Preservation in Scottsdale is a recent habit. The city made its first historic register listings in 2000, and its first postwar ones, including the Hotel Valley Ho, came in 2002. By then a good share of the town’s best postwar buildings were gone. They weren’t lost to disaster. Mostly they came down because they were in the way of something bigger, newer or more profitable.
This list is short because the sources are thin. Every building on it is documented as built and as demolished. We’ve left off anything we could only half confirm. If you have photographs of any of these, the Scottsdale Room at the Civic Center Library and the Scottsdale Historical Society both collect them.
The Safari Hotel (1956–1999)
Start with the famous one. Al Beadle’s Safari Hotel opened on Scottsdale Road in November 1956, a few weeks before the Valley Ho, and grew through expansions in 1957 and 1959. It was demolished in 1999. The city’s own driving tour mentions it, a little ruefully, right after the Valley Ho: “A similar vintage hotel in Scottsdale by Al Beadle called the Safari Hotel was demolished.” Losing the Safari is a large part of why the Valley Ho fight went the other way.
Los Arcos Methodist Church (1966–2012)
This was the most striking building on the list. In autumn 1966 the Methodists put up a white, twelve-sided thin-shell concrete church at 7425 E. Culver Street, with arches all around the edge. It stood just east of the Los Arcos Mall, and its motto, “Church in the Marketplace,” was a nod to its neighbor.
The architect and engineer were the same team that did St. Maria Goretti. Modern Phoenix’s Walt Lockley traced the shape to Félix Candela’s Mexican shells. He also found the interior oddly cave-like: “like a theme restaurant, or a sophisticated mud hut.”
The mall closed in 1999 and became SkySong. The church closed too and was demolished in 2012 for housing. Its surviving sibling is St. Maria Goretti on Granite Reef. See Scottsdale’s midcentury churches.
Coronado High School (1960; mostly razed 2006–07)
Ralph Haver and Jimmie Nunn’s high school had a folded-plate roof on precast Y-shaped columns. You could pick it out from a long way off. Cast-concrete hyperbolic paraboloids were lifted into place as shade parasols.
Modern Phoenix has a story about the opening. The school had to open in September before the sidewalks were poured. Haver suggested letting the students walk wherever they liked, and then paved the paths they wore.
Most of the campus came down in 2006 or 2007; sources give both years. The district was rebuilding schools across the system. The losses weren’t total:
- Modern Phoenix says the waffle-roofed auditorium survives.
- The roofline and the student mural were “preserved to some extent.”
- Haver’s Town & Country houses still face the campus across the diagonal.
First Federal Savings & Loan (1963)
This was a Haver & Nunn bank near today’s Fashion Square. It won an NSID award for excellence of design and an AIA Award of Merit, and it was demolished. We haven’t found the year it came down. A permit search by address in the city’s eServices document viewer (EDM) would date it, if we knew the address. A 1963 Scottsdale Progress would give us that.
Kaibab and Hohokam elementary schools
Haver designed both. Kaibab Elementary won an AIA regional design award and is gone. The city’s 2021 Kimsey Building plan and Modern Phoenix date it to 1957; Wikipedia says 1962. Hohokam Elementary (1959) is “mostly demolished” according to the city plan and “partially demolished” according to Modern Phoenix. Scottsdale Unified’s facilities records would say what’s original.
Polynesian Plaza and the Polynesian Dairy Queen (1964)
Haver & Nunn designed Polynesian Plaza and the Polynesian Dairy Queen that stood in it. This was the same Polynesian craze that brought Trader Vic’s to Fifth Avenue in 1962. The plaza was razed. The city’s 2021 Kimsey plan said the Dairy Queen was demolished “but may be reconstructed.” We found no sign that it was. If you know otherwise, tell us.
Los Arcos Mall (1969–1999)
Scottsdale’s first enclosed mall closed in 1999 and was demolished. After a long fight over a proposed arena, the site became ASU’s SkySong in 2008. It’s on the list for its role in the Los Arcos church story, and because a generation of south Scottsdale grew up inside it. The Los Arcos Mall page has the full history.
Close calls and quiet losses
Some buildings are still standing, but only just, or with pieces missing:
- Hotel Valley Ho. It spent decades under Ramada beige before its 2005 restoration. The city listed it in 2002, while it was for sale. The city’s tour says it was lucky: the buyer wanted to save it.
- The Kimsey Building. The city’s older driving tour said “fortunately the property has not been the target for redevelopment.” Then it was. It is being kept as part of a new apartment and hotel project, and everything around it is changing.
- Craftsman Court. According to the city’s tour, the large stained-glass panels in the rear building have been removed. The tile panels remain.
- Motorola’s Government Electronics Division on McDowell. The city’s tour calls it the best intact Garden Industrial building in Scottsdale, “if not the state.” It also notes that the broad lawn in front was replaced with desert landscaping, “taking away visually from the broad lawn in front of a long horizontal building.”
- The garden apartments south of the Valley Ho. A city survey recommended them as a district. They’re still unprotected, and two of the seventeen had already lost their block under stucco when the survey was done. See the garden apartments note.
- Royale Gardens Townhouses. The Historic Preservation Commission calls it “an excellent candidate” for the register. It hasn’t been listed.
Where the rest of the story is
This list is surely incomplete. Two city sources would show what else came down between 1945 and 1975, which period buildings were listed, and which were lost:
- The 2010 places-of-worship survey. It covers 28 churches still standing in 2010. Checking it against period city directories would show which churches had already disappeared.
- The postwar multifamily survey. It covers 101 apartment complexes.
The Historic Preservation Office holds the survey forms for both. The Scottsdale Progress on microfilm at the Scottsdale Room records the openings. The demolitions usually got a smaller story, if they got one at all.
What’s still standing is in our historic districts field guide and Ralph Haver’s Scottsdale.