What it’s actually like
Most of Old Town sells the Western look ready-made. American Leather Company sells the one piece of it that has to fit. The shop sits on the north side of First Avenue at 7236, next door to Cien Agaves, and its business is belts. The straps come in leathers that would stock a small zoo: alligator, crocodile, ostrich, python, lizard, stingray, American bison, bullhide, Italian calf. The buckles are in the case. You pick a strap and a buckle, and the belt is measured and cut to your waist in the shop.
That is a rarer service than it sounds. A belt off a department-store hook is sized by number. A belt from a shop like this is sized from the buckle end to the hole you actually use, and the shop’s own fit guide is careful about the details that ruin a purchase, such as matching the buckle to the width of the strap’s end rather than its body. The belts use screw fasteners rather than rivets, so the buckle you buy today can come off for a different one next year.
The shop says it has spent thirty years on East First Avenue. It doesn’t publish a founding year, and its older about page counts “more than 25 years” in Scottsdale, so the honest summary is that it has been on this block since the mid-1990s at the latest. That makes it one of the longer-running tenants on a street that has turned over almost entirely to restaurants and bars.
What to buy
A belt cut to fit. The reason to come. Start with the leather, then let the staff measure you. Bison and bullhide are the hard-wearing everyday choices; ostrich, lizard and alligator are the dress ones.
An inlaid buckle. The shop sells buckles set with turquoise, oyster shell and coral alongside plain sterling, gold-plated, two-tone and brass designs. A stone-inlaid buckle on a dark strap is the most Arizona thing in the room.
A ranger set. The multi-piece buckle sets (buckle, keeper and tip) come in four widths, and they are what turns a good strap into a Western belt.
Wallets and small leather. Wallets in manta ray, crocodile, snake and ostrich are the gift that fits in a carry-on.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
First Avenue between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue has a little time-limited street parking, and it is usually full in the evening. The free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is a flat five-minute walk; the Old Town on foot note maps the loop and the Old Town guide covers the wider district. If you’re coming for a fitting, come in daylight. The block gets crowded once the restaurants fill.
Come prepared. Wear the trousers you plan to wear the belt with, or bring a belt that already fits, so the measurement is right the first time. If you’ve got a buckle you love, bring that too. The shop is set up to build a belt around it.
Plan online if you like. The shop’s website has a sizing guide and a 3D belt builder, so you can try out strap and buckle combinations before you go. The site doesn’t post store hours. Check the shop’s Instagram, @americanleatheroldtown, or call before a special trip, especially in summer.
High season, January through April, brings the snowbirds and spring-training crowds, and February’s Parada del Sol sends the parade past the end of the block. A fitted belt is a sensible thing to buy before a weekend of Western bars.
Eat while you’re there
You won’t have to go far. Cien Agaves next door does scratch-made tacos and a hundred-plus agave list, Pattie’s First Avenue Lounge a few doors west is the honest dive, and Hula’s Modern Tiki across the street pours mai tais under roll-up glass walls. The Sugar Bowl at the corner of Scottsdale Road has been the sundae stop since 1958.
How it got here
The block American Leather sits on has a better story than most of Old Town, and almost nobody walking it knows it. Around 1918, First Avenue was where Akimel O’odham farmers from the Salt River community tied their wagons when they came to town to trade, and the row became known as Pima Plaza. In 1952, a year after Scottsdale incorporated, nine local businessmen planned both sides of the block between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue as one “dignified Western” shopping square. That story is told on our Pima Plaza and the Westernaire Shops page. The north side’s owners, Bob Herberger, Tom Darlington, Dan Norton, James Beattie and K.T. Palmer, joined the south side’s in setting buildings back for covered walks, putting out hitching posts, and turning the middle of the street into parking. The Town Council fought that last idea for months.
The north side began with the Ranch House Shops of 1950 at the Scottsdale Road corner, which opened with eight shops including Goldwaters. The Klevan, or Artco-Western Park, Building went up at the Brown Avenue corner. By 2004, the city’s historic context notes, both had been remodeled from their early Western look with Southwestern features and materials. We haven’t confirmed which of the north-side buildings 7236 belongs to, so we won’t say.
What we can say is what the block became. Through the 1980s and 1990s, downtown’s Western blocks sold the West to winter visitors as turquoise, boots, hats and leather, and First Avenue had its share. American Leather, by its own count, arrived about thirty years ago and stayed. The tenants around it didn’t. Pattie’s has poured drinks a few doors west since 1992, Cien Agaves arrived next door in 2007, and the street’s evening trade went from browsing to dining.
A belt shop survives that kind of change by doing something a restaurant crowd can’t get elsewhere. Here, that means cutting a strap to fit and fitting it with a buckle you chose, in an exotic leather you can see and handle before buying. The street now draws its crowds for dinner and drinks, and that service is a good part of why the shop is still open among them.