Phoenix Vacation

For a bit of milling around shops and people watching, you can hardly do better than taking either a Red (R) or a Yellow (Y) public bus, and coming to the Heritage Square. The name, again, is revealing. The city of Phoenix was created in the year 1870, but surprising little remains of its 19th century past – and the only place where I could discover them was the heritage Square, carrying some of the few remaining 19th-century houses in Phoenix (all Victorian in style and all on the National Register of Historic Places) and the original Phoenix town site. Today these buildings are not, of course, residential, but they house museums, restaurants, and gift shops instead. Here is what to expect:

The Eastlake Victorian Rosson House: you can view late 19th-century antiques when touring the building.

The Silva House, a neoclassical, revival-style home, houses historical exhibits on turn-of-the-century life in the Valley of the Sun.

The Stevens-Haustgen House is now a gift shop, with both postcards and more rare, expensive items of local art.

The Stevens House houses the Arizona Doll and Toy Museum. Especially interesting is the 1912 schoolroom display in which the children are all represented by antique dolls. It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm, and on Sundays from noon till 4pm. Closed in August.

The Burgess Carriage House is another gift shop and ticket window for the Rosson House tours.

T The Teeter House, an 1897 mule barn, as well as the old Baird Machine Shop now house various eateries.

Universities rarely have such excellent art museums that they open to the public free of charge. The Arizona State University in Phoenix is such an institution, which has a museum memorable for its innovative architecture and famous for its temporary exhibitions. The museum is not very large (we are not quite in the Louvre league here, to be clear), but there are special galleries for crafts, prints, contemporary art, Latin American art, a temporary exhibition gallery, as well as two outdoor sculpture courts. The building itself is far from being uninteresting: it is surprisingly stark and angular, with vivid, sunset-like colors matched with gray on the façade. The museum’s entrance is down a flight of stairs that lead to a cool underground garden area. For the American art, you can count on the following:

- Georgia O'Keeffe, who was one of the foremost painters in 20th-century American art. Among the works, you can see are enlarged views of skulls and other animal bones, flowers and plant organs, shells, rocks, mountains, and other natural forms.
- Edward Hopper, 20th-century painter who specialized in everyday urban scenes. Although the museum has no major works of his (these are mostly in New York and Chicago), it gives a good outline of his style.
- Frederic Remington, the late 19th-century American artist famous for his realistic portrayals of life in the American West, complete with little details that indeed make a work of art realistic.

The museum is house in the Nelson Fine Arts Center, at the crossroads between 10th St. and Mill Ave., Tempe. You can visit it on Tuesdays from 10am to 9pm, Wednesday through Saturday from 10am till 5pm, and on Sundays from 1pm till 5pm. Closed on Mondays and for major national and state holidays.