Built in 1929 to house the personal collections of Dwight and Maie Heard, the Heard Museum has been a landmark in Phoenix for over 75 years. Encompassing 130,000 square feet of classrooms, galleries and performance spaces, the Heard is a place where visitors from across the globe come to learn about the region’s Native cultures and art.
A little history: According to the museum’s website, in 1895, Dwight Bancroft Heard and his young bride, Maie Bartlett, moved from Chicago to call Phoenix home, hoping that the dryer climate would help Dwight with various health issues. The warm air definitely had a beneficial effect on this young go-getter, because he soon became one of the largest landowners in the Salt River Valley, and the Bartlett-Heard Land and Cattle Company raised cotton, alfalfa, citrus trees and prize cattle. Later, Dwight became president of the Arizona Cotton Growers’ Association and is widely credited with helping to make the Arizona cotton growers industry competitive internationally. He was also involved in publishing, investment lending and real estate development, and Maie actively founded or supported civic endeavors such as the YWCA, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts and the Woman’s Club of Phoenix.
Maie Heard and other Bartlett family members donated land for the city’s first civic center, which was located at the corner of McDowell Road and Central Avenue. This site is also where the original Phoenix Library and Phoenix Art Museum were located, and is where the Phoenix Art Museum stands today. Nearby, Dwight and Maie built a beautiful 6,000-square-foot house called ‘Casa Blanca’ in what was then considered north Phoenix. Designed around an open courtyard, the home featured Spanish-style architecture and lush landscaping, and in fact, the couple is responsible for the planting of hundreds of palm trees along four miles of roads in Los Olivos, the neighborhood surrounding their home. When you see palm trees around Phoenix, say a silent thanks to Dwight and Maie, because local historians often credit them with introducing the stately trees to Phoenix.
Casa Blanca became quite the social hub of the city, with the Heards hosting a variety of family and friends including Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Marshall Field, Harvey S. Firestone and others. Over the years, they enjoyed collecting American Indian Art and began to acquire pieces that they exhibited in their home. As a result of their travels and contacts with trading posts and Indian arts dealers, their collection rapidly grew, and as time went on, it became evident that a space larger than their home should be dedicated to their acquisitions. Thus, the idea for building a museum was born.
Unfortunately, Dwight died of a heart attack several months before The Heard Museum opened in June 1929. Visitors frequently rang a doorbell of Casa Blanca so that Maie could show them the museum, but she didn’t seem to mind as she loved teaching visitors about the Native cultures that were dear to her heart.
After Maie’s death in 1951, the Board of Trustees worked to ensure the museum’s continuation by hiring several staff members and establishing a volunteer Museum Guild. Events featuring Native artists and food were created that still continue to this day, and major expansions occurred at regular intervals, with the most recent adding three new exhibit galleries, bringing to ten the number of galleries at the Heard. ‘HOME: Native People in the Southwest’ is the museum’s 21,000-square-foot signature experience, housing almost 2,000 objects from the permanent collection.
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The author of this article deals with Phoenix real estate. The author has great knowledge about Phoenix home, Phoenix real estate and has written many articles on that as well.
Having trouble with shady auto mechanics. what should i do?
Where to begin? i have an ’04 mitsubishi endeavor. last august my transmision got stuck in 3rd so i sent it in to a transmission place. they said i needed a new one(used) and parts and labor came to about $2300.(keep in mind i still owed about $9000 on the car and its only worth maybe $6000 so im stuck with it.) for this reason and that reason it took them over 5 weeks to get my car back to me. when i got it back the transmission was slipping alot so i sent it back to them. they sent it to the dealership and supposedly reprogrammed the computer or something. when i got it back a few days later, i noticed it was still acting funny but not as bad. i didnt have time to send it back and i needed my car so i decided to see how it runs for a few weeks.
after 3 or 4 weeks its making funny noises. i take it to some overpriced firestone center and they tell me they want like $115 just to look at it. i decline that service but go with some cheaper one for about 30 bucks, where they tell me i need new shocks but there are no major problems. later that day, my engine throws a rod and my car is done.
after considering my options, i take a loan from my grandparents and send it to some japanese engine exchange place, where they tell me they have a used engine with 35000 miles on it for $1900 and they will put it in for 800 bucks. well later they say i need new hoses and belts an all that and i agree to like another 350 bucks for that. and after that there saying i have a hole in my radiator and i need a new one.
my car never overheated and never had a problem with the radiator but im not a mechanic so i have no idea if what they are saying is true so i okay them to put one in for another 200 bucks.
another month passes and i finally get the car back. they tell me that the engine warranty will be void if it overheats. well guess what, it overheats the first day i have it, voiding my engine warranty. my grandpa checks out the car and tells me they installed the radiator wrong. also the car has trouble starting, sometimes it takes me 15 minutes to get it started. i never had a problem with that on this car before. and the transmission is slipping like crazy. i call them up and they come get it again. in two days they bring it back saying everything is fixed.(for which they “had” to charge me another 180 bucks for “sensors” and who knows what else) well the radiator was fine but as they were leaving the car was leaking transmission fluid all over my driveway. i flagged them down and they looked at it and said that they think they filled it too full(after charging me for the fluid of course) and that it should stop after it overflows enough. well i take their word for it. and as fortune would have it i got a flat tire. well it was christmas time and i had no money left to fix it so the car sat until this week when i could afford to fix it.
now my car is still taking 10 minutes to get it started and the transmission is slipping like crazy and it feels like its about to go out again. i checked my transmission fluid and its very low. i dont know much about cars and im so tired of this nightmare. i still owe my granparents $3400 and im struggling just to pay my $300 car payments.
thats my story, now heres my question. what should i do? im tired of sending it to these mechanics who will probably just rip me off more and not even fix my car! ive put like $5800 into my car in the last 5 months! shouldnt my car work? should i sue the mechanics? should i talk to the transmission place or the people who replaced the engine? whos fault is it? please help.
Answer
i agree with Mars, you should have gone right back to the 1st repair shop who replaced the engine, you still get 90 days of labor and 1 year on parts. You should have contacted them the very 1st day when you got the engine back and it overheated. What gets me is that you were told that if the engine overheated it voids the warranty, dont you think that it was kind of fishy that it overheated that very same day? It was like they knew it was going to overheat. Problem now is that once someone else worked on the car , it automatically voids the 1st repair shops warranty. Now you are kind of stuck, because you have no where to go, you owe your grandparents money and the car is still not working. You need to go after the last people who worked on your car to make it right, you are not paying for any more repairs or parts that they deem necessary. You may have to go to a lawyer to ask of their advice, usually the 1st visit is free. But you really need to get this car repaired. Go after the last mechanics who worked on the engine and then go after the ones who worked on the trans, you should have some sort of warranty from these two at least. Last ones to work on the car are responsible, they took your money and you still have the same problems.
good luck…….
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