The Arizona Republican writers and staff pose in the basement of the Heard Building on Central Avenue in 1920.

By 1920, Phoenix had grown to more than 29,000 citizens. Urban sprawl was beginning. Visionary entrepreneurs thought it was time to reach for the sky. The completion of the seven-story Heard Building at 112 N. Central Ave., in downtown Phoenix gave the city its “…first real skyscraper and up-to-the minute office building.”
The new building featured 149 office suites and was the home of The Arizona Republican. The office space occupied the top six stories of the building. The newspaper occupied the basement, first floor and mezzanine. From the top of the building, visitors could clearly see the entire city from 220 feet above street level. The concrete-constructed building was considered “absolutely fireproof.”
The Arizona Republican was founded in 1889 by then-territorial Governor Lewis Wolfley. Wolfley was a Republican appointee of then-President Benjamin Harrison. Governor Wolfley did not have much local support so he created the newspaper in order to spin the news to protect his administration. The name of the newspaper reflected its political leanings.
The original editorial staff of the newspaper “…consisted of Charles O. Ziegenfuss, city editor; C. O. Ziegenfuss, reporter; and just plain Charley Ziegenfuss, copy reader and head writer.” Clearly, staffing was not a high priority.
In the early years, news gathering was done on a personal basis. The reporter, clearly named Charley, knew most of the men in Phoenix. He also knew who he could trust to give him good information. There were only a few territorial offices to cover for news. Undoubtedly, these offices only had a few employees for Charley to contact. The early offices of the territory included District Court, Justice Court, City Hall, and the Chamber of Commerce.
Charley found most of his leads from hanging around saloons and the “poor man’s clubs.” These establishments included such places with names like the Bodega, the Anheuser, the Palace, the Capitol, the Cabinet, the Hoffman, and the Richelieu. He knew that although 99.5 percent of what he heard in these establishments was exaggerated lies, there were also nuggets of truth contained in the stories from the saloons.
Charley would wait until everyone sobered up to interview his sources. He said he got more than a few good stories from the tales told in the bars.
During this time, The Republican was known as the “meal ticket” newspaper. Charley would tell people “…pay days were about as irregular as the rainfall – and far less lucrative.” Because of the regular delays in paying his staff, Governor Wolfley would distribute meal tickets to his employees. Apparently, “…management just couldn’t bear to see its workmen go hungry.”
During this time there were two other newspapers in Phoenix. The citizens of Phoenix were mostly interested in reading about themselves in the local briefs of the newspapers. The Republican may have held the record in publishing these when they ran 132 items in a single day. A sample of these items included one that read, “City Marshall Billy Blakenship appeared on the street with a new sombrero yesterday morning.”
In 1899, the paper merged with The Salt River Herald, which had been founded as a weekly newspaper on Feb. 16, 1878. In October 1912 The Arizona Republican was acquired by Dwight B. Heard to support the presidential candidacy of his friend Theodore Roosevelt.
Heard’s leadership brought a new era of news reporting to Arizona.
— Mike Miller. Photo courtesy of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, Archives Division, Phoenix, #98-9903.