Maryvale: N. 47th Ave. and W. Indian School Rd.

In trying to decide on the multiple ways that I could display my houses; I researched the history of a suburb and looked at many different large cities within the United States on Google maps. Through my research, many ideas began to circulate around in my thoughts. Meanwhile, I decided to go back 50 years to 1961 and look at pictures of cities back then. I came across an old photograph from 1962 by Ralph Crane.

This photograph is of American real estate developer John F. Long looking over his private plan development that he developed in Maryvale, Phoenix, Arizona. Originally Long developed Maryvale as an area to provide affordable housing development for war veterans. 

This photograph intrigued me and I began to research it further. I came across an interview with Long that described the "Birth of Suburbia." In short, the interview described how Long started with a house for his family, then sold it and built another house in the same style. Furthermore, he eventually built 13 houses in the same manner that started the first subdivision. "We started Maryvale in 1954, and the overall plan was to develop a community that would provide homes for young families and a place for their recreation and employment and so forth, and their shopping, all in one given area," Long said. 

In further research, I found coordinates of an approximate location of where the above photograph was taken. The location is here on Google Maps on the southeast block of N 47th Ave and W Indian School Rd. 

This research is an extension of the photographic research I plan to do after graduating to document the changing landscape of the American West. 

For the molds of my houses. I plan to set up the houses in a location that can be viewed on level and from above. Furthermore, I am going to set up two separate sections; one section modeling the 1962 Crane photograph and the second section modeling the current Google Maps view of the same location as the photograph.