A Tucson City Council member is proposing the installation of street signs to honor street names from past eras.
Councilman Steve Leal said he wasn’t trying to change the official names of the streets to their originals, but only to install decorative street signs to honor the past.
“It adds another layer of intrigue, appreciation or interest,” Mr. Leal said. “It gives an immediate relationship between past and present.”
He also is proposing a decorative plaque on the street poles or on the sidewalk to explain the old street name and what the streets were like at the time of the walled presidio, the fortress that protected the community in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
In Tucson’s presidio and territorial days, the city’s streets didn’t have names like Pennington, Congress and Main. Instead, those streets were named, respectively, Calle del Arroyo, Calle de la Alegria and Camino Real.
Mr. Leal, who wants the city’s staff to come up with a cost estimate for carrying out his idea, sad the signs would be a cheap and effective way to spruce up downtown and drum up interest. He said the street signs have been proposed several times in various forms, but never materialized.
Tom Peterson, retired director of the Southern Division of the Arizona Historical Society, said some downtown street names were in Spanish from the presidio times until as recently as the early 1900s.
Marty McCune, the city’s historic preservation officer, said the historic street signs are a good idea, but that the street names need to have a plaque that explains them.
Or, at the least, she said the explanation of the Spanish names should be included in the brochure for the city’s downtown historic walking tour that is marked by a turquoise line.
“It’s a matter of how you structure it, so it’s clear what the current street names are,” she said. “It’s about how it’s executed so it isn’t confusing.”
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