Exploring

We've been in Arizona for two weeks now just taking it easy, resting, swimming in the pool, shopping, and generally just vegging out.  Yesterday we decided to go to downtown Phoenix in search of the State Capitol and whatever else we could find.

Phoenix is the only city I've been to where the downtown area is almost totally deserted on Sundays.  The roads were devoid of traffic, which made getting around really easy.  A few extremely well tanned homeless people were seen going about their own business in the bright sunshine, and that was about all.

We found the State Capitol easily.  It wasn't nearly as impressive as the California State Capitol in Sacramento but was beautiful in its own way.

Arizona State Capitol

 There was some interesting structural and architectural styles in some of the older buildings in downtown Phoenix.  I concentrated on them and ignored the large modern glass and steel structures in favor of the more artistic ones.

Not sure what this one is, but loved the circular porch-like structure on the front.

Grace Court School

This colorful building is The New Windsor Hotel.  Lloyd commented
that if that is the New hotel, he'd like to see what the Old one looked like.

Phoenix has some beautiful churches. This Presbyterian Church was one we were able to tour through a couple of years ago.

This next one, The First Baptist Church, is on the National Register of Historical Buildings.  It was damaged by fire in 1984 and almost torn down in 1992.  The Historical Society fought to save it and were successful.  With a grant from the Historical Foundation, it's in the process of renovations now.  The stained glass windows have been removed, a lot of the roof structure is missing and there's a lot of interior damage.  I'd like to see it again when the renovations have been completed.

This interesting old building with the antenna on top is the Westward Ho Hotel.  It appeared to be fairly old but we couldn't get near enough to it to see if there was a date on it.

I liked the way this circular building was tucked into the corner.

This beautiful old building taking up almost an entire block is the Orpheum Theater."After 12 years, $14 million and an incredible amount of perseverance, the historic Orpheum Theatre has been renovated for 'adaptive reuse'. The Orpheum Theater hosts a great variety of first class productions, drawing thousands of people to a vibrant downtown venue."

Along the top of the Orpheum are beautiful carvings and statuary.

And lest you think that Phoenix is a city of the past, here's one of the newer buildings downtown, the new Phoenix City Hall.  The sunburst over the front doors represents the eternal sunshine found in Arizona's Valley of the Sun. I just made up that last sentence.  I don't know what it officially represents but that's what I like to think.

And that's my very limited exploration of downtown Phoenix.  There's much, much more to see, but that'll wait for another day.