Gerry McCue may now be in his 80s, but the retired father of four knows how much the kids today love their 3-D. That might explain why he’s always seeing young couples slow down as they pass his beautifully preserved 1944 French Provincial Ranch-style home in the Fairview Place historic district of Phoenix.

“You’d be surprised how often it happens,” McCue says. “If I’m out front cutting the grass, they’ll be driving through the neighborhood, and they’ll stop and say, ‘I had no idea these neighborhoods existed here!’ I think for some people, this is like a three-dimensional look at the past.”

McCue, who, with wife Marge, has lived in the same house for 50 years, says that when most people think of Tucson and Phoenix, they think of all the homogenous “cookie-cutter” suburban developments built since the ‘70s that gave the cities their dubitable reputation as the birthplace of Sun Belt urban sprawl. Indeed, in Phoenix it was the carving up of downtown neighborhoods in the mid-‘80s to make way for the I-10 freeway expansion that motivated the couple to start the Phoenix Historic Neighborhoods Coalition, a grassroots group of residents in various old neighborhoods who have fought to protect endangered districts from the formidable Southwestern push of progress.

“Freeway construction was already wiping out parts of the older neighborhoods, and the city was enticing people to move out to new home developments further north,” says McCue, who laments he saw many friends take the bait and move to 32nd Street and Shea — ironically, into neighborhoods similarly obliterated 10 years later to make way for State Route 51. “We felt our little neighborhood was worthy of preserving,” adds Marge.

Tucson, always more enamored of its past as one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in America (archaeological digs date life in the Old Pueblo back to 800 B.C., and its oldest surviving homes were built in the 1840s, when southern Arizona was still part of Mexico), has, much to the chagrin of its commuters, so far spared its older neighborhoods from the development of a comprehensive freeway system.

Nevertheless, the construction of the Tucson Convention Center in 1971 and its subsequent expansions, including the $246 million in additions scheduled for completion this year, have kept its city preservationists on guard, too.

“The big turning point in how people valued our older neighborhoods was during the period of urban renewal in the late ‘60s, when Tucson ended up replacing many square blocks of our city’s core with the new convention center and government buildings,” says Jonathan Mabry, head of the city’s Historic Preservation Office. “It was a classic case of ‘You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.’”

Tucson established its historic preservation office shortly after the Convention Center’s opening, and Phoenix finally started its own after the completion of the first leg of the I-10 in 1986. Together, and with the efforts of various historic preservation groups that sprang up in both cities, advocates have since managed to get 29 neighborhoods in Tucson and 35 in Phoenix designated by the National Register of Historic Districts, and even more on the cities’ historic property registers, which not only protect the houses from unreasonable demolition but also provide a 30- to 45-percent property tax break to live-in owners — and up to $10,000 in matching voter-approved grants to fix up exteriors.

That bonus has made historic homes even more attractive in this era of scaled-back house hunting. Couple the financial incentive with a renewed interest in compact and walkable, diverse mixed-use communities dubbed the “New Urbanism,” and it’s easy to see why young families are taking a long, fresh look at classic tree-lined neighborhoods like the McCue’s.

As the original preservationists prepare to pass the acorn-shaped street lamps on to the next torchbearers, a second generation of historic house enthusiasts are settling into what for some are their grandparents’ old neighborhoods.

“There are still people living in our neighborhood that were original buyers,” says Bruce Bilbrey, who’s lived for the past 20 years in Phoenix’s Medlock Place Historic District, a desirable square mile bordered today by the light rail hub at Central Avenue and Camelback. “But we’re also seeing a lot of younger families moving into the neighborhood and starting to fix up these older homes. Many of the original residents, as they’ve aged, are either moving away, selling their houses or, unfortunately, passing away. And we’re seeing a lot of younger people moving in — and a lot of renovation work.”

Past Restrictions

Whether this new generation will have the desire, or the political tools, to keep these districts authentically restored is a matter of concern for the original preservationists. Encanto resident G.G. George, founder of the first historic neighborhood association in Phoenix and a woman widely regarded as the movement’s grande dame, believes the passage of Proposition 207 in 2006, requiring 100 percent of the homeowners in a neighborhood to sign a waiver before any new residential historic district can be created, makes it virtually impossible to get a neighborhood approaching the mandatory 50-year-old mark to be designated historic today. In fact, there have been no more historic districts designated in Phoenix since 2007.

“When we decided to get Encanto on the national register, we had 100 percent of the residents on board,” she says. “No dissension. I don’t think you could get that today.”

Mabry says he’s seen a similar drop in the number of neighborhoods applying for historic designations in Tucson, even though the city still requires approval from just 51 percent of residents, rather than 100 percent.

“We haven’t had any new local designations since 1980,” Mabry says, even though many other neighborhoods have passed the required 50th birthday during that time. “These days, people don’t voluntarily sign up for increased regulations.”

Paperwork aside, some new owners of historic homes don’t feel compelled to retain quaint features like hand-cranking windows and gabled attic vents — particularly given the availability today for cheaper or more energy-efficient materials.

“There are certain people who want to remake these houses in their own image,” says George, disapprovingly. “Increasingly, people want to do their own thing.”

Ironically, it was that same individualistic spirit that created the eclectic mix of architectural styles that are the hallmark of all great historic districts. Drive down the streets of Tucson’s Blenman-Elm, Armory Park, El Presidio or West University historic districts, or Phoenix’s Willo, Encanto, F.Q. Story or Fairview Place, and you’re likely to encounter a wild mix of styles. Everything from Sonoran-style mud adobe block row houses and Art Deco homes with zig-zagging roof parapets and porthole windows, to Victorian-inspired houses with turrets and elaborate wrap-around porches and Tudors with steeply pitched roofs and Gothic-arched windows can be found on the same streets, often side-by-side.

“A big part of the attraction in an area like this is the vastly different architectural styles,” says Eric Johnstone, who’s lived in the Encanto-Palmcroft district of Phoenix for 18 years. “When these houses were originally built, there were building restrictions on height and proximity to the sidewalks and things like that, but for the most part, you could do whatever you wanted to do. If you wanted your house to have Greek columns or Japanese ornamentation, that seemed to be fine. So there’s a great diversity of style in these neighborhoods.”

Today, residents can still do whatever they like to the inside of their homes, but they’re severely restricted in what they can do with the front of their house, as one resident in Fairview Place discovered after applying to make renovations to her Cape Cod-style home. Paulla Reres, who says she moved into her home one year before the neighborhood was designated historic, proposed expanding the front porch using artificial wood siding and replacing all of the steel casement windows with more energy-efficient white vinyl sliders. In a three-year City Council battle that has drawn in the mayor and, some say, led to the controversial re-assigning of Historic Preservation Office head Barbara Stocklin to the light-rail department, Reres’ demands have repeatedly been rejected on the grounds that the entire district could lose its historic preservation status if enough houses followed her lead to replace vintage features with modern.

“People don’t like to conform to requirements,” says Diane Mihalsky, who lives in a 74-year-old early ranch-style Cape Cod in Phoenix’s Yaple Park district, where neighbors are currently fighting over whether or not to keep the area’s 80-year-old irrigation system.

“Some residents truly don’t appreciate these homes. They just look at it as an old house. And there are some only interested in the land, who’d like to pay for a demolition permit, knock it down and start over” — a move, incidentally, that historic associations are usually successful in delaying for years.

“Our feeling is, you know what you’re moving into when you buy a historic home,” Mihalsky adds. “In our neighborhood, there are people who complain about the smell of the irrigation waters — but that’s part of the history! Whenever I hear that kind of talk, I just want to scream, ‘Then why don’t you move to Anthem!’”

A ‘Leave It To Beaver’ Life

Gerry and Marge McCue know what it takes to get one of those little blue signs designating a neighborhood as a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places.

“It takes a tremendous amount of work!” says Gerry, recounting how he and Marge, along with 10 other neighbors, struggled for four years to document everything needed to be placed on the national listing. “I’m sure we looked like the village idiots, walking around with all these 3-by-5 index cards, drawing pictures and writing down the characteristics of each house. We had a couple people down in the Capital basement, looking at microfiche to get the history of any house that looked like it had been built in the ‘30s.”

Marge says that during the early days of the city’s Historic Preservation Office, most such research was done by the city. “But by the time we approached the city, there was no more grant money available to do the survey,” she says. “So ours became one of the first do-it-yourself preservations.”

Today, the couple, whose four grown children also live in historic neighborhoods within about a one-mile radius, are proud to have saved their district from the path of progress.

“You can go all around the Valley, and you will not see any other neighborhoods like these,” says Gerry. “You’re looking at houses that you do not see being built in the same manner anymore. When these houses were built, there were craftsmen who apprenticed with a carpenter or a mason, and they put in little artistic features that demonstrated their skills. Nowadays things are put up very quickly with new technology and new materials. But they don’t include those little touches you would see on an old house, like a niche in the wall, or hand-hewn corbels and canales coming off the roof. You don’t see window sills anymore!”

But preservationists feel they’re safeguarding more than just inset doorways and multiple layers of brickwork by securing one of those little blue signs. They’re also preserving vintage values.

“This neighborhood is still very friendly,” says Marge McCue. “If there’s an illness in the neighborhood, people bring food over to the house and mow your lawn for you. They’re not nosey, they’re not into your business, but if they see a need, they step right up, immediately. And it’s been that way in all the 50 years we’ve lived here.”

“When we first moved in here, it was a real Leave It To Beaver neighborhood,” says G.G. George. “And it still pretty much feels like that. I’ve always wondered, is it the people who make the neighborhood, or is it the neighborhood that makes the people?”

“We have values,” says Donna Reiner, who has lived in Phoenix’s artsy Coronado district for nine years. “We value the buildings we live in, and we see ourselves as caretakers of these buildings. But we’re also caretakers of the community. I see my neighbors. We chitchat. We trade things — if I’ve got extra vegetables from my garden, I know several people on my street who’ll be more than happy to take them. It’s that kind of place.”

Jane Powers, of Tucson’s Blenman-Elm district, says she sees that same kind of old-fashioned neighborliness even in the young renters, who are attracted to the district because of its proximity to downtown and the University of Arizona.

“A lot of them will help the older people in their homes,” she says. “And we all get to know each other.”

Though Powers and her husband have lived in the same house since the mid-‘70s, she says she’s confident the new kids on the block will retain the spirit and soul of her beloved old neighborhood.

“They get it,” she says. “I think it’s in good hands.”