Without the efforts of preservationist Alison King, Phoenix might be a very different city.

Alison King recognized early on that midcentury architecture is important to the character and history of Phoenix,” says preservationist Roger Brevoort. He’s among many fans of King, who founded both the Modern Phoenix Neighborhood Network and modernphoenix.net, where she writes, designs and illustrates a manifest of Phoenix modernism.

“She was articulate and out front and able to say, ‘Let’s not talk about Palm Springs—let’s talk about Phoenix’ in a way that didn’t offend anyone,” Brevoort says.

Gerri Beadle, daughter of famed Phoenix architect Alfred Newman Beadle, has an even stronger opinion of King. “If Alison hadn’t moved back here from New York, there would be holes in our landscape,” she explains. “Today, people would be walking around saying, ‘Why did they tear down that beautiful old building?’ And the answer would be ‘Because Alison wasn’t here to stop them.’”

King tends to sidestep accolades, preferring to discuss bigger-picture stuff. “What I’m trying to do is help develop our identity by documenting where we came from,” she notes. “Phoenix is a city of transplanted people, so our culture is bombarded by new ideas from people who came here from other places. It’s important that Phoenix doesn’t lose sight of its true character. That’s really what my work is about.”

It’s also about saving and restoring noteworthy local architecture. Even before former mayor Greg Stanton asked King to launch a postwar architecture task force, she’d become known as a building hugger who got things done.

King was instrumental in saving dozens of noteworthy buildings, including the David and Gladys Wright House, a significant Frank Lloyd Wright property. More recently, she helped protect downtown’s Duke Photography building. She lectures far and wide on the importance of historic preservation and helps property owners research the buildings they’ve purchased in hopes they’ll want to restore them.

She created an exhibition of images of Phoenix by legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman in 2009 and has mapped and documented hundreds of notable midcentury structures throughout the Valley. She has become the city’s resident expert on architect Ralph Haver, whose career and game-changing designs she has documented in print and online.

When King received American Express’s Aspire Award for emerging preservationists, no one was surprised. Without King, Beadle says, her father’s distinctive work was more likely to have been forgotten. King created The Beadle Registry, which documents and identifies more than 80 residences and 200 other Beadle designs.

“People love his buildings and houses,” Gerri Beadle says, “but they didn’t know Al Beadle had designed them, or even who he was. Alison saw how my father’s architecture changed the city and put it into words and photographs.”

“There’s a bottom line here,” says journalist Donna Reiner. “Without Alison, we’d have fewer tools for others who want to learn the city’s architectural past.”

King’s own past began in a Scottsdale tract of Hallcraft Homes. She grew up surrounded by modern architecture and planned to be a high school art teacher. After acquiring degrees in design and art history, King settled in Manhattan with her husband, Matthew, whom she met at Saguaro High.

During annual visits home to Scottsdale, the couple started to take note of Southwestern architecture. Still, she says, “Documenting desert modernism didn’t become a serious pursuit until we moved back to Phoenix in 1999.”

As they shopped for a new home, the couple began photographing houses they liked and posting the images on the internet, back before there was social media and like-minded people weren’t as easy to find.“Someone would Google Ralph Haver and end up finding the photographs Matthew and I had posted,” King recalls. In 2003, she launched Modern Phoenix, where she could use her design skills and interest in art and architecture to promote modernism and local design. Within six months, she and Matthew were hosting their first midcentury modern home tour.

That first year, they sold 100 tickets. Today, the Modern Phoenix event, which will resume this year after a pandemic hiatus, sells 1,000 tickets in a matter of hours. It’s morphed into a 10-day-long affair featuring tours, talks and seminars aimed at design professionals and midcentury enthusiasts.

King isn’t keen on taking credit for the success of the midcentury modern movement here. She prefers to point to technology.

“We’ve never had a mainstream architectural critic keeping an eye on things and speaking up when a building was going to be torn down,” she points out. “With the internet, I’m my own media producer. I can use it like a printing press to amplify the voices and opinions that have helped Phoenix become self-reflective about its past.”

Her colleagues are more willing to talk about King’s influence. “Unlike the rest of us, who can be a bit noisy about saving a building,” Reiner says, “Alison is tactful and patient when she’s explaining why a developer shouldn’t level an important structure.”

King claims her patience comes from years of teaching. Her hope for Phoenix, she says, has always been the same.

“I want to help people feel more connected to this beautiful desert city,” she says,“and to take more pride in Phoenix, to value it and shape it thoughtfully. More than anything, I want people to listen to Phoenix’s stories and pass them on.”

SOURCES

modernphoenix.net