A group of us join the masses who took advantage of a gorgeous day to enjoy the 23rd annual Willo HIstoric Home Tour in downtown Phoenix AZ.
We began our adventure with a bit of breakfast at the Duce. Service was casual as is usually the case and the food was excellent as always. Most of us dined on one of their scrambled egg dishes while a couple feasted on the “baked cinnamon pecan French toast.” Yummy stuff.
Parking for the event was eventful in itself. Being that I spend a lot of time in the hood, I found easy parking near Chateau on Central and we walked the couple of blocks to pick up our tickets and on to the tour.
You could not have asked for a better day to take a walk… not to hot and clear as a Caribbean sea. The first house on the tour was probably the most interesting. It is a Herbert Green design that was intentioned and used in the 1930’s as a school called FairHope. Over the years it saw many other uses until it’s current owner decided to make it a single family residence. The home still has a school house feel due to the style of the windows and layout.
The balance of the tour featured mostly Tudor’s with a Monterrey Ranch, bungalow, Spanish Mission/Colonial and an unusual offering… International Style. (We ran out of time to see that one. If you saw it, please add our thoughts by commenting at the end of this post.)
In general, we saw a lot of fine and fun homes. There is simply something about historics that makes you smile. I do have to comment on one of the one of the renovated homes. I won’t say which one to protect the innocent. Why would a designer/builder take a perfectly sweet historic home from the 1920’s or 30’s and do a kitchen make over that looks like it came out of a Pottery Barn Catalog? Sure it was well done, but the materials and look was 2005 Pulte Homes verses a rare period revival house. It just makes me crazy when someone calling themselves a “designer” has no sense of the era, texture, and materials.
I tool a lot of pictures along the way that we are sharing as a catalog here on Urban Connection Realty. We hope you enjoy them. As you will see, it was a very well attended event. It is wonderful to see more and more people valuing our historic homes by dropping a fair chunk of change to see and support the Willo district. Come back soon as we’ll be providing information about the Roosevelt tour, Coronado Historic Tour and Modern Phoenix tours coming up in the next few months. If you went to the 2011 Willo home tour, give us your feedback by leaving a comment via the comment link below this article.
Gene Urban
The Urban Team
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602-234-5777
