Connors Family Adventures: January 2017

For Scott's 50th birthday we decided to take a short trip down to Phoenix, Arizona. It was a very nice little getaway. We toured the Arizona State Capitol (#6 down!), the Wrigley Mansion, Taliesin West, the Rosson House, the Wells Fargo Museum, the Police Museum and a Japanese garden. Phew! It was a bit of a whirlwind! We also had dinner with my Aunt Patty & Harold who live in Peoria and Nikki & Mike Park who live just a short ways away in Gilbert. We were able to enjoy some sunshine although it was not as warm as we had hoped...but it was still way warmer than it was at home! We had a great time & knocked off a couple of items from our 2017 Adventure List.

Phoenix became Arizona's permanent capital city in 1889 and, in that year, the construction of the Phoenix state capitol building began. Completed in 1900, the cost of the building was about $136,000. The capitol building became too small and had 4 additions over the years. Eventually it was designated a museum in 1977. Currently it is used for educational and ceremonial purposes. We were bummed we had to do a self-tour because the tour guide was too sick for the guided tour. There is a huge area on the first floor dedicated to the USS Arizona.

Model of the USS Arizona

the dome

There were several school tours going on that day. This is the House Gallery.

The tower addition that was done in 1974. The Governor's office is located on the 9th floor.

The Capitol dome. Atop is the Goddess of Victory (also known as the Statue of Justice or Winged Victory). She is 17 feet tall & also a weather vane.

Across from the capitol building is the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza. It serves as a home to a number of memorials honoring prominent figures in Arizona history as well as memorializing significant wars and other events that have affected the state. We spent some time walking around checking out the different memorials.

The mast from the USS Arizona. You can see the capitol building in the background.

After the capitol we drove to the Wrigley Mansion where we had a delicious lunch followed by a tour of the Italianate mansion built by William Wrigley, Jr., in 1929. It was really fun and we learned many interesting facts about Mr. Wrigley such as he started out as a soap salesman, then sold baking powder. He used gum as a gimmick to sell more baking powder by giving it away with every purchase. At the time gum didn't have any flavoring & was used mostly as a digestive aid. Mr. Wrigley decided to add flavoring to the gum & market it as candy. It was so successful that he gave up selling the baking powder, and the rest is history...

This is actually the view of the back of the mansion which has been turned into a restaurant. I was tired after climbing all those steps!

The front of the mansion.

That building in the background is the Biltmore hotel, which was also owned by Mr. Wrigley. And that is Camelback Mountain.

One of only two of these pianos in existence. It has an auto play feature w/a console (by the wall) that can accommodate multiple scrolls of music, kind of like a multi CD player. It also had a remote control!

Beautiful hand painted ceiling in the entry. It has not been retouched but is still as vibrant as ever!

The wall is actually covered with old fashioned gum wrappers!

The next day Scott & I took a behind the scenes tour of Taliesin West, the winter home & studio of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The tour lasted 3 hours and included a little mid morning snack where we visited with one of Wright's actual apprentices who had lived & worked at Taliesin and Taliesin West since the 50's. All the apprentices would work in Taliesin West in the winter months then pack up & head back to Taliesin (in Wisconsin) for the rest of the year. They sure were hard working folks! They built Taliesin West from the ground up in the Sonoran dessert, and it took them over 20 years to complete the compound. We were surprised to learn that it is now the main campus for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. We had an amazing time!

There were lots of amazing sculptures around the grounds.

The office. Check out that amazing door!

A model of the compound made from Legos.

Scott got into my panoramic!

Those chairs were surprisingly comfortable!

That is the apprentice we met.

All the water is from an aquifer they found early on.

Scott wasn't being naughty! Our tour let us go beyond this part to view some areas not seen on the regular tour.

Studios where the students work. This also has student sleeping quarters.

We went into this house which was amazing! It is made up of pods.

Because we could not get enough of Arizona history, we went next to the Rosson House in downtown Phoenix. It is a totally renovated Victorian home which was built for the family of Dr. Roland Rosson back in 1895. The Rosson's only owned it for two years, during which they mostly rented it out. The house was then sold off when they moved to California. Three more families would live in it before it became a boarding house. By the time the city bought the house in 1974 drastic changes had been made to the interior & exterior. 19 people had been living in the house at the time. It is now totally restored back to how it looked in 1895. We enjoyed learning about its history & getting to tour the house. It was really beautiful inside & out.

view from the side

How it looked when the city purchased it.

The inlaid floor designs were so beautiful. They had different designs in each of the rooms on the first floor.

They uncovered around 12 layers of wallpaper before finding the original one, then had it recreated for the house. There were many different wallpapers throughout the house.

The tin ceilings were beautiful!

back porch

On our last day we went downtown. Since it was very gray & overcast, and a bit cold, we decided to find indoor things to do. We toured the Wells Fargo Museum, which was actually really interesting. Afterwards we kind of stumbled onto City Hall and the Police Museum. After a quick and yummy lunch we walked a little over a mile to a Japanese garden, which was a nice break from the unrelenting brown of the desert landscape in Phoenix.