What it is
Downtown Chandler is a town square, which is rarer in Arizona than it sounds. Dr. Alexander J. Chandler, a Canadian veterinarian who had become the Territory’s first veterinary surgeon and then one of its biggest landowners, opened his townsite on May 16, 1912 with a park at the center and a hotel planned for its west side. The Hotel San Marcos opened there in November 1913, with the state’s first grass golf course behind it, and the square has been the middle of Chandler ever since.
Today Dr. A.J. Chandler Park sits on Arizona Avenue between Boston and Buffalo streets with the San Marcos still on San Marcos Place behind it, the 1,500-seat Chandler Center for the Arts a block north, and the blocks around filled in over the last twenty years with the things a square needs: SanTan Brewing’s brewpub, open since 2007, The Perch with its rooftop and its aviary of rescued parrots, a dozen restaurants, and The Ostrich, a speakeasy under the hotel. On Saturday mornings from October to May the park is a farmers market. In December it holds a Christmas tree made of tumbleweeds, as it has since 1957.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because it is the other East Valley main street, and the one with a hotel. Gilbert’s Heritage District, fifteen minutes east, has more restaurants and a louder crowd; Chandler has the history, the breweries and a 1913 lobby to drink in, and it is the better choice for a couple or for a night away without leaving the metro. Our breweries note is honest that Scottsdale is not the Valley’s beer town; this square is part of why.
The practical version
Thirty-five minutes from Old Town via the 101 and the 202. City garages and free street parking. Weekend evenings or Saturday mornings, October through April; December for the tree. Allow an evening, or a night at the hotel.
When to go
October through May is the season for everything on the square: the Saturday farmers market in the park from 9 to 1, the Third Thursday art and music nights from 5 to 9, and patio weather at the breweries. December adds the Tumbleweed Tree, lit early in the month in a ceremony the city has run since 1957; go on a weekend night after dark. Summer is for the San Marcos pool, the air-conditioned brewpubs and the Center for the Arts; the square itself is empty from noon to six.
The walk
- The San Marcos. Start in the 1913 lobby and the courtyard; the hotel is covered in its own guide.
- SanTan Brewing, 8 South San Marcos Place, the brewpub that started downtown’s beer row in 2007.
- The Perch, a pub and brewery with a courtyard patio, a rooftop bar and a collection of rescued exotic birds that is the most Chandler thing in Chandler.
- Arizona Avenue for dinner; the blocks between Boston and Chandler Boulevard have the restaurants, with new ones most years.
- The Ostrich, the speakeasy under the San Marcos, for the last drink; our speakeasies note covers its Scottsdale sibling, The Goose.
Culture
The Chandler Center for the Arts at 250 North Arizona Avenue is a 1,500-seat hall shared between the city and the school district, with a touring season of concerts, comedy and family shows. The Chandler Museum is free, but it is out by Chandler Fashion Center, not downtown; pair it with the mall rather than the square.
With kids
The park, the market, the birds at The Perch and the Center for the Arts’ family programming cover an afternoon. The Arizona Railway Museum, ten minutes south on Arizona Avenue, is the real kids’ outing, weekends only from September through May.
The story
Alexander Chandler came to the Territory as its first veterinary surgeon and left the job within a few years to do what everyone with capital in the Salt River Valley did, which was buy desert and irrigate it. By the time the Roosevelt Dam guaranteed the water in 1911 he held 18,000 acres south of Mesa, and he did something unusual with the middle of it: instead of selling farm lots along a road, he hired planners and laid out a town around a square, with a grand hotel to anchor it. The townsite office opened on May 16, 1912, lots sold that day, and the Hotel San Marcos, designed by the California architect Arthur Burnett Benton, opened in November 1913 to a crowd of 500 and the sitting vice president.
The square prospered on cotton, then nearly died with it. The 1920 cotton crash began the slide that cost Dr. Chandler the hotel to his creditors, the town incorporated that same year, and for most of the twentieth century downtown Chandler was the quiet center of a farm town known, if at all, for the ostrich farms that had raised plumes for ladies’ hats in the 1910s. The city’s two inventions from those years were the Tumbleweed Tree, first built in 1957 as a desert answer to a Christmas tree, and later the Ostrich Festival, the spring fair that has since moved out to Rawhide at Wild Horse Pass. The revival came in the 2000s: Intel’s plants made Chandler a tech city of a quarter million, the San Marcos was restored, SanTan Brewing opened on the square in 2007, and the restaurants and bars followed.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale and Chandler were founded a generation apart by men with the same idea, a town built to attract winter visitors to a resort hotel, and Chandler built the hotel first. The San Marcos opened in 1913; Scottsdale’s Ingleside Inn was earlier but was a ranch resort outside town, and the Jokake and Camelback inns came in the 1920s and 1930s. Chandler also received one of Scottsdale’s own landmarks: Rawhide, the Western town that stood on Scottsdale Road from 1971, moved to Wild Horse Pass on the Gila River Indian Community in 2005, and now hosts the Ostrich Festival. If you are a Scottsdale local who misses it, this is where it went.
Getting there
Loop 101 south from Old Town to its end at the Loop 202 interchange, 202 east to Arizona Avenue, then south about two miles to the square at Boston Street; thirty-five minutes with no traffic, fifty from North Scottsdale. Park in a city garage or on the street, which is free. The 101 backs up southbound on weekday afternoons, so a Friday-evening start before five is worth the early dinner. There is no rail here, and it is a car or rideshare trip; if you are staying the night at the San Marcos, the rideshare math changes in your favor.