page_title: Downtown Flagstaff, Arizona
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Downtown Flagstaff, Arizona / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: Flagstaff, Heritage Square
context_page_description: Downtown Flagstaff, Arizona sits in the western part of the city, and consists of several culturally-connected blocks. The city of Flagstaff has a downtown culture of local, independent, stores inside historic buildings.
context_section_description: Architecturally, many of the buildings are historic, with stucco friezes; some stand out in the cityscape more than others, including the 1888 Babbitt Brothers building, the 1926 train station, and the Weatherford Hotel with its "grand two-story wraparound veranda and its sunroom". The train station serves as a visitors center, remaining the heart of Flagstaff's economy after originally bringing prosperity in by the railroad; both of the city's train depots were restored in the 1990s. Paradis describes the main station, which is an example of Tudor Revival architecture, as "probably the most prominent landmark in Flagstaff", adding that it "has further been described as perhaps the most unique architectural piece in town". Santa Fe Plaza, with the old depot, lies across the road a few hundred yards east of the visitors center/1926 station and includes a bronze sculpture of a railroad worker known as "Gandy Dancer" and an old locomotive.
  A few blocks north of the train depots, turning west into East Aspen Avenue, is Heritage Square. Before the square was built, it had been a dirt tract from the demolition of historic Flagstaff buildings, including the Empress Theater – this name is written across an amphitheater in the square. Also on the square is a modern retail building that is a reconstruction of Flagstaff's original city hall, which had once sat a block south before being demolished in the 1970s. Paradis describes the square as "a celebratory railroad-oriented theme park", which he suggest Sante Fe Plaza can also be seen as. In human geography, he suggests that these are places designed by white males from a "perspective that cherishes the values of progress, technology, expansion, and economic growth"; he writes that while there are other elements of Flagstaff's heritage present (including rock strata of the Grand Canyon), the overwhelming theme is the Santa Fe railroad, reflecting Anglo-American expansionism and not representing the Native perspective. Heritage Square's design was largely influenced by Jim Babbitt, a local history activist and another original Babbitt descendant, with Paradis also acknowledging that with a wider selection of urban architects, Flagstaff is a population that may embrace more diverse perspectives in its cultural representations. When the city council bought the land from a broke developer in 1991, it was seen as an "opportunity to turn downtown into a beautiful area, something it [hadn't] been for the past 25 years". 
  The Babbitt Brothers Building from 1888, the city's first two-story building and a simplified Italianate architecture construction with "tall, arched windows and [a] heavy, bracketed cornice on its roofline", was restored to its original appearance in the 1990s after cladding applied in the 1950s and '60s hid the facade. It is also a downtown landmark, in appearance and in its historic function as the anchor to the district's success: a department store, smaller businesses nearby relied on its appeal to catch customers already in the area, as well as being a familiar name and a community social fixture with nearly 100 years of trading. It sits at the corner of North San Francisco Street and East Aspen Avenue, a few blocks directly north of the train depots (San Francisco Street bisects the railroad plazas) and just east on East Aspen Avenue from Heritage Square. The demolition of part of the building revealed the Empress Theater's shell and was part inspiration for Heritage Square.
  A block north of Heritage Square on the east side of downtown is the old Coconino County Courthouse. Built when Coconino first became a county, this building has served as the political hub since 1895. Despite its importance in administering the second-largest county of the United States, it was "shoved aside" to a random city block during planning, as the grid for downtown had not considered institutional buildings, but was still "by far the most elaborate structure in Flagstaff". It is an example of Romanesque Revival architecture, but the "small-town version", featuring "heavy masonry const
caption: Heritage Square in 2008
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