Most cities wait until a neighborhood is about to be bulldozed before they call it historic. Scottsdale did something odder. In June 2005 it put two ordinary 1950s subdivisions on its historic register: one of tract houses by Ralph Haver and one of plain brick-trimmed ranches. Modern Phoenix, the Valley’s midcentury archive, calls the Haver tract “the first modern-styled neighborhood ever to be designated historic by any city in the Valley.” Two townhouse districts followed, along with a run of churches and commercial buildings.
All of it sits inside the old city, south of Shea and mostly south of Chaparral. You can see every district in a morning. All of them are also neighborhoods where people live, and that shapes how you should go about it.
The ground rules
- These are private homes. Look from public sidewalks and streets. Don’t walk up driveways or onto patio-ports, don’t photograph people, and don’t use the gates to the pools and clubhouses. In the townhouse districts those common areas belong to the homeowners’ associations.
- Go on a weekday morning. You’ll find quiet streets, low sun on the facades, and nobody trying to back out of a carport around you.
- Walk or bike rather than drive. A slow car circling a block twice looks like a burglar casing it.
- Start with the city’s own tour. The Historic Preservation Office’s “Drive Yourself Mod” map covers twelve stops in about 15 miles and takes roughly an hour by car. It’s on the city’s historic-zoning page (scottsdaleaz.gov/historic-zoning). This guide covers the residential half in more depth.
Town & Country Scottsdale (1958–60)
Where: southwest corner of 74th Street and Oak Street, between Oak and Monte Vista, 72nd Place to 74th Street. Listed on the Scottsdale register June 7, 2005 (Ordinance 3619).
There are 62 houses on one plat. The register says the site is about 12 acres; the city’s significance report says 15. Phoenix Title and Trust platted it in 1958. Builder Fred E. “Woody” Woodworth, whose name the city’s own report also spells “Woodward,” began selling in January 1959. Ralph Haver designed four Contemporary plans with two, three and four bedrooms that sold for $13,500 to $16,950, a little above the Scottsdale norm. It was the third subdivision Woodworth built from Haver plans.
What to look for:
- Low front-facing gables with tall walls of glass beneath them. This is the Haver signature.
- “Patio-ports.” These are carports designed to double as front patios, often with a screen wall or gate.
- Clinker brick. These lumpy, irregular bricks were used as wainscoting on some fronts. Modern Phoenix begs owners not to paint them.
- The fourth window. On some models the row of glass looks like it belongs to the living room, but the pane farthest from the patio-port is the bathroom window. Modern Phoenix says Woodworth liked the trick because it hid the bathroom.
The houses were cheap to build because they had three load-bearing walls instead of the usual four: two block exterior walls and one partition at the roof peak. The deed restrictions capped houses at one story and banned front-yard walls over 2½ feet, which is why the street still reads as open. When the city surveyed it, 84 percent of the homes still contributed to the district’s character. It reached the National Register in September 2009 by the city’s count; Modern Phoenix says 2010. Haver’s Coronado High School stood across the diagonal. The school is covered in our lost midcentury Scottsdale note.
Village Grove 1–6 (1957–59)
Where: south and west of Oak Street and 68th Street, between Oak and Almeria Road, from the canal at 66th Street to 69th Street. Listed June 7, 2005 (Ordinance 3620). National Register May 2010.
This is the other half of that 2005 pair, and it’s the more ordinary one, which is the point of it. Allied Construction Company built 255 houses on six plats across 72 acres. The streets west of 68th run on a grid and the ones east of it curve. Allied ran the most aggressive ad campaign of any Scottsdale builder of the decade, with an ad every Sunday in the Arizona Republic. It kept the first plat to seventeen lots so it would sell out fast, and it sold out in one weekend. Prices went from $12,750 to $13,250 within six months, and then to $13,500 when the third phase enlarged the plan from 1,732 square feet to almost 1,800.
What to look for:
- Hip roofs, Superlite block and steel casement windows. These are Simple and California Ranch styles, the two most common in 1950s Scottsdale.
- Bands of brick, board-and-batten and squeezed mortar joints across the lower fronts. Allied added them to make the houses look longer and lower.
- Citrus trees. Buyers could choose a lot with the old grove trees left standing or a “clear cut” lot, and some of the trees are still there.
In the survey, 92 percent of the homes still contributed, the highest share of any large 1950s tract in the city. One footnote the city’s report preserves: in 1959 Allied ran a Christmas lighting contest for residents, with prizes donated by Papago Plaza merchants, and Mayor Mort Kimsey helped judge it. For the wider postwar story of this part of town, see South Scottsdale.
Villa Monterey Units 1–7 (1961–69)
Where: east and west of Miller Road, north and south of Chaparral Road. Listed June 7, 2011 (Ordinance 3944).
This is the biggest district and the most charming one. It has 758 homes and thirteen common tracts on about 115 acres, making it the largest historic townhome complex in the city. Dave Friedman built it through his company, Butler Homes. He was a Philadelphia builder who came to Arizona with asthma, expecting to retire. He went back to work instead, bought about 100 acres north of Camelback and the Arizona Canal with a wash running through them, and then traveled to Carmel and the Monterey peninsula. He came home with the idea of a “casita colony,” which he defined as “small houses built together.” Unit 1 went up in 1961 and sold 180 houses in six months. The city’s report calls it “purported to be the first successful townhome project in Arizona.”
The sources disagree on a few points, and we’ll show both sides:
- Architect. The register credits Ralph Haver and Associates, and the city’s 2021 preservation plan for the Kimsey Building says Friedman “called upon Haver once again to design Villa Monterey in 1961.” The city’s driving tour credits only Friedman, and the significance report names no architect.
- Dates. The register says 1961–69, the driving tour says 1961–67, and the Kimsey plan says 1961–73 across nine phases, seven of them designated.
- Who it was for. The driving tour calls Villa Monterey “a very large age-restricted townhouse development.” The significance report says Friedman pitched it both to buyers in “the earlier interim or transient stages of life” and to people later in life who wanted to “jet around the world” without worrying about the house. The original deed restrictions at the Maricopa County Recorder would settle the question. We haven’t seen them.
What to look for:
- A different costume on every front. Buyers chose among Spanish Colonial, Territorial, Mission, Monterey, Mediterranean and Pueblo facades applied to the same block boxes.
- Parapets, ornamental block, applied vigas and canales, medallions, inset tile and wrought iron. The city’s tour says ironwork shows up more in the later units along Chaparral.
- Trees. Friedman was warned that trees wouldn’t grow there. He planted parkways, citrus and pecans anyway, and they did.
Each plat got its own pool, clubhouse and ramada. These are gated, private and not for visitors. A golf course went in on the wash spillway. It is now Camelback Park, the public piece of Villa Monterey you can actually walk around in. Only seven houses, under 1 percent, failed the integrity survey, a figure the city calls rare for midcentury neighborhoods. The homeowners started the process themselves: they first approached the Historic Preservation Commission in March 2007.
Sands North Townhouses (1972)
Where: 7233 E. Joshua Tree Lane, off Scottsdale Road. That’s the city’s address; a Scottsdale Historical Society listing gives 7322. Listed October 1, 2019 (Ordinance 4426). National Register September 2022.
This is the youngest district and the most modern one: 51 townhouses around a clubhouse and pool that you see straight down the entry drive. The builder was Emron Thomas “E.T.” Wright, born in 1917 in Cedar City, Utah, and raised in Casa Grande. He left the lumber business in 1956 to build houses and put the “Sands” name on several projects, including Sands East I and II in 1969 and Sands Scottsdale One in 1974. He lived at Sands North until he died in 2001. (He has no connection to Frank Lloyd Wright.)
What to look for:
- A strict palette. Off-white stucco, beams painted dark brown, and steel gates and screens painted black in simple geometric patterns.
- Exposed beams and rafters, colonnaded entry walks, and courtyards lit by roof openings. Five basic plans repeat, plus two one-offs: the clubhouse and one house.
- The Scottsdale Road frontage, with its line of trees and tightly trimmed hedges.
The preservation plan notes that the community isn’t gated and its private drives are open to the public. Keep it that way by being the quietest person on the street.
Royale Gardens Townhouses (not listed)
Where: North 72nd Way, south of Rancho Vista Drive.
This one isn’t on the register. The city’s tour says the commission considers it “an excellent candidate.” Dell Trailor built 44 homes of about 2,000 square feet each. They face a landscaped median on a two-block private cul-de-sac, with parking off the rear alley and a pool and bathhouse at the south end. The bathhouse has a scalloped thin-shell concrete roof, which is the reason to come. The entry-wall lamps show up on other Trailor projects.
The credits are uncertain. The city dates it to 1970 and says the two house designs came from “two different unknown architects.” Wikipedia’s list of Ralph Haver’s works dates it to 1968 and credits Haver. Neither Modern Phoenix’s Haver chronology nor the Haver list in the city’s 2021 Kimsey plan includes it. Look from the entry, and don’t drive in.
Adobe Apartments (1949 or 1953)
Where: 7037–7041 E. 1st Avenue. Listed July 1, 2002 (Ordinance 3455).
It’s small, easy to miss, and walkable from Old Town: six adobe-brick buildings in a U around a garden court, laid out like a postwar motor court, with the old carports enclosed between them. Dr. Phil Schneider built it. (The city’s own report calls him “Paul” once.) Schneider also built Bimbo’s, the town’s first drive-in, and the first bowling alley, and he co-developed the center that held the first Goldwater’s. The register gives the construction date as 1949 and the significance report gives 1953. When it was listed, the units held small offices. It is the opening chapter of our garden apartments note.
The rest of the register
Single buildings, all within a short drive of the districts:
- Hotel Valley Ho (1956, Edward L. Varney), listed 2002.
- Craftsman Court (1955, T.S. Montgomery), listed 2002.
- Sugar Bowl (1950 building) and Pink Pony (1954 building), both listed 2004.
- Glass & Garden Community Church, Holy Cross Lutheran and First Church of Christ, Scientist, all listed June 18, 2013. See Scottsdale’s midcentury churches.
- Kimsey Building (Ralph Haver; the register says 1963), listed 2021.
- City Hall (1968, Bennie Gonzales), listed June 13, 2023. It’s part of the Civic Center.
The city also lists Taliesin West, the Kerr Cultural Center and a few earlier buildings. For those, see the Frank Lloyd Wright note.
What the register doesn’t cover yet
Two gaps stand out. First, the city’s townhouse study, finished around 2009, looked at 5,871 townhouses in fifty-six complexes and picked six as the best examples. Villa Monterey and Sands North are listed, Royale Gardens is waiting, and the other three aren’t named in the reports we read. Second, the garden apartments south of the Valley Ho were recommended as a district years ago and still aren’t on the register. The 2023 version of the register had no garden-apartment listing.
The National Register nominations for Town & Country, Village Grove and Sands North would add plan drawings and period photographs. They are held by the National Park Service and the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office. The original sales ads ran in the Arizona Republic and the Scottsdale Progress between 1957 and 1961, and the Scottsdale Room at the Civic Center Library has the Progress on microfilm.
A morning loop
- Village Grove at 68th Street and Oak. Walk the curving streets east of 68th.
- Town & Country, less than a mile east at 74th Street and Oak. Count the clinker-brick houses.
- Adobe Apartments on First Avenue. Have coffee in Old Town.
- Villa Monterey along Miller and Chaparral, then walk the old fairways at Camelback Park.
- Royale Gardens and Sands North, off Scottsdale Road north of Camelback, last, while the light still hits the white stucco.
By bike the loop is a good half day. If you drive, park and walk at each stop.