Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history and memorials. This month, Donna tells us about some of the distinct mid-century modern high rise condos that started popping up downtown and uptown in Phoenix in the 1960’s.
It was the early 1960s in Phoenix when two apartment buildings, both designed by the same architectural firm, became reality.
Phoenix Towers, opening in 1957, was the first high rise residential building (fourteen stories) in Phoenix and built outside of downtown. The lack of additional high-rise residential buildings in Phoenix for the next five years or so appears to stem from politics and apparent disinterest in high rise apartments by Phoenicians.
Chopas and Starkovich, a Phoenix firm, was commissioned to design the Embassy Square Apartments for Green Valley Investments, Inc., and the Monarch Apartments for R. C. Crabbe. They set to work to create two distinctive buildings.
The Embassy Square is an eleven-story structure on the northeast corner of 4th Avenue and McKinley Street. A conceptual drawing was printed in the Arizona Republic in July 1962, but it was not until November 1963, that ground was broken for this complex. Whether it was height issues that slowed the process, all of the Embassy Square’s neighbors at the time were no more than two-stories high, is not clear. Or it could have been financing problems.
Nevertheless, opening in September 1964, the 80 apartments, most were one-bedroom, came furnished or unfurnished and one could rent by the day, week, or month. Imagine, ads indicate that it was possible to have hotel service for your apartment including maid service for a mere $12.50 a day in 1965! Every apartment had a balcony and the building also had three penthouses. But the most unusual feature was the pool/recreation area construction on the third floor over the main entrance.
The Monarch Apartments now known as the Olympus, on the northwest corner of Maryland Avenue and Central Avenue, were listed as condominiums. This three-building complex ranged in height from two-stories to four-stories.
Breaking ground in August 1963, the Monarch Apartments, so named as R.C. Crabbe was the owner of Monarch Tile Company, consisted of 36 luxury apartments. One ad claimed “The Monarch was not created for temporary living…but for those few who demand quality…and wish to live at an address of distinction permanently.” Like the Embassy Square, every unit had a balcony, there was a pool, and the complex also boasted having four large penthouses on the top of the two three-story sections.
The Regency on Central Avenue and East Hoover was the “last” of the residential high-rises in the 1960s. Recessions, building busts, and a continued lack of interest in this type of living created a lull in Phoenix residential high-rise construction until the 1990s, and now we all know that a large construction crane especially downtown probably means another residential tower.
Even though most of you probably have not heard of Robert Starkovich, he does have an unusual claim to local fame. He was the associate architect with Petroff & Jones out of New York City in the design of BIG SURF.
