Walking my new favorite neighborhood

After watching volunteers from the Living Streets Alliance paint 6th Avenue by Armory Park in late October, I drove around the area and discovered a neighborhood of Spanish Revival and Territorial style homes. Most of them faced onto tree-lined walkways, rather than the street. They looked quite new and freshly painted, but the trees and shrubs lining the walkways had clearly been there for several years. I was puzzled until I spoke with a woman who lives there and learned more about it.

A few of these homes, built between 2000 and 2015, face onto 3rd St., above left. At the back of each house is a big garage that faces onto Ott St., above right. But most of the homes in this compact community behind Ott St. face only onto walkways with the garages in back lining the streets.

Here is what I saw as I wandered around the walkways in this neighborhood:

Territorial style with 21st Century colors

Homes in a kind of historic Arizona territorial era style. Each home has a different paint combination and no two homes of the same style and colors are side by side. There seem to be more of this style of home with a large front porch at the northern end of the community. Are there interior courtyards? Or small back yards between the houses and garages? I don’t know.

[A few days later: I saw photos of the interiors of a couple of these homes and they are just bare white boxes. I guess they would be called open concept. Disappointing. To answer my other question: there are interior courtyards between the back of the homes and the garages.]

Spanish Revival with Mission influence

On the left, Spanish Revival showing the influence of California Missions in the bell that hangs above the front entrance of the orange color home. The facade of the red house on the right also has a echoes of Spanish missions. As for the colors–they seem to be inspired by 1960s. The Spanish Revival homes built a century ago during the heyday of that architectural style were almost always painted white.

There are a handful of two story homes — one for each walkway–but most are single story houses taking up almost all the space on the lot. The two story homes are the least successful visually. In Colonial, Territorial and Spanish Revival homes the balcony on the second floor is of dark wood, not cliched wrought-iron with short white pillars.

And there is outdoor and garden art throughout the neighborhood, including these lizards (?) geckos (?) on a wall near the small park at the entrance to the community. That speaks well of who lives there.