus Christ into their homes. Ortega reported that poems and regional songs even describe the tradition of luminaries in Christmas celebrations. One poem by Dorothy Linney reads, "The little fires that blaze on Christmas Eve; are lit by simple folks who believe; the Christ Child wanders softly through the night; and blesses all who set a guiding light." According to Ribera, the decline of the Spanish missions contributed to the decreasing use of luminaries. It was this tradition that Santa Fe appropriated when it began lighting the city in the early twentieth century.   In creating its own Las Noches de las Luminaria in 1978, the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix drew upon the southwestern cultural tradition that had emanated from Santa Fe to broaden its appeal and create a new relationship with the community. Indeed, community outreach became more central to the Garden in the 1970s, when Charles A. Huckins became director and reinvented the Gardens by making them more accessible, including creating trails and education programs. As a thank you to the Phoenix community and its volunteers, the Desert Botanical Garden hosted a one-night winter celebration, showcasing the luminaria festival for the first time. That first Las Noches de las Luminaria displayed approximately three thousand luminaries lining the trails and buildings; it was free for all visitors and open from 7 to 9 pm. Webster Auditorium, decorated with "piñatas and desert holiday arrangements," also offered hot chocolate and cookies. The festival grew larger with each passing year. By its fortieth anniversary, Las Noches de las Luminaria displayed more than eight thousand hand-lit luminaries. The event now includes luminary donated by individuals, as well as volunteers recruited for lighting the thousands of luminaries each year. The Garden also hosts various concerts during the festivities, from Native American Flute players and Mariachi bands to brass bands and bell choirs. Instead of one evening, Las Noches de las Luminaria can be seen throughout December.

edited 12/18/2019: mt

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William Hartranft founded Encanto Park in 1934, seeking to create a park for Phoenix that was like San Francisco's Golden Gate Park or San Diego's Balboa Park. William Hartranft emulated parks inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of Central Park, whose plan shaped urban parks across the United States, including Golden Gate Park. Hartranft's inspiration tells us how Americans living in the 1920s imagined what a park should look like. Olmsted imagined parks as public places where men could escape the dirt and noise of the city and find natural, uplifting spaces. Olmsted romanticized nature and sought to improve it by designing viewsheds, hills, and lakes. His vision permeated San Francisco's planning for Golden Gate Park. However, he recommended a different location and a design more in keeping with California's unique landscapes. Olmsted argued for a similar park to promote civility and grant a meeting place for all classes in San Francisco. Likewise, New Yorkers wanted Central Park opened to all classes of society. Hartranft duplicated that inclusiveness with family-oriented recreational areas for all ages. Such ideals influenced parks across the United States, including those in Encanto, Golden Gate, and Central Park.  Early designs for Encanto Park promoted a naturalistic style that drew upon both the design and organic materials used on the East coast. Not surprisingly, this preference for lawns and shade trees proliferated in Phoenix as it grew in the desert. Photographs and drawings demonstrate how Phoenix's early residents replaced the natural Sonoran Desert with lawns and trees, though often with palm and other desert-hardy trees, such as willows.  If claims about the public good motivated Hatranft's rhetoric, his motives surely included the desire to build an amenity that would enhance his own economic interests. Hartranft and business partner Dwight Heard began to develop property in the nearby Palmcroft plat in 1927. They sought to build a neighborhood that would appeal to well-heeled middle-class residents and planned amenities accordingly. These eventually included Encanto Park, complete with a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, and a swimming pool.  The Park's orientation toward elite residents (and new development) was evident in its location. In fact, residents originally called Encanto Park Dorris-Norton Park, with a nod to the nearby residents and developers who sold the land to Phoenix for the Park. James C. Norton and James W. Dorris had large estates on the land. The impressive Norton House abutted Encanto Park, as did Dorris's estate, Casa de Rojas (which later became Encanto Community Church). In the context of Phoenix's development, locating Encanto Park at the lightly populated northern edge of the city, where city elites lived and/or were moving, indicates that Hartranft and his peers imagined an amenity that would serve the well-heeled residents of the Encanto Palmcroft district. And more broadly, Phoenix remained a primarily agricultural settlement, except for its multi-ethnic neighborhoods immediately south of the central business district. Moreover, prior to the city's purchase, the land for Encanto Park had been vacant property primarily for agriculture, especially grazing animals. In letters to nearby property owners after the sale, the Phoenix City Manager informed them that "you are herewith notified that in allowing stock to graze on this land you are trespassing upon Private Property, and unless you immediately cease this trespass the City of Phoenix proposes to take the necessary legal steps to evict you."  Over time the relationship between the Park and its surrounding community changed, growing increasingly contentious as the years wore on. After World War II, the connections between the Park and the nearby neighborhood remained close, and families continued to flock to the Encanto-Palmcroft neighborhood. In 1946, Kiddieland opened on an island in the Park's lagoon. The new addition drew neighborhood children and tourists to its eleven amusement park rides, including a now-famous carousel. However, the community gradually became more middle class, adopting the inexpensive ranch-style houses often characteristic of the post-war American West. This was partly related to cost; creating custom homes became cost prohibitive, and the ranch style emerged as an affordable and respectable style of architecture. Still, the Encanto-Palmcroft neighborhood remained relatively exclusive. Its post-war housing boom was characterized by more elaborate and sometimes custom-built, rambling ranch-style homes.  By the 1960s, however, tensions emerged between the users of Encanto Park and its neighbors, setting off a twenty-five-year struggle over the soul of the Park. Though newspapers reported almost daily on the positive activities happening in the Park, those news reports were sprinkled with concerns by the latter half of the decade. Through the summer of 1968, the Arizona Republic reported on the lagoon's pollution and overgrown weeds, confirmed by the operators of Kiddieland. At the same time, the Arizona Republic noted that a "cold war erupted this week into open battle" between 'hippies' and the police who were defending "adult society." The newspaper opined on the importance of "law and order" and worried that Phoenix "won't remain a choice place if Encanto Park is made into a Western version of Central Park in New York." By the mid-1980s, park leaders in Phoenix sought to restore Encanto Park's aging infrastructure and update its amenities, including Kiddieland. A public debate ensued on a variety of park features: the future of Kiddieland (it was closed) and the fate of its carousel (a citizens' group preserved it), whether to buy "natural" boulders for the lagoon or manufacture them from concrete and how to best preserve public safety. The bandshell was lost to fire in 1987, though planners had intended to demolish it anyway. Civic leaders claimed that removing the bandshell was a safety issue as its construction was substandard. Still, one wonders whether evening concerts had produced too much tension between residents and park users over the years. By 1991, the Park had been rehabilitated, now serving a neighborhood that had become less exclusive from Phoenix and its surrounding communities.   Even so, the Park itself remained an expression of the same park ideas that shaped the growth of urban parks throughout the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It reflected the romantic ideals of 19th-century landscape designers with its open spaces, artificial lagoons, and use of grass and trees to frame views and experience. In some respects, it may have become even more important as an oasis from the vicissitudes of urban life as Phoenix expanded around it. At the same time, the continued emphasis on amenities--whether in the form of golf, swimming, tennis, or the amusements of Kiddieland--suited the more rationalistic urban planners of the 20th century. They wanted to create functional spaces that drew visitors not just for contemplation but for recreation, especially children and families. Like other American parks, Encanto Park combined romantic and rationalistic perspectives. It had broad landscapes to complement romantics and unique attractions to suit more rational planners.

edited 12/17/2019: mt

edited 10/07/2022: jls

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Maple Ash began its construction in the early 1900' s and is considered one of Tempe's oldest existing historic neighborhoods. Its borders extend from the south side of University Drive to the north side of Hayden Lane and from the west side of Mill Avenue to the west side of Ash Avenue.

Along with the early development of this community, flood irrigation was a key aspect to what makes this neighborhood unique to this day. Flood irrigation was originally used for agricultural land by transporting water through channels of open ditches. Maple Ash took this system and used a distribution of pipe systems to replace the open ditches for residential purposes. This highly desirable watering system was so popular because it made having a green oasis in the middle of the desert a reality, providing lush green lawns and healthy shade trees year round. The healthy vegetation also dropped the ambient temperature in this area by an average of 3-11 degrees year-round. Problems began to arise in the 1950s, and water consumption became a financial issue. The city proposed raising the fee residents pay in exchange for the water service they provide. Residents disagreed with this idea, and it was later decided that the city would stop offering flood irrigation services and stop creating new ones for future use.

In the early 2000s, the neighborhood's association received a $12,000 grant to transform the historic irrigation standpipes into a public art display. Not only did the artwork beautify the community, but it also had historic stories built into the murals about the people and architecture that created Maple Ash into what it is today.

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WaterWorks at Arizona Falls plays with the serious subjects of water and power to bring new life to the historic falls along the Arizona Canal. SRP and the Phoenix Arts Commission commissioned the project from the internationally-renowned team of public artists Mags Harries and Lajos Héder.

In collaboration with landscape architect Steve Martino, Harries and Héder sought to bring "into focus the role of water in the history of Phoenix and in the future of green-energy" and to explore "water as both a utilitarian commodity and as a beautiful transformative substance."

Built to accompany a new hydro-power plant, WaterWorks still uses the water that comes from the high country 60 miles east of Arizona Falls through five dams and storage reservoirs. WaterWorks revels in and reveals the pre-industrial and industrial past to remind us how water and electrical power have been harnessed to fuel the rise of desert metropolitan cities.

Harries and Héder's 1992 Wall Cycle to Ocotillo along State Route 51 was one of the first large public art projects of the Phoenix Arts Commission. Their 2003 WaterWorks provides both a personal and communal place to ponder the gravity-fed journey of water, the power of water, and the power of this particular place.

edited 12/23/2019:wt

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