Pre–World War II Central Avenue was originally named Center Street upon Phoenix's founding with the surrounding north–south roads named after
Indian tribes. The original Churchill Addition of 1877, covering a small area north of
Van Buren Street to what is presently
Roosevelt Street, was the first recorded
plat showing Central Avenue with its present name. Despite this, there is evidence of it being called Center Street into the 1930s. A replat of Phoenix's original townsite in 1895 was the first to officially show numbered streets and avenues starting from the east and west sides of Central. Phoenix's first school was built on Center Street and Monroe in 1874 as a one-room
adobe. A new four-room schoolhouse replaced it in 1879 as the fourth
brick building in the city, and the school was expanded again in 1893. By 1919, the school had deteriorated considerably and was condemned and sold. The luxurious
Hotel San Carlos, the first downtown hotel to feature
air conditioning and
elevators, opened on that spot in 1928 after a long delay. The
Phoenix Indian School was established in 1891 giving
Indian School Road (4100 N) its namesake. Near North Mountain, architect William Robert Norton subdivided the first parts of Sunnyslope in 1911 amidst a "squatters' community of asthmatics and
tuberculosis patients" whose makeshift dwellings were illegal in the city proper. and has changed little other than that patrons today enter the restaurant through the back off the parking lot as celebrities and other socialites once did back then.
Park Central Mall (3110 N) replaced a dairy farm in the middle part of the decade, signaling the beginning of
downtown's long decline as retail stores and malls opened away from the city center. America's second
McDonald's restaurant was built near Indian School Road in 1953. It was the first McDonald's franchise, the first to feature the
Golden Arches, and served as a model for
Ray Kroc's Illinois store. These early commercial developments foreshadowed the trend towards autocentrism on Central Avenue and indeed the rest of the city. The first major high-rise built on Central Avenue outside of downtown was the
Phoenix Towers (2201 N), erected in 1957. The
Phoenix Art Museum moved to Central Avenue in 1959. Phoenix fully annexed Sunnyslope, at Central's north terminus, that year. Central Avenue to its southern terminus, South Mountain, where minorities had been historically
redlined, was annexed a year later.
1960s . The 1960s brought a wave of high-rise development in Phoenix to Central Avenue that the city had hardly seen in its modern history. In 1960 the
Phoenix Corporate Center opened, which at became the tallest building in Arizona. The first phase of the Rozenweig Center, known today as
Phoenix City Square, was completed in 1964. Architect
Wenceslaus Sarmiento's largest project, the landmark
Phoenix Financial Center (3443 N, better known by locals as the "Punch-card Building" in recognition of its unique southeastern
facade) was also first finished in 1964 for banker and developer David Murdoch. Eight floors were added four years later. In addition to a number of other office towers, most of Phoenix's residential high-rises, such as the
Landmark on Central (4750 N, then known as Camelback Towers), Executive Towers (207 W. Clarendon) and the
Regency On Central (ROC) (2323 N, then known as
Regency Apartments), were built during this decade.
1970s and
3300 Tower, completed in 1985 and 1980. In 1971, Phoenix cemented the precedent of previous ad hoc zoning decisions with the adoption of the Central Phoenix Plan, which envisioned unlimited building heights along Central Avenue. The new plan, however, did not sustain long-term development of the Central Corridor. Only a few office towers were constructed along North Central during this decade and none approached the scope of projects constructed during the previous decade. Instead, downtown resurged in popularity during the 1970s, witnessing a flurry of construction activity not seen again until the urban real estate boom of the 2000s. In 1979, Phoenix adopted the Phoenix Concept 2000 plan which split the city into
urban villages—each with its own village core where greater height and density is permitted, further shaping the free-market development culture. Phoenix officially turned from its roots as a city built around its two
main drags to a city of many nodes later connected by
freeways. The cluster of high-rises north of Thomas Road became part of the
Encanto village core.
1980s Development on North Central Avenue began anew in the 1980s as part of that decade's
real estate boom with a second wave of office towers.
One Camelback was built in 1985 at the intersection of Central and one of Phoenix's other signature streets,
Camelback Road. It is likely the last structure to be built that tall that far north, thus capping the build-out potential of the Central Avenue skyline almost five miles (8 km) from the origin downtown. The Phoenix Indian School was closed in 1988 and remained vacant for years. The city's third-tallest building at ,
Qwest Tower, opened in
Phoenix Plaza in 1989 on
Thomas Road (2900 N).
1990s , completed as the Dial Tower in 1991. The building design resembles a bar of
Dial soap. Phoenix adopted the Arts District plan in 1992 in an attempt to interconnect lower Midtown's cultural amenities in a walkable area, but the private development that the plan anticipated never arrived, though
Burton Barr Central Library (1221 N) opened in 1995. The savings-and-loan boom that birthed new towers for Midtown Phoenix plagued it throughout the economic doldrums of the 1990s. The city's fifth-tallest at , the
Viad Tower (1850 N) opened in 1991 as the Dial Tower, isolated between the Downtown and Midtown skylines and the last new tower constructed in Midtown Phoenix.
Floorplans of office towers built in previous decades had become functionally obsolete and contributed heavily toward Midtown's high vacancy rates. Despite the recession, the swank Biltmore area surrounding
24th Street and Camelback Road began to eclipse the Central Corridor as the
Phoenix metropolitan area's premiere office destination with mid- and low-rise developments such as the
Camelback Esplanade. The 1990s were unkind to Central Phoenix's oldest section, and a renewed interest in the central city developed, focused on new residences instead of offices.
2000s After numerous failed initiatives, Phoenix voters approved the
Transit 2000 Regional Transportation Plan which dedicates a percentage of funds raised through a 4/10-cent (four cents on ten dollars)
sales tax to build the
Valley Metro Rail line. The initial phase, which opened for service in late December 2008. The
A Line runs from the
Downtown Phoenix Hub then east Washington Street en route to
Tempe and
Mesa.
Gilbert Road/Main Street station. The
B Line runs from the
Metro Parkway station, to Camelback, down Central, On Central Avenue, there are seven stops in Midtown and Uptown Phoenix and three in Downtown Phoenix then the line goes south to
South Phoenix to the
Baseline/Central Avenue station. The three-year construction process commenced in late 2005, with the final rail being laid in late April 2008. The alignment of light rail down the center of Central permanently reshaped its physical layout and impacted the future of the surrounding neighborhoods. Light rail influenced growth as Phoenix adopted
transit oriented development zoning standards in 2003 within 1/2 mile of stops, rendering an autocentric Central Avenue a thing of the past. In Midtown, the market responded with two new mid-rise projects, the Artisan Lofts (1326 N), which opened in 2004 and the Tapestry on Central (2302 N), which opened in 2007. Tapestry's construction
brought down the second-to-last estate home in the Central Avenue Corridor; the 1917 Ellis-Shackelford House (1242 N) still remains north of Margaret T. Hance Park. Capitalizing on its
retro mid-1960s styling, Camelback Towers became the Landmark on Central in 2004, continuing a tradition of the city's few
apartment towers becoming ownership
condominia later on. Also that year, Century Plaza (3225 N), originally built in 1974 as offices, had a complete exterior and interior
remodel as part of its conversion to condominiums. As reconstruction continued, two additional floors were started in 2007. Century plaza is now known as "One Lexington".
Steele Indian School Park opened in November 2001 on the site of the old
Phoenix Indian School five years after an intricate three-way land exchange involving the
Barron Collier Company and the
federal government. In Phoenix, Collier received a portion on the southwest corner of the site for long-term investment in addition to the Downtown block on which the
Collier Center was built. ==Gallery==