|
|
Tucson
The Santa Cruz Valley was
originally settled by Spaniards as part of a system of missiones and
visitas under Padre Kino in the early 1700s. In 1744 and 1747 the Spanish
king approved advancement of the military frontier to the Gila River in response
to the threat of French expansion westward from the Gulf of Mexico, and
presidios were established in the Alta Pimerfa. The presidio at Tubac was
one of these, situated some thirty miles south of the present-day site of
Tucson. It had a combined military and civilian population of about 500 in the
1760s. In 1772 instructions were received from the viceroy to relocate the
presidio to Tucson; it is a reflection of the scarcity of funds and personnel
that this was not accomplished until 1776, and further, that the presidio walls
were not completed until 1782. The presidio was approximately three hundred
years on a side, bounded by twelve-foot-high adobe walls three feet thick at the
base. it had a single gate centered on the west side, around which the first
civilian settlement grew up. The interior of the presidio was split by a row of
buildings into two plazas, with military stores and quarters built along the
outer walls. This pattern was maintained after the wafls came down. In 1791, in
an effort to induce further settlement of the area, the governor of the
Provincias Internas set aside four square leagues around each presidio for
civilian settlement (Mattison 1946:281). In fact, this had little impact outside
of the area immediately around the presidio; like the Rio Grande settlements,
the outlying Santa Cruz and San Pedro ranches were subject to frequent attacks
by Apache Indians, and there was thus little incentive to settle beyond the
safety of the presidio.
In 1821, Tucson had a population
of about 1,100 persons, approximately 500 of whom were Spaniards (Sonnichsen
1982:26). They occupied an area of less than two square miles and were engaged
primarily in subsistence agriculture and stock raising. In his narrative history
of Tucson, C. L. Sonnichsen describes the town in the following way:
At the end of the Spanish
period, just before the revolution of 1821, Tucson was a moderately prosperous
village in which Spaniards and Indians lived side by side, but the native
population was slowly giving way to Hispanics and mixed-bloods. Retired
soldiers were occupying fields which once belonged to the Papagos, though they
were not allowed to take possession of the lands controlled by the mission.
Other Spaniards had come up from the south in response to the settlement law
of 1791. . . . There was trouble between mission Indians and settlers, giving
a preview of problems that were to plague the community for many years to
come. (Sonnichsen 1982:27)
During the three decades of
Mexican administration, Tucson experienced a general decline–the economy was
disrupted by Apache raids, the mission was weakened by secularization in 1828,
and the Indian population was reduced by disease and a declining birthrate.
The first Americans who came to
Tucson during this period were trappers looking for beaver along the Gila and
Santa Cruz rivers in the 1820s. The "Mexican War" in 1846 brought U.S. soldiers
to the area, and when the Gadsden Purchase was finalized in 1854 U.S. troops
took charge of the garrison, bringing with them Anglo settlers who could make a
living serving the military's needs.
Sonnichsen describes the period
from the mid 1850s through the American Civil War as "the great transition" in
Tucson's history: a transition related to developing communication and
transportation linkages to the rest of the United States. The first mail routes
became dependable at the end of the 1850s, the regular arrival and departure of
stagecoaches (at 1:30 P.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays for westbound mail and
passengers, and at 3:00 A.M. on Wednesdays and Saturdays for eastbound coaches)
imparted a new rhythm to the town's life, where contact with the outside world
had been limited to infrequent and intermittent military and
government-controlled commercial expeditions (Sonnichsen 1982:43).
Stagecoaches were followed by
wagon trains as the number of California immigrants choosing to take the
southern route through Tucson rose. This was a period of economic growth for the
town; the mines in the region became active again, and there was an increase in
the number of military and Indian Agency personnel whose needs generated a
corresponding increase in trade. The population doubled between 1850 and
1860–the census of the latter year counted 623. By 1858 there were three general
stores, two butcher shops, and two blacksmiths; 1859 saw the first saloons, and
a gristmill on the Santa Cruz; and by 1869 there was even a brewery and beer
garden established by a German immigrant (Sonnichsen 1982:59).
The business center of Tucson
was Calle de Correo, renamed Pearl Street in the Anglo Territorial period. The
original name indicates the location of the post office; opposite that was the
Buckley House complex, which provided accommodations for travelers and horses,
as well as storage for merchandise prior to sale. Contiguous with the Buckley
House complex was Pacheco's blacksmith shop and residence. The courtyard complex
occupied on one side by the post office contained a store on the side fronting
Calle Real, later Main Street (Sonnichsen 1982:43).
The irregular pattern of
this settlement derives in part from Tucson's origin as a presidio, which
occupied the approximate square containing the Plaza Militar and Plaza de las
Armas in Fergusson's 1862 map
(fig.22). The civilian
community established itself just outside the main gate, within a bend in the
acequia serving the presidio. This growth was not governed by the Laws of
the Indies; lacking a plaza as a generator of form, buildings grew along
established routes of travel between the presidio, the river, and the mission.
The initial southerly offset (with respect to the gate) began a pattern of
development that shifted southward around the edge of the old presidio, between
its plaza and the Plaza de la Mesilla. Analysis of the 1883 Sanborn map shows
the greatest density centered around Pennington and Congress and around Main and
Meyer streets.
The Sanborn map of 1883 also
shows that the initial business area west of the presidio gate underwent a
cultural "replacement" process as well as a physical one: the uses indicated on
the Sanborn map are "Chinese Laundry," "Chinese Opium Den," and "Chinese
Grocery." There had been Chinese in Tucson since the 1860s; when the railroad
was completed in 1880, a group settled in this part of town and had developed
more than one hundred acres of truck gardens along the Santa Cruz floodplain by
1884. Pacheco's blacksmith shop was altered by the addition of a new row of
rooms behind the first, to accommodate the "lodging house" for Park Brewery,
part of the new "entertainment district" west of the acequia.
Tucson was incorporated as a
town in 1874, occupying two complete sections; streets and blocks were laid out
parallel to the section lines, and the street numbers began on the eastern
section line–rather than at the center of town–an indication of the power of the
survey grid as a tool to rationalize the landscape.
The 1870s saw the first public
school, and as a consequence, a first small influx of unmarried Anglo women. Up
until this time Anglo merchants often married Hispanic women, thereby assuring
cultural assimilation, and in the case of those who married into wealthy
families, access to the important social and economic network. The availability
of Anglo women in the community marked the beginning of an important cultural
shift. Sonnichsen notes that intermarriage became less frequent throughout the
1870s and 1880s and that newspaper accounts of social events contained fewer and
fewer Hispanic names (Sonnichsen 1982: 88). Although a cause-and-effect
relationship would be difficult to document, one can speculate that these Anglo
women began to transform their environment at the smaller scale levels.
Certainly their attitudes are well known through the diaries they kept (Susan
Magoffin's diary of her travels and time in Santa Fe during the 1840s is the
best-known example). The adobe house with its dirt floors, whitewashed walls,
and dirt roof, which needed constant attention to maintain, seemed primitive to
Anglo women used to raised wood floors, glass windows, and painted or papered
walls. Beginning with their inundated environment, the house interior,
transformations occurred at the detail level–rooms were filled with furniture
brought by wagon from the East or Midwest, glass windows and trim were installed
in existing openings or new ones, wood boards covered dirt floors–such
transformations all fall under the category of addition.
While some prosperous
Anglo and Hispanic families continued to live in and transform their courtyard
houses, others constructed new houses at the earliest opportunity. These houses
constituted additions at the district level, new houses inserted into the
existing fabric. The residence of Anglo families in Tucson also created the need
for certain related institutions. By the 1870s there were three schools,
Methodist and Episcopal churches, a hospital (although this was Catholic), and a
public bathhouse. These buildings represent addition and infill at the district
level; they appear as isolated structures unrelated in form to their Hispanic
environment. Infill at the district level can be observed in the circa 1880
photograph of the Plaza de las Armas
(fig. 23), where a church
and landscaped park now occupy the former plaza, and a two-story house with bay
windows has been built on the north side of the plaza. None of these elements
follows the formal rules of Spanish and Mexican town form, such as continuous
street facades (no set-backs), flat roofs, and open plaza
(fig. 24).
Not all of these
transformations occurred at the district level: some buildings were reconfigured
or added to as a result of the cultural shift. An example was the Cosmopolitan
Hotel on the comer of Pennington and Main. An 1874 photograph shows an adobe
structure with a heavy portal, and a subsequent photograph of the same building,
rechristened "The Orndorff," shows that one wing of the building has added to it
a frame second floor and balcony, complete with bracketed cornice (Sonnichsen
1982: 100, 101). A photograph of Meyer Street in the 1880s
(fig. 25) shows the
addition of several simple porches and at least one brick parapet coping.
Anticipation of the approaching
railroad led to a boom in real estate values in the late 1870s; when the first
train actually arrived on March 20, 1880, "prices on practically everything were
rapidly revised downward," causing the financial ruin of several of Tucson's
most prosperous merchants (Sonnichsen 1982:105). Five concerns either sold off
stock to their creditors or went bankrupt in the following four years. This
loss, however, was limited in scope, and in the long run the railroad only
hastened economic and population growth in Tucson.
The new railroad tracks and
depot one-half mile from the business center sprouted a district of warehouses
and shops. Congress Street developed as a connection between these two areas,
and as Sonnichsen notes, "it was the first east-west thoroughfare to break the
old north-south pattern" (Sonnichsen 1982:107). Unlike Albuquerque and Las
Vegas, where the orientation of the railroad tracks dictated the street
orientation of the "new town," the diagonal path of the railroad through Tucson
simply broke through the grid of blocks and streets, with the exception of Toole
Avenue and the lots fronting the railroad.
An increase in Anglo population
relative to Hispanic population resulted in an increase in the pace of
environmental change. In 1882, the Arizona Citizen described the "change
in building styles" due to replacement of adobe with brick and lumber, observing
that "newcomers preferred to freeze in winter and stew in summer rather than
live in one of those 'ugly mud houses.' The idea of stepping through one's front
door into the street was equally repugnant, and in the new districts a front
yard interposed a decent interval between residence and road.... New residents
(also) imported the green lawn" (Sonnichsen 1982:107). Wealthy residents built
northward on Main Street, their large houses bringing Eastern architectural
styles and materials to the desert setting. Reinforcing these directional trends
was the location of the university in 1891. Three businessmen donated forty
acres one-half mile northeast of the railroad depot, creating an impetus for the
development of new residential neighborhoods. The first additions to the
original two-square-mile townsite after the turn of the century were in this
direction.
These initial trends of growth
for the Anglo population to the north and east signaled future patterns: the
predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods and the incorporated town of South Tucson
remain in the southern sectors of the metropolitan area, while the wealthy Anglo
population has leapfrogged to successively higher and higher around in the
foothills of the Tucson, Santa Catalina, and Rincon mountains to the northwest,
north, and northeast, respectively.
One example of infill at
the city level is the subdivision of the Old Military Plaza
(fig. 26), now known as
the Armory Park neighborhood. It was laid out in the same pattern of regular
lots (50 ft. x 150 ft.) that was used in the rest of the town and built in the
Anglo pattern of "solid" volumes in the center of open but private territory;
again, the antithesis of the Hispanic pattern of building enclosing private open
space (courtyard).
As the business district
expanded along Main and Meyer streets, it displaced Mexican American families
who, according to Sonnichsen, were either bought out or forced out; they moved
southward, concentrating around the Plaza de la Mesilla, renamed Church Square
(fig. 27). Adjacent to
this area on the north in the 1890s was Tucson's "sporting district," occupying
a narrow,, tapering block called "The Wedge." The Wedge provided Tucson with its
first opportunity for demolition at the district level when it was razed in 1902
in combination with other street-widening work, which constituted overall
reconfiguration at that level.
In the last two decades of the
century additions were made to the urban infrastructure. The privately owned
Tucson Water Company began operating in 1882, marking the end of private wells
and of a part of the service sector of the economy: water carriers had sold in
the plaza buckets of water brought from the Santa Cruz for five cents. The city
took control of the water system in 1890, coinciding with work on a sewer
system. An 1881 proposal for streetcars was not implemented until 1898, when
mule-drawn cars went between downtown, the train depot, and the new university.
The mules were replaced by electricity in 1906.
As early as the 1880s Tucson
began to see tourists and health-seekers arriving for the winter months. By the
turn of the century this influx had grown tremendously, facilitated by good
passenger rail service and increasing private ownership of the automobile.
Tucson actually experienced a housing shortage in the 1890s as tuberculosis
patients camped in tent cities at the edges of town and in the Santa Catalina
Mountains (Sonnichsen 1982:141). In spite of this, the city's growth was by no
means assured. "Indian problems" continued into the mid 1880s, when the last
rebel Apaches conducted their campaign of resistance to Anglo control from
mountains in southeastern Arizona. Population in Tucson actually fell between
1880 and 1890 but then began a rapid rise, reaching 13,000 by 1910 (Sonnichsen
1982:210).
|
|
|
|
