As of 5/5/08 this page has been blacklisted by Google. This means a search for "John Sing Tang", for instance, will not find this page. You're here already, of course, but this page is effectively hidden from others.

This means somebody didn't like the contents and complained. I wonder who that could be? I wonder what they found objectionable?

Part of the Orwellian process of being blocked by Google is that you can never know WHO objected or WHY. And you have to guess around at what those secret objections are, whether those objections are sensible or self-serving, and how to fix it.

I've decided to fix it by doing further research, expanding the page, and sharing the material to bring more attention to this little street.

In 1961, the Arizona State University Board of Regents commisioned a Greek Row on a short segment of pavement called "Alpha Drive".

(Unusual that a school would build a Greek Row from scratch, as opposed to letting the frats occupy nearby four-story falling-down Victorian houses in the neighborhood. Then again, there weren't any of those.)

ASU turned to the best local architectural talent of the day, spreading out the commission. This talent includes some important names in Phoenix architectural history: Ed Varney, Kemper Goodwin, T.S. Montgomery, and Taliesin Associates.

All of them are designed more or less like motels, with residential rooms (in rows or stacks) and common areas, most with courtyards. Imagine it on opening day, 1961, the pinnacle year of mid-Century design, all the properties fresh and crisp, a bit like an old-school housing display. Each architect approached the assignment with his own taste and imagination, each design unique and competing with each other on this short street.

There were ten altogether, eight remaining. This article says ASU hopes to tear all this down within two years and move the Greeks into a major multi-use development with a hotel and restaurants and non-Greek student housing; there are eight separate owners here and that's slowing down ASU's plans; the Interfraternity Council has asked members not to speak to reporters; and the Sigma Chi house alone is valued at more than $1.4 million. "The (two) properties owned by the Board of Regents are those that have been demolished. The others are owned by entities related to the respective fraternities." The Board of Regents owns the parking lots, complicating matters.

So here in the thumping heart of ASU's notorious party scene, site of uncountable pizza deliveries, these buildings have taken heavy abuse. Of these remaining eight, the best and the one most connected to architectural history, the Taliesin project, is fenced off and in immediate danger of being erased as of April 2008.

As to the rest of them, I wouldn't bet on their survival. Heartbreaking shame.

Guirey's firm had been building for ASU for at least 10 years. His dorm consists of two orthree one-story brick curveless room blocks that contain a fairly cheerless common courtyard, at least at 8ish on a school morning. The only visible flourish is the shade supports that go out a foot longer than they need to. Either this was always a modest sort of frat, or we're missing something, or there's something missing.

This was the cheapest of the ten, contracted at $159,511 in 1961 dollars. There was no Building A.

Ah, this Taliesin Associates design has some true Wrightian substance visible through the chain-link fence. The generous second-story balcony with fancy railing is situated around a central massive brick chimney -- you imagine a big fireplace down in the main room. Of all the floorplans seen from overhead this is the simplest. It has excellent proportions and a nicely angled rear end, consistent with Wright's observation that a building shouldn't have a 'front' and 'back.'

Originally Phi Delta Theta.

The year 1961, Wright had only been gone for two years. Was this John Howe? Rattenbury? Montooth? Wes Peters? It's sad to hear that old familiar Wright music warped and strangled like this. Fenced off, boarded up, in immediate danger.

Kemper Goodwin, the man who designed much of the Tempe campus and first brought modernism to ASU in 1955 with the Memorial Union design, plants an outlandish curvilinear canopy and other vintage modernist gestures on the facade of a mostly-traditional dorm. The top of that canopy looks tempting for skateboarders and is, along with many other roofs along this street, heavily tagged and entertaining from an overhead view.

It's the only set of curves on the entire street, and it's a good one.

About James Pleinart we know little, so far, but today his design is the best-looking, a brave open TraveLodge-like plan with pool, striving towards international style simplicity, and the central entrance nicely marked with a high open canopy. Sigma Nu is one of the best maintained and lively-looking of these.

This was the most expensive of the ten, contracted at $264,551.

While it may offend some to be reminded, this frat was a filming location for "Shane's World 29 - Frat Row Scavenger Hunt 3" in 2002, in which Brian Buck, vice president of ASU's student government, can be seen giving his all.

Tang was the architect son of a prosperous Phoenix grocer who graduated from Rice in Houson, worked for Lescher and Mahoney as a while for a draftsman, and set up his own office in 1950 as the first Chinese-American architect in Arizona. Reportedly he earned a national reputation as a designer of modernist houses.

Now Tang's name has virtually disappeared. This frat house suggests a certain stature in 1961, an important datapoint about his career. The design is a two-story brick block of residence rooms in the back, quite square, and an irregular building for common areas in the front, and a social courtyard between the two. Originally for Alpha Tau Omega.

Gutted by fire in 1997. Closed since then (eleven years, man) and partly demolished.