Vernacular Architecture Forum : Tucson 2005

	Spanish Colonization of the Pimería Alta (Sonora and Arizona) Spanish exploration of what is now the American Southwest began in the 16th century during which early explorers recorded encountering Pima and Papago (now Tohono O’odham) tribes in settlements along river floodplains. This region, populated with primarily Pima-speaking populations, became known as the Pimería Alta, a large geographic area defined by the Pima and Papago settlements that occupied the current Mexican state of Sonora and the region of southern Arizona. During the latter part of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Jesuit missionaries, including the most prolific of Jesuit builders, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, followed the footsteps of the early explorers and established a system of mission sites adjacent to the more populated native settlements. In 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from Mexico and replaced by the Franciscans, who are responsible for most of the extant church buildings. Following missions was the establishment of fortified garrisons, presidios, that protected the missions and the growing agriculturally based communities from the Apaches, a semi-nomadic, marauding tribe who were a constant threat to the permanent establishment of Spanish settlements. Though never fully implemented in Pimería Alta to the same degree as in other areas of New Spain, the pueblo, or town component of the colonization process incorporated a prescribed set of town planning principles defined by a central plaza, grid-iron pattern of streets and other urban elements based on the Laws of the Indies. Building principles included attached street-abutting facades, one-story flat-roofed buildings with an inner block courtyard, a semi-public interior hallway (zaguan), and in Pimería Alta, the use of adobe as the dominant building material. The Spanish Colonial period in Pimería Alta ends with Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, but the architectonic influences linger on through the Mexican period ending in 1853 when the American government purchased the land currently defined as southern Arizona.
	Ranching in Southern Arizona Cattle ranching in southern Arizona began with the first Spanish explorers who introduced cattle to the region, primarily for their own consumption. The open grasslands landscape of the Pimería Alta was ideal for cattle ranching, a Spanish tradition of open range grazing established in Andalucia. Missionaries, miners and other early enterprises in southern Arizona soon relied on cattle as a food staple and as a commodity that funded many mission building projects. The establishment of cattle ranching as an industry began in earnest with the assignment of Spanish land grants dating from the early 19th century, primarily along the Santa Cruz and San Pedro River valleys. Vast ranches of hundreds of thousands of acres, with thousands of head of cattle each, dominated the cultural landscape of southern Arizona. As Americans moved west with land settlement policies that encouraged the “Americanization” of lands such as southern Arizona, a new phase of cattle ranching was established that optimized breeding, created water control systems and dominated the economy of the region up through World War II.
	Mining Towns of Southern Arizona Mining in southern Arizona began with the first Spanish explorers to the region whose principal interest was to exploit the riches of the new land as others had done in central Mexico. Though gold was what they were seeking, it was silver that was first found, in Arizonac, a settlement just south of the current international border, and, ironically, by a Yaqui Indian, in 1736. This prompted prospectors to come to southern Arizona in droves, but with only minor financial success, and forced many of these settlers to turn to ranching, but established themselves as the pioneering generation of Spanish settlers in southern Arizona. The California Gold Rush prompted the next phase of mining activity during the mid-19th century when many Americans prospected in Arizona with moderate success. The mining claims that dotted the landscape throughout southern Arizona quickly evolved into mining camps, then mining towns, some of which have become famous in western lore, such as Tombstone. Copper soon became the mainstay of Arizona mining and during the 1920s, southern Arizona was the world’s largest producer of the material that was in demand due to the advent of electricity and copper wiring. Though most of these towns, such as Bisbee, grew organically, and often overnight, other towns, such as Warren and Ajo, were planned as part of the City Beautiful movement where town layout, civic amenities housing and landscaping were carefully designed as part of a holistic landscape.
	Native American Architecture of Southern Arizona Prior to 1450, the dominant cultural group in southern Arizona was the Hohokam, who created an elaborate built environment of dwellings (pit structures, ramadas and above-ground pueblos), communal architecture (great houses, ballcourts, platform mounds), plazas, and sophisticated water control systems. The Hohokam culture was abandoned by the time the explorers and missionaries arrived into southern Arizona, but their surviving cultural descendents, the Pima and Papago (now Tohono O'odham), maintained agrarian settlements along the Santa Cruz River incorporating some of the same architectural traditions. Today, the Tohono O'odham occupy a reservation the size of Connecticut and their current built environment has been influenced by a variety of external forces though has continued to maintain an architectural expression unique to the O'odham. The Yaquis, though not historically linked to southern Arizona, have created an equally unique built environment, in part to maintain their ethnic identity.
	Territorial Architecture in Tucson Upon the arrival of Americans in the middle of the 19th century, the cultural identity of Tucson gradually transformed from Hispanic to American, as seen in a number of architectural expressions and at a variety of scales of the built environment. From the time Arizona became a US territory in 1863, until statehood in 1912, the formerly Hispanic pueblo of Tucson went through the process of cultural assimilation, aided greatly by the arrival of the railroad in 1880, bringing architectural ideas, prefabricated building materials and people from throughout the United States that fueled the growth of Arizona’s largest city at that time. Soon, Americans were living in subdivisions of detached houses, brick construction and the expressing the decorative tastes that distinguished themselves from their Mexican counterparts in an increasingly segregated town, both ethnically and architecturally. By the first decades of the 20th century, all the academic styles that were popular throughout the eastern United States were being imported to Tucson, regardless of their climatic inappropriateness, to create an eclectic mixture of styles representing cultural connections to someplace else.
	20th Century Residential Landscapes Soon after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, the popularity of regional revival styles grew in cities throughout the American Southwest representing a romantic association with a common cultural heritage being created for, and promoted by, tourism. Soon, residential subdivisions and public architecture were only being designed within a limited stylistic palette of Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission Revival and Pueblo Revival. All these represented an architectural vocabulary external to the historic building traditions of Tucson and Arizona, but rather generalized to the larger southwest in an attempt to lure new residents by associating new architecture with the heritage of the place, however falsely. This regional revival period lasted until World War II after which housing was drastically affected by post-war population boom in the southwest. The simplicity of the emerging modern stylistic expression combined with design standards determined by federally insured home loans created a housing typology based on the ranch style whose characteristics included an open floor plan with an equally open relationship to outdoor spaces, a low, wide street façade, large “picture” windows and minimal decoration. Production housing of this type dominated post-war subdivision developments with a few subdivisions dictating deed restrictions that emphasized architectural or community amenities.
	Traditional Typologies – New Applications The energy crisis of the 1970s fueled a resurgence in the utilization of traditional building materials, including adobe and rammed earth, and passive solar architectural typologies and elements that also proved to be energy efficient. Southern Arizona became a center for architects experimenting with appropriate responses to the desert environment, including architects trained as Modernists, such as Arthur Brown and Judith Chafee and a subsequent generation that incorporate tradition typologies and materials, such as Bob Vint and Rick Joy.