The Madhouse on McDowell still holds court at the state fairgrounds. Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum at 1826 West McDowell Road opened on 3 November 1965 with the Ice Follies, a privately funded seven-million-dollar arena billed as the most modern in the Southwest - and its engineering backed the boast: a saddle-shaped, double-curvature cable roof over a perfect circle, designed by Lescher and Mahoney with structural work by T.Y. Lin, that cut air-conditioning volume and gave all of its seats.....

A 1917 garage on the old coast-to-coast highway became the venue that taught downtown Phoenix to go out again. Crescent Ballroom at 308 North 2nd Avenue opened on 3 October 2011 with a sold-out Blind Pilot show, the creation of promoter Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents, who had spent years booking other people's rooms across Arizona before renovating the F.L. Hart Garage into his own. The single-storey brick building with its wood-truss roof dates to Phoenix's first automobile boom, built alon.....

It is the largest art museum in the southwestern United States - 285,000 square feet holding more than 21,000 works - and it started with a building by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Phoenix Art Museum, at 1625 North Central Avenue in the city's Central Corridor, opened on 18 November 1959. The original three-storey building came from Alden B. Dow, the Michigan architect who trained at Taliesin; a 1965 east wing tripled the museum to 75,000 square feet, and successive expansions - includi.....

A blues radio host got a call from his landlord-to-be and hatched a club in one meeting. The Rhythm Room at 1019 East Indian School Road in midtown Phoenix opened on 18 September 1991 with Big Pete Pearson - the city's king of the blues - on stage, conceived when property owner Lenny Frankel recruited harmonica player and KJZZ radio host Bob Corritore to book and shape a blues room in the former Purple Turtle bar. Corritore, a Chicago transplant who had played the building in its Purple Turtle .....

An elementary school district built one of Phoenix's best theatres, and the voters paid for it on purpose. The Madison Center for the Arts at 5601 North 16th Street opened in 2018, owned and operated by the Madison Elementary School District as a shared home for student performances and professional touring shows. The building is unapologetically grand for its ownership: a 904-seat state-of-the-art auditorium, an extensive veranda, and a lobby with a 40-foot ceiling that hosts galas, weddings a.....

Arizona's oldest arts organization built its newest ideas a black box. The Hormel Theatre at 1825 North Central Avenue is the flexible second stage of the Phoenix Theatre Company, opened in October 2013 as the centerpiece of one of the most significant performing arts expansions in the Southwest - a project that added a soaring glass atrium lobby, rehearsal halls and entertainment spaces to the company's Central Arts District campus. The parent institution's pedigree is remarkable: founded as t.....

The smallest room on Arizona's biggest theatre campus is where the risks get taken. The Judith Hardes Theatre at 1825 North Central Avenue is the intimate stage of the Phoenix Theatre Company, a roughly 112-seat house on the company's Central Arts District campus at Central Avenue and McDowell Road. The company it serves is the state's founding arts institution: begun as the Phoenix Players in 1920 and resident on this ground since the Heard family's coach house became its home in 1924, incorpo.....

Nirvana, Tool and Pearl Jam played this address when it was the Mason Jar; the room that replaced it was named America's best small venue. The Rebel Lounge at 2303 East Indian School Road in Phoenix opened on May 20, 2015, when promoter Stephen "Psyko Steve" Chilton and partner Chuckie Duff bought the fabled rock bar's building and rebuilt it from the studs. The predecessor's legend loomed over the project: the Mason Jar ran from 1979 to 2004 as Phoenix's infamous metal and hard rock haven, hos.....

The building spent 75 years closed to the public as a recording studio; now the public sells it out. Walter Studios, at 747 West Roosevelt Street on the southwest corner of 7th Avenue in downtown Phoenix, reopened in 2022 as a 600-capacity concert hall. The 1948 structure was home to Canyon Records, the pioneering label devoted to Native American music that later expanded into film production - a heritage the renovation honors rather than paints over. The operator is Walter Productions, the Ph.....