While we were exploring Tucson and the university campus, we frequently drove down the city's main east-west drag, Speedway Boulevard. East of the campus, I noticed that the boulevard was lined with fine old Craftsman houses and apartment buildings, some of them derelict, but others clearly occupied. Intrigued, I took my camera and walked through this area, known as West University Neighborhood. It was Tucson's first suburban enclave, developed to house faculty and staff after the university was established on a large land grant in 1885. Back then the campus was a small group of buildings sitting on desert land outside the city limits. Over the next 50 years, the West University area grew to be a middle-class neighborhood of some 600 homes, most built in the Craftsman and Mission Revival styles.
