Arizona Republic;
Phoenix, Ariz.;
Oct 27, 2000;
Kelly Pearce, The Arizona Republic;
If walls could speak, oh, what colorful stories the Westward Ho would tell!
On Sunday, dressed in flapper attire and gangster duds, some of them will do just that as they lead a nostalgic journey down Westward Ho's memory lane. The 15-story Spanish Colonial Revival building, now home to nearly 300 disabled adults and seniors, is a stop on the Roosevelt Action Association's Historic District Tour.
It's one of the first times the historic site will swing open its doors to the public. And those who already have seen its treasures hope it leads to future tour programs.
In anticipation of the building's latest rush of guests, residents hearken back to their own pasts.
"Most of these people visited when it was a top-dog hotel," assistant manager Diane Edelen said. "They're starting to retell their own stories."
"It's incredible," marveled Trace Vencenza, president of the Roosevelt neighborhood, who worked with Westward Ho officials to include the building on the tour. "I think it's hidden. I think it shows downtown's past is more colorful than many believe."
Mariam Cheshire, 73, and Erling Eaton, 70, are poised to show off that color.
"You get the feeling sometimes that part of these people who stayed here are still here watching," said Cheshire, who used to own a travel agency and has lived at the Ho for three years.
Residents joke about the presence of ghosts, including the white blur that sometimes passes by the window of a room sealed off when the hotel was converted into apartments.
The hotel opened in 1929 and was the first building in the Valley with air conditioning. It added a 268-foot tower to its roof in 1949 to accommodate KPHO-TV, Phoenix's first television station.
Hundreds feasted in the Thunderbird Room and graced the ballroom's maple dance floor. Politicians, movie stars and mobsters checked into the plush rooms. The Westward Ho was party central in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.
"Money was no problem," said Eaton, who is writing the hotel's history before its chapters are lost.
Cecilia Hopkins helped style that history.
"I curled and twirled for 20 years," said the 84-year-old resident, a former hotel beautician.
Many a celebrity sat in her chair. She remembered film starlet Myrna Loy, who asked for a curtain around her booth during the styling session. She buffed the fingernails of the wife of Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek but had to ask the guest to do her own hair. (Hopkins didn't know the first thing about the Chinese twist.)
"I gave her the comb," said Hopkins.
Today the building's tunnels, once popular with prohibitionists, are boarded up. The turquoise and gold leaf ceiling in the lobby is buried under three layers of paint. Only a handful of items are left from the hotel's original 13,000 pieces of silver and 60,000 pieces of china and glass.
Thriving gourmet restaurants and floral and curio shops have been replaced with a catering company and thrift store. The Kachina Room, once outfitted in fancy couches and chairs and decorated with cowboy paintings, is home to residents' shopping carts and bicycles. The top- floor garden balcony is no more.
But as long as the Westward Ho stands, the grandeur of yesteryear will live on, say Eaton and Cheshire.
[Illustration]
Photos (3) by Michael Ging/The Arizona Republic; Caption: (1)The Westward Ho's courtyard and fountain will be on view during the Roosevelt neighborhood's tour Sunday.
(2&3)The Westward Ho (above) was built with extensive ornamentation.
This (at left) is on the building exterior.