Roy Place office then

Roy Place office now

Recognize these photos? It was the location of the former Walgreen’s downtown which closed sometime after 2001, but the facade has now been restored, and the building rented to the University of Arizona as a center for “urban design, planning and policy classes” for graduate students. The College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture will be the new tenant, and Pima County is the lessor/owner. Read more in Arizona Daily star article:

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/college/article_623b03b1-baae-51db-85ba-8043e142cbfd.html.

Or in UA News (click here).

It was the office of local architect Roy Place, who also built the Pioneer Hotel, Roskruge Elementary and Mansfeld Middle Schools, the St. Benedictine Monastery.

The dedication for this building will be on Thursday, Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. with UA President Robert Shelton and Fred DuVal, a member of the Arizona Board of Regents. The dedication ceremony will be on the NW corner of N. Stone and E. Pennington Street at Jacome Plaza, although this Roy Place building is at that same intersection on the SE corner, 44 N. Stone Avenue.

I used to shop in there at Walgreen’s when I worked downtown on Pennington Street at the Domestic Violence Commission (now defunct). But it’s wonderful to see the original facade restored, especially as it was Roy Place’s architect office, which looked out upon the lovely Pima County Courthouse, which he built in 1929. It is perhaps his most famous building in Tucson.

For website of Pima County Consolidated Justice Courts/Courthouse, click here.

Incidentally I have held court (Small Claims) in that historic courthouse building for the Pima County Consolidated Justice Courts, although our courtroom is now in the La Placita Village down south on Church Avenue.