O'Connor House
How did you become involved with O'Connor House?
Hugh Hallman
The story of how this house ended up in Papago Park in Tempe really is the story of independent and simultaneous creation. We see it in in science, now, in the last number of decades. But that's what happened here. This serendipity, to me, demonstrated that this had to happen.
And it started for me when I received a phone call from a woman named Barbara Malone. She was a director on the board of directors of the Rio Salado Foundation. And she had been tasked by the board to go seek financial assistance for our work in historic preservation from Barbara and Craig Barrett. She called me having met with Barbara Barrett and said, "Mayor, I have a problem." I said, "What's the problem?" She said, "I need help moving an adobe house. And I need some place to put it." I said, "Barbara, you were supposed to help us get financial resources for Historic Preservation, not add more to my list of tasks." And she laughed and said, "Well, here, here's what it is. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a home that she and her husband built in Paradise Valley, and it's about to be torn down. And Arizona should be embarrassed if we don't save this. Here's the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, who led a life, an exemplary life of leadership. How could we let this happen?" And I said, "Got it. But I'll tell you, moving an adobe house is a very big problem. I only know one person who's ever successfully moved an adobe house. She's a longtime friend of mine. I'll give her a call."
And I hung up with Barbara Malone and picked up the phone and started to dial my longtime friend, Janie Ellis, her phone number by heart, I was her yard boy. She taught me to dance and choreographed me in many shows that were presented across the state. So she presented me in many shows that were presented across the state. I reached for the phone, dialed, and the line was busy. I sat down the receiver handset and Barbara White, my longtime assistant, shouted in from her desk outside my office door and said, "Janie Ellis is on the phone." I laugh pick up, picked up the line and said, "It's funny. I was just trying to call you. I need help." She started laughing and said, "That's why I'm calling you!" I said, "Well, me first. I need help moving an adobe house." Jamie had moved, successfully, two of her father's adobe homes. He had been a contractor and a builder in Arizona since the late 1920s. And in fact, part of the reason I kept such close touch with Janie is, her father built my home, the home I now live in, in the early 1940s.
I explained that there was an adobe house that belonged to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that was about to be torn down, and we needed help moving it. And I was supposed to also find a place to put it. And Janie started laughing, and said, "That's why I'm calling you. I've met with some ladies who are friends of the Justice, and they are distressed that the house is about to be torn down, and you're the only person I can think of who could get this done, too." So together, we met and talked about it, and came to the site where the original home sat on Denton lane. It was going to be a very, very challenging project. Denton Lane is a very narrow road. Paradise Valley has lots of power lines in the old parts of the city, and they were going to provide a challenge, but the house itself was going to be challenging. It's adobe, number one. But it has this extraordinary roof structure, that would prove to be the biggest challenge. How to move the, the roof itself, and then the walls underneath it. By the time we got involved, folks had almost given up on the view that they could save the house. The five women who were really instrumental in kicking off the effort, they're sometimes referred to as the originals, were so distressed that they couldn't find a way to save the house, they started looking at alternatives, including maybe just taking two or three of the walls and having them put at the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law at ASU, or other options. And that seemed to me to be a defeat, that we could do better than that.
And Janie thought we could do better than that. And the genius came one day as Jamie was standing in the house, looking at the roof structure, and she realized that the central beam is actually two beams and that they had been nailed together. And what we could do is saw-cut down the center of that beam, and that would allow us to take the roof structure apart, lift it, and then move the walls out from underneath it. And that's how it happened. The challenge included, of course, fundraising, and that's where the originals were essential. Every piece of this concurrent independent creation was necessary. There's not a single piece of this story that could have been removed and the project had been completed. It took the efforts of Gay Wray and Elva Coor and Barbara Barrett, Kim Sterling-Heflin and Vicki Budinger.
We sat together one night at Janie Ellis's dining table and outlined on, literally, napkins how this was going to get done, what we thought it would cost, and how long it would take. And it was going to be expensive. This is not an easy project. The total estimate we had was about $3.1 million, including the land costs. We only missed that budget by $50,000. It was actually a little less than $3.1 million when you add it all up. But that group of people was as committed to a project as I've seen. And even with the challenges everybody faced, and the tensions that got brought to bear, the friction that create, is created when you're in a very stressful, stressful situation. All of that could easily be overcome by the recognition that we were doing something that had to be done. We couldn't let the family home of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her husband John and their three children turn to dust. It had to be saved.
This building today stands for additional projects and programs that, I think, Justice O'Connor has been pushing hard for, for her entire career. Making the world safer for women, avoiding domestic violence and trying to attend to that. Other programs that she's viewed as essential to the success of these United States. I'm reminded that she had written Majesty of the Law just prior to this project kicking off. And that book contains so many great understandings and notions of what makes this country great, and what we need to do to preserve it. Well, in this instance, we've preserved a building that I think will stand the test of time, not only for being way ahead of its time, an adobe building that is essentially completely sustainable, built from adobe that was quarried out of the Salt River riverbed.
And adobes then made for a home in Paradise Valley. Ultimately, this house has returned to its home in Papago Park, just a few hundred yards from the original location where the adobe was quarried. But then there are other tie-ins that are stunning, that tell you each of these things was not only necessary to make this project happen, but part of a story that has been so intertwined for decades, that Janie Ellis and I have known one another for most of my life, that her brother was on my father's baseball team at Scottsdale High, that she taught me how to dance, that she took the time to figure out how to save her father's buildings that gave her the knowledge and ability, the techniques to save this particular building. But in addition, that we found out things like the window that's to my right, allowed us to finally discern who the architect of the building was. It's a window design that is actually taken from a block design that was incorporated into the Valley Ho hotel. And it was that window that caused Janie to realize that the architect likely was DK Taylor, the architect of the Valley Ho hotel, a hotel on which her father worked.
The reason the O'Connors were referred to Janie's father to help build the home is because he'd worked with DK Taylor. And Taylor explained to the O'Connors that if they really wanted adobes, there was only one person they knew, or he knew, who could help them with that. And that was George Ellis. By the 1958-59 time period, nobody was really still building with adobes. And George Ellis made that happen. We, of course, didn't know any of this when the project started. And it was the last day in which the house was on its site that we discovered those family connections, Justice O'Connor with the originals and the team of people we were using to move the building, including Janey Ellis Jones, were meeting to talk about how the project would get completed. And there are some wonderful photographs of the team, including Justice O'Connor, sitting in the living room of the home talking about it. And the team members were introducing themselves to Justice O'Connor, our builders and other folks who were going to be involved. And about halfway through the introductions, Justice O'Connor stopped to tell the story that DK Taylor, an architect she whose name she could not remember at the time, had referred them to a fellow in Scottsdale, what had become Scottsdale, for the adobes. That his name was George Ellis. And that George Ellis would be the man who would create the adobes. We continued with the introductions, but with tingles running up and down my spine because one of the people yet to be introduced was Janie Ellis Jones. And Janie explained that she was the project manager for the Rio Salado Foundation, and would be moving the house, and had introduced herself as Jamie Jones, and then said Janie Ellis Jones. And Justice O'Connor started for a moment and said, "Is there any relation?" And Janie teared up, as I am now, and said, "Yeah, he was my father." And it was at that moment that I really knew this project was absolutely destined to be, and that everybody involved in the project understood why it was so important to get done.
O'Connor House
So, talk about the Rio Salado Foundation and the funding from the Rio Salado Foundation.
Hugh Hallman
The Rio Salado Foundation was founded in 2001 to assist Tempe in completing amen– amenities to surround Town Lake. And that project itself, the Rio Salado project, is enormous. It has public components to it and private sector components that will take decades to complete. But the public components have been challenging for the city of Tempe to complete because they're expensive, and Tempe is a relatively small city. It has a huge impact in our state, and a reputation for doing incredible things. But it remains a smaller community. It's only 42 square miles, and it does have 175,000 residents, but it's compact. And it's, it's not a city of great wealth. So the Foundation was formed to begin looking for ways in which to engage the private sector to help address those amenities.
When I became mayor, I was then invited by the board of the Rio Salado Foundation to become a board member and, ultimately, its president. We had an executive director, and her name was Stacy Polowski, who was also essential to this story. She convinced me to become a member of the Rio Salado Foundation board, and the board then convinced me to become its president. And I agree do that if we could broaden the scope of the Foundation's work and recognize that the Rio Salado project itself was in a context, in a setting that, if we celebrated the entire context and setting, it would be more successful. And so the Foundation repositioned itself to take on projects around Town Lake and in Papago Park. And that included elements of the historic preservation in the park and surrounding in Tempe that we needed to undertake so that, as the lake was developed, we wouldn't lose the essential components that make Tempe and Papago Park special.
With that refocus, this project came up as an opportunity for us to highlight Papago Park, and the historic role it has played in our state and in this valley. And placing Justice O'Connor's home in Papago Park, I think, adds a gravitas to the other historic elements that are in this park. As another example of unusual crossover. I view this house itself as a celebration of a smart, hardworking, thoughtful woman who exerted power in our country in a way to improve how our country has operated. But this house itself is adjacent to the Arizona Historical Society Museum, which is on the grounds of the Eisendrath House, another home, adobe home, built by a woman who was ahead of her time as well, and faced discrimination. She was Jewish and not allowed to stay in the resorts in the Valley, so she built her own home on nine acres immediately to the north of this house. And so, Rose Eisendrath, I think, is an addition to that object lesson that we are celebrating strong, smart, thoughtful women who were leaders.
Across the street from this home is the Tempe Women's Clubs Xeriscape Garden, a very early effort to demonstrate how we live in this Sonoran Desert. What better thing to do than have Justice O'Connor's home placed here, a home that celebrates the Sonoran Desert, that's surrounded by the natural flora that occupy this Sonoran Desert? And it is stunning what has been crafted here in celebration of the Sonoran Desert. Again, a group of women who put together a xeriscape garden as one of the first efforts, who were leaders in our community. All of those are object lessons that help us demonstrate and tell a story of the importance of women in our society, and how far we've come during Justice O'Connor's lifetime in particular. But it's also the story of sustainable living in the Sonoran Desert, from this adobe home to Rose Eisendrath's adobe home, to the Hohokam village that's up on the hill immediately to the west of this home that was occupied from approximately 1200 AD to 1450, with 30 or 40 people who lived in that area, also extraordinarily sustainable building, using stone and adobe from the surrounding areas that sustained that community in some of the harshest times this Valley's ever seen. This is the perfect combination of opportunity and experience that, I think, the Rio Salado Foundation could not resist. And it was with unanimous support that that board decided that the O'Connor House should be a project we took on. And that meant a lot of additional fundraising.
But again, without the help of Elva Coor and Gay Wray
and Barbara Barrett and Kim Sterling-Heflin and Vicki Budinger, we could never have pushed this forward. And then, without the help of Stacey Pulowski, we never would have been able to pull off some of the events that gave us enough notoriety to get this done. She put together the event, from the Rio Salado Foundation's side, at the Tempe Center for the Arts, the very first Supreme Evening of Jazz, that would celebrate music, but also this home. And the reason for the jazz was, of course, Justice O'Connor and her husband John, wonderful dancers who enjoyed music and jazz and big band music, in particular. And we used that as a theme to bring people from across the state together to understand what the project was about. And that effort kicked off in an amazing way, the fundraising to make this possible. And it was that evening that we learned that Stacy Polowski was facing an unhappy and unlikely success with her breast cancer that, that evening, after all of the work she'd put in, to help us put this project together, she had received the news that her breast cancer had metastasized to her brain lining. And so, in the midst of this celebration of bringing a community together, we had a dear friend who had been responsible for our work to make this happen, receive the news that we knew was really a death knell. She carried on, as she always did, in a brash, open, hard-pressing way to continue this project through the end of her life, and it was important to her to see the success. It was many of her connections that created a big enough community of donors that we were able to achieve this result. And so, as her efforts as the executive director of the Rio Salado Foundation, her contribution is another one of those examples that we, but for that we would never have been able to complete this project.
O'Connor House
How was this particular location identified as the place?
Hugh Hallman
The, the big question.
Where to put it? There were the need to, there was the need to move very, very quickly. I negotiated directly with the then-owner of the home over bourbon, I think, at the Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, to secure our right to save the house. And it was both difficult and easier than it might have been. It turned into a problem of just having enough resources to supply the person with a replacement home during the extra months he would have to wait to take the property, to give us time to move the house. And so it was Bob Robson who agreed to donate the home and to allow us the time to move it from the property. And that negotiation took place. He agreed, and then we moved forward to secure the building itself. It then took months to carefully move it from its site.
This is again, a stout building once in place, but without all of its pieces tied tightly together, it's very fragile. And lifting the roof off, taking the walls apart, numbering the bricks, putting them on palettes, getting them here, all were challenges that we faced, really, every single day. And the most challenging day I can remember of this project was the day that we were getting close to running out of money. And the house was in pieces in the parking lot that's immediately to the east of us at the Arizona Historical Society Museum. And the thought that all of these palettes with all of these walls might face a series of gully-washing storms coming through that would destroy the raw materials was devastating. And we had to move, and we had to kick everybody in the gear again, and go back out and explain how crucial it was to get this done. And that's where a company like Sundt Construction comes in. The guys running that company, David Crawford in particular, who I had to sit with more than a few times and explain why we would be a little late in paying the costs that they were incurring. It was those folks' willingness to help and then donate their time and effort to make this happen. So another example of an essential, necessary component, all of that had to come together. And as I think about this story and the emotions it brings back, the, the sad moments and the great celebrations. It is a, it is a story of import that demonstrates across this country what Sandra Day O'Connor means to people, and why this was important to accomplish. And I hate to say this, but I don't remember what your original question was. You don't either.
More than covered, I'm sorry.
O'Connor House
And this particular person…?
Hugh Hallman
I'm sorry, okay. The, the decision on how we ended up with this parcel. Everything had to come together very quickly. And I'm grateful that my city council, by the time this project came up, had put enough faith in my judgment that if this was something that would be good for Tempe, they were willing to take it on. The challenge of finding the right place for this home had to occur very quickly, and by the time we finished the negotiations with Bob Robson about getting the house, we had about five weeks to find a location for it. And that took place very quickly only because my council agreed, to a person, that this was a project that was worth doing, that would be good for, not just Tempe but the entire state. And truly, how could we allow Justice O'Connor's home to be destroyed without us giving it our best efforts?
We identified, quickly, three possible locations. The goal was to find a location that had water associated with it, because Justice O'Connor's original home site was immediately north of the canal, cross-cut canal that runs between the city of Phoenix and Paradise Valley. And that element was important to her, that there was water near the property, that celebrated the Sonoran Desert and the, the kinds of riparian areas that we have in the desert, to give life to most of what we have. That was an important element. Finding a place that would give it views of a mountain, that would at least be reminiscent of her view of Camelback Mountain was important. And then finding a place large enough that could be open to the public, eventually, and give us an opportunity to create the right siting for it. Those were the main three elements. The three sites we identified, two of them were on or near Town Lake, one of them adjacent to the Tempe Center for the Arts, another one a little farther to the west.
And then, by happenstance, I was in meetings with our public works department negotiating with our neighborhoods in North Tempe over how to limit the damage that would get done to Papago Park when we put in a new water line, a water line from the north Tempe water plant that's called the Jonny G. Martinez Water Plant. A four-foot pipe had to be laid through Papago Park to bring the water out of that plant to replace an almost 40-year-old water line. And the only way to get it done, according to the public works group, was to pull it through a portion of Papago Park behind the Arizona Historical Society Museum and across the hill, down then through the rest of the park to a corner at Curry Road and College Avenue. As I sat looking at the drawings, I realized, "We've got it."
This site and Papago Park would have been completely denuded. The site would have been opened and there would have been roads built in that would allow us to bring in the construction equipment to build the house. In about 15 minutes working with the Public Works group and our development services group, we knew we had identified the site. And the only challenge the site then presented was that there would be a four-foot water line under the site that we couldn't build across. And because of the engineering constraints, we'd have to build a concrete pad over the top of the water line. For those who aren't engineers, water lines are built to contain pressure pushing out from the water and the pressurized water within it. They're not built to contain pressure coming from without, and so having the water line with possible automobiles or other traffic drive over it could crush the water line. So we had to build, literally, a concrete bridge over the top of the waterline, and that's where the driveway is now for the home. That gave us a little extra expense in the project, but then almost free rein to redesign the site. We will, and were, and did, take a construction zone and have a chance to recreate it.
And that's where Tonnaight came in to do a magnificent job, understanding what this could present, and situating the home almost exactly the way it was situated on the original site, it's about 15 degrees off from its original siting. That's important because the home was designed as a passive solar home to prevent heat gaining, and cold gain. We wanted to preserve as much of that as possible. In addition, we ended up with the sight of the Superstition Mountains, to the east through the windows, and then a view of Town Lake to the south. But also, there's a riparian line that runs on the north and east side of the home, it's called the green line. And again, a bunch of smart, thoughtful, hard-working women had converted that from a dump site to the green line that it now exists. It's always been intended to be a riparian area, but it had been, had become fairly dilapidated, and used as homeless camps and filled with garbage. All of these women, most of them in their 60s, 70s, came together to clean it up and bring it back to its natural environment. And they had just completed that work a year before. So now we had all of the elements that we had wanted on one site that gave us an opportunity to create this beautiful setting for the home. Again, serendipity, simultaneous creation. Happenstance? I don't think so.
O'Connor House
So a few years ago, I remember your, O'Connor House announcing the giving from the Rio Salado Foundation. Tell us about that.
Hugh Hallman
The, the project, as popular, I suppose, as it was for folks to get involved in and donate money to, still was expensive. And the Rio Salado Foundation Board of Directors and I agreed that we could not leave the project unfinished. The project had to get finished, given the costs associated with delay, and the risks to the building associated with delay. So the Rio Salado Foundation used its other resources that it had, its general fund monies, to cash flow and pay for the costs of this project, pending fundraising coming later. And most of that fundraising did come later, but it left about $100,000 unpaid. And rather than keep the O'Connor House group focusing on raising capital dollars, the board and I agreed that it was much more important to get its programs kicked off. That is, Justice O'Connor was pushing to move the programs forward. We should not have the capital project as a hurdle yet to overcome. And instead, the O'Connor House should have that chance to get its programs activated. And so, the board of directors of the Rio Salado Foundation agreed that we would just wipe the debt clean. And it was approximately $100,000 by that time. And we would raise money for our other projects, other ways, but that this was a project worth not only the time and effort of our board to do its fundraising and to assist in the project, this was a turnkey operation.
It was hard for folks to understand, but the Rio Salado Foundation is not a passive organization. It literally took on the project, entered the contracts with the contractors, managed the project through Jamie Ellis, who we then brought on board to be the project manager, and completed the project. We then had to do some of the fundraising to assist in getting those costs covered. And when things fell short, the Foundation agreed that it was a project worth investing in ourselves. So, in addition to the time and effort and talents that the Foundation brought to create and undertake the project and complete it, it also, then, included its fundraising capacity as well as a significant donation.
O'Connor House
So from the day that you got involved with Janie Ellis and then were trying to call each other to the, the release of the debt, what was, what was the time frame?
Hugh Hallman
Oh, jeepers, I think it was somewhat more than four years, almost five? I, it was, I'm stunned when I think about it, how long a period of time this project covered. But the, the relationships that were developed and the great successes that came out of it during that entire period, I will cherish for the rest of my life. The, the moments that I remember, the, the truly sweet moments that I remember from this project and during my tenure as mayor also cause me to tear up because they are such personal and valuable memories. But they are memories that, really, are connected to Justice O'Connor and what a wonderful human being she is. The day my assistant my, we were in the original home with Justice O'Connor talking about it. And just the, both of them being cowgirls, how quickly the conversation turned to horseback riding and cutting cattle. And my family are ranchers from Arizona. And Justice O'Connor didn't know that about me, and having the discussion about what it was really like to grow up in this state. The hardscrabble life that ranchers have lived touched me deeply.
The, my favorite moment that I shared with Justice O'Connor was when we interviewed her on stage, it was a fairly impromptu effort. We had announced we were going to do this project. And a women's group asked for Justice O'Connor to come and present. And she agreed if it would be set up as an interview format. And it was her son Scott and I who got to interview her. And we undertook the interview at the Arizona Historical Society Museum. And I had brought from the site, one of the blocks. They're heavy. It's a big, adobe block. I had that with us on stage. And they're a little messy, and I had it on some plastic. We then met with some press folks immediately before that interview. And we were on the site, just slightly down the hill from where we are today. And I was holding that block in my hand, as she was describing her experience on the Lazy B and her home, and why she thought it appropriate that we celebrate this effort.
And she described that
adobe buildings can last for more than 1,000 years. And she said, "We hope this one will." And just as she said that, she turned and looked at the camera that was across from me. And it is the most adorable moment I can remember having been picked up on all of the video of everything we've done, seeing this suddenly young cowgirl appear through her eyes, peeking at the camera, smiling and almost winking. It demonstrates the, the richness of her life and what she's brought to others.
O'Connor House
Is there anything else you'd like to add
, to offer for those who will be listening to this story?
Hugh Hallman
I assume most of this will hit the cutting room floor, but I'm happy that a little bit…
We're not very good in Arizona about preserving our history. We're a young state. And so we're surrounded by things that were essential to what our state has become. But they're not so old that people think that much about them. We're not a state where the modern history dates back 400 years. In our modern history, we're lucky if we have a building that dates back 50 or 60 years. The La Casa Vega in downtown Tempe, dates to 1871. That's not a very long history compared to states back east, and certainly pales in comparison to the important historic sites that dot Europe and the Middle East. And yet, it is these few items we have that we need to be careful of and protect and preserve. Because they are the seeds of the greatness of this state. And once they are lost, they can never be replaced. And so I am truly honored and humbled by having had the opportunity to be part of saving this building and supporting the projects that have come out of it as a result, so that we assure that Justice O'Connor's legacy lives on for decades, if not centuries.
O'Connor House
Thank you.