A really splendid, old-fashioned building often overlooked, solid and old-fashioned but fancy in its way, seven shades of red on the red tile roof, with a small political mystery, a trunk murderess, and swastikas. What more could you possibly want?

The official credit for the 1928 officially-named Maricopa County Courthouse / Phoenix City Hall goes to Edward Neild and Lescher & Mahoney.

Lescher & Mahoney is a familiar local name, in business since 1910 or so with a long, long string of government commissions.

And Edward Neild? Uh who?

Edward F. Neild was from Shreveport, Louisiana. Halfway around the planet in 1928 miles. Why does the western third 1/3 of this building have a different purpose and architect than the eastern 2/3? Why is there confusion and disagreement about Lescher & Mahoney's specific contribution? Why was Nield summoned all the way from Shreveport?

Well, I'm working on this project about architectural sculpture in the United States. To get a good survey of the buildings that have sculpture on them, we had to look at who built major civic buldings from 1870 through 1940 (roughly) and why.

You'd be surprised about how much psychological-architectural confidence-building went on in those years, to prop up the wispy intangible ideas of national banks, the federal reserve, and state and local government as those things were invented and put into place. Heavy buildings, classical references, stone statues of angry women, they were all tactics to make people believe in stuff.

Separately you'd be shocked at the power and wealth of what-we-call fraternal organizations in 1920s America. The Elks, the Native Sons of the Golden West, the Knights of Pythias, and especially the Masons. You might think of these guys as comical asses dressed in BVD's and frilly hotel lampshades, but they were deep into 1920s local politics from smoke-filled rooms and formed real estate syndicates and funded insurance companies and man, they called the shots.

So, take a look at the northeast cornerstone below. It has to be correct, it's carved in stone. It says GRAND LODGE STATE OF ARIZONA, F&AM (Free and Accepted Masons), etc., A.D. 1928, A.L. (Anno Lucis), 5928.

In the 1920s there were two popular building genres with a lot of psychological-architectural confidence-building: county courthouses and fraternal headquarters. It's heartwarming and satisfying to see them here under the same roof. Edward Neild was a high-ranking Mason summoned from Louisiana. His moment of career glory came in 1948 when he re-did the White House for Harry Truman, another high-ranking Mason. And that "Anno Lucis" stuff is just funny old hogwash.

So there you have the proud democratic tradition of Phoenix. The Maricopa County Court House was a Masonic lodge.

At one time the top floor served as the county jail, and there's some amazing jail-art up there, including a depiction of the Last Supper. At one point the jail was home to Mr. Miranda, of the familiar "Miranda warning", and also Winnie Ruth Judd, the purported trunk murderess who ran afoul of the proud Phoenix democratic tradition (good old boy network) and was tried here for killing two of her girlfriends and co-workers at the Lois Grunow Clinic, dismembering one of them, packing them in two trunks and a hatbox and carting this sweating, stinking, leaking luggage all the way to Los Angeles on the train. Except the hatbox, which she tossed out the window when nobody was looking.

The most remarkable thing about the building is the terra cotta carving. There are emblems and fasces and all kinds of things, but take a closer look at these two eagles, or phoenixes (your choice).

There's no attribution -- we don't know exactly who carved these, beyond attributing the terra cotta work to the Gladding, McBean company out of Lincoln, California. In placement and concept and design and execution they're amazing high-quality pieces of architectural sculpture, easily the best in Phoenix. And likely to have been influenced by the "emergent figures" on the Los Angeles Public Library of the same year, which Gladding, McBean also worked on.

Dignified and approachable, mysterious and weird but instantly understandable, well coordinated with the mass of the building, and subtle. The carved flames are subtle. The way the bird's breast is almost human. I wonder why these haven't been adopted as a civic symbol a long time ago.