When the Hotel Valley Ho opened in 1956, it brought a neighborhood with it. On the blocks directly south of the hotel, builders put up small apartment complexes with resort names (Day-O, Shalimar Sands, Capri, Granada, Fontainebleau, Americana, Loloma Vista, Embassy) and rented them by the season to winter visitors who wanted some of the Valley Ho’s life. Most of them are still there: two-story blocks around a pool, a steel stair, a metal sign with the complex name. Nobody has documented them complex by complex, and the city has never designated them. This note is a start.
What a garden apartment is
The city’s Postwar Multifamily Housing Survey, written by Debbie Abele and Liz Wilson, gives the definition: walk-up buildings of one or two stories, set around shared open space for walkways, lawns, trees and recreation. Each unit sits on a single level, and on two-story buildings the units are stacked. Nationally, it was the most popular apartment type of the first twenty years after the war.
Scottsdale’s versions were fancier than the Valley average, and the survey has the numbers to show it. Much of it comes from a 1964 market study by the Real Estate Research Corporation.
- Furnished and seasonal. Almost 60 percent of the city’s postwar apartments were available as seasonal rentals. About 55 percent of the year-round units came furnished as well.
- Resort amenities. More than a quarter of the complexes offered maid service, and most had a pool. The courtyards got barbecues, shuffleboard and putting greens.
- The highest rents in the Valley. By the mid-1960s the median rent on a furnished unit was nearly 30 percent above the metro figure.
- Bigger buildings. Across the Valley the duplex was the most common multifamily type. In Scottsdale more than half of postwar apartments sat in buildings of five or more units.
- The U plan. Nearly three-quarters of Scottsdale’s garden apartments put their buildings in a U around a courtyard. When the open side faced the street, the courtyard was usually closed off with a wall of decorative block.
Block was the material for more than 90 percent of the complexes. That was mostly Superlite block from Phoenix; by the early 1960s Superlite was one of the biggest block makers in the country. Builders stacked ornamental block into shadow walls and open block into screens.
The Valley Ho district
The survey recorded 101 postwar apartment projects across Scottsdale, built between 1948 and 1964, and recommended 38 as eligible for the National Register. Seventeen were in what it called the Valley Ho survey area, south of the hotel. Fifteen of those contributed to a proposed Valley Ho Resort Apartment District, and two were knocked out because their block had been covered in stucco. The survey called the district “one of the best collections of upscale, garden apartments in the Phoenix Metropolitan area.” It said the complexes were marketed specifically to the seasonal winter tourist.
The fifteen contributing complexes, under the names the survey used:
White Feather · Jacaranda · Granada · Dayo · Americana · Azura East · Loloma Vista · Fountain Terrace · Savoy Plaza · Shalimar Sands · Capri · Fountaineblue · Carmelo · Embassy · Park Paradise
Modern Phoenix’s photo survey of the same blocks uses current signage, so a few names differ. It adds El Dorado, Valle Vista, Parc Scottsdale, Scottsdale Palms and a building it calls the Lounge, and spells the French one “Fontainebleau.” Names drift over the decades, and more than 20 percent of the city’s postwar complexes have been replatted as condominiums. The County Assessor’s parcel records would match each old name to its current one, along with a build year. That’s the first job for anyone who wants to finish this list.
What to look for
Walk the blocks south of the Valley Ho on a weekday morning:
- The entry. The survey says developers sold these complexes on a “dramatic entry”: a metal sign with the complex name, theme art, a fountain, decorative block or a shaped canopy. The signs are the best part. One survey postcard shows the Jacaranda’s Western theme art; another shows the Valley Ho with the Jacaranda and White Feather behind it.
- Steel stairs and railings. Modern Phoenix calls the “unique steel staircases” a signature, and the survey notes the decorative stair and balcony railings.
- Textile and screen block. Look for patterned block walls that shield a pool courtyard from the street.
- The Embassy’s glazed brick. The survey singles it out as the only complex in the district built with tan glazed brick.
- Tropical planting. Lush landscaping around the pool. Modern Phoenix says Scottsdale Palms “truly puts the garden in Garden Apartments.”
- Stucco. Where the block has been covered over, the building has lost the thing that made it worth listing. You’ll learn to see it fast.
People live here, so stay on the sidewalk. Don’t walk into courtyards or through pool gates, and keep your camera on signs and facades, not windows.
Day-O is the one complex with a known architect. Modern Phoenix credits it to Al Beadle, who designed the nearby Safari Hotel. Our Beadle page dates it to 1958 and puts it on East Second Street near 68th Street. Every other complex in the district is a design question waiting for a building permit to answer it. Pull permits by address through the city’s eServices document viewer (EDM).
The precursor: Adobe Apartments
A few blocks east, at 7037–7041 E. 1st Avenue, the Adobe Apartments show what came before. There are six small adobe-brick buildings in a U around a garden. Carports linked them, the way they did at a motor court, and those carports have since been enclosed. Dr. Phil Schneider built them. He also built Bimbo’s, the town’s first drive-in. The city’s report calls the complex one of the first rental developments downtown, put up for the postwar wave of seasonal and year-round residents.
The dates conflict: the register says 1949, the city’s significance report says 1953. The complex went on the register in July 2002, and at the time it held small offices. Compare it with the Valley Ho blocks: same courtyard idea, same seasonal market, but here it’s dressed in frontier adobe instead of modern block.
The rest of the city’s list
The Valley Ho blocks are the densest cluster, but the survey flagged others worth a detour. Some carry only survey site numbers, not names:
- Alhambra Terrace. The survey calls it one of the best two-story International Style complexes in postwar Scottsdale.
- Scottsdale Condos. It has undulating building forms and the first elevators in any postwar Scottsdale apartment complex.
- Regal Arms, at Miller and Osborn. It’s a “Character Ranch” complex built around a castle theme, and at survey time the courtyard wall had crenellated battlements.
- Palm Lane. The survey says its tree-lined streets are the city’s best multifamily landscape.
- Scottsdale East. Its buildings sit in a pinwheel arrangement.
- Oasis Plaza. Rows of identical single-story fourplexes, each complex set apart by how its facade materials are arranged.
Why it isn’t protected
Modern Phoenix reported that the Historic Preservation Commission was studying a historic overlay for the district. If adopted, it would have been the first garden-apartment overlay of its kind. We found no sign that it was ever adopted. The Scottsdale Historic Register, last updated in August 2023, lists no garden-apartment district, and the only apartment complex on it is the Adobe Apartments.
Meanwhile the old district sits between Old Town and the Valley Ho, where redevelopment pressure never lets up. If you want to know where the effort stalled, read the commission’s minutes from the years after the survey. The City Clerk keeps them. Until then, walk the blocks while the signs are still up.
See also the historic districts field guide and lost midcentury Scottsdale.