Roosevelt Row Arts Walk

Welcome to Phoenix, and to Roosevelt Row. This is the Evans-Churchill neighborhood, right next to the downtown core, and it's home to Roosevelt Row, a nationally recognized arts district. Since 1994 it has hosted First Fridays, a monthly event that has grown into the largest monthly art walk in the United States. The neighborhood runs from McDowell Road south to Fillmore Street, and from Central Avenue east to 7th Street.

It's a mix of single-family homes and newer mid-rise buildings. Growing interest has pushed Roosevelt Row to become more pedestrian-friendly and to support small, local, independent businesses, and its development is overseen by the nonprofit Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation. Some context for the rest of the walk: in 1870, Phoenix's original town site of 320 acres was bought for 50 dollars raised by public subscription. North–south streets east of Center Street, now Central Avenue, became numbered streets, and those west of it became avenues.

Phoenix was incorporated as a city on February 28, 1881.

This is the Burton Barr Central Library, the flagship and headquarters of the Phoenix Public Library. It's named for Burton Barr, Republican majority leader in the Arizona House of Representatives from 1966 to 1986. It was funded by a 1988 bond issue and replaced a 1950s library on McDowell Road that's now part of the Phoenix Art Museum. It was designed by DWL Architects with Will Bruder.

The five-story, 280,000-square-foot building opened in May 1995. Inside, a central open core holds three high-speed elevators and a five-level grand staircase called the crystal canyon. The roof structure was inspired by Buckminster Fuller's tensegrity structures. Notice the shade sails on the north side and the motorized louvers on the south side, both for sun control.

The whole fifth floor is a one-acre reading room, one of the largest in the country. Every year a summer solstice celebration is held there. At solar noon, skylights project circles of sunlight straight down the building's north–south midline, some reaching the ground floor lobby.