Many stories left to tell
For the Melikians, preserving the Hotel San Carlos and other historic properties in the Phoenix area is the family business
The first time Greg Melikian laid eyes on the Hotel San Carlos, he knew it was going to be his.
The New York City businessman was strolling the streets of 1970s downtown Phoenix, headed to a meeting at a nearby hotel, when he saw the Italian Renaissance Revival-style building nestled in the heart of the city.
He noticed the terra cotta embellishments speckling the seven stories, the red-and-gold-rimmed awnings shading the lobby entrance and the blocky neon lettering that protrudes from the building’s front corner.
In the details, he also saw something else: an opportunity to freeze a fragment of Phoenix history that would otherwise fade away.
So, in 1973, Melikian bought and began restoring the San Carlos. Since then, its marble-lined halls have become a cornerstone of his family’s mission to preserve Arizona’s history, one building at a time.
“I always believed in preservation in New York City before I came and moved here,” he said. “I was buying buildings left and right — only historic buildings, because there’s heritage. There’s a story.”
Today, at age 94, the World War II veteran still walks his hotel’s worn marble floors sporting leather shoes, a matching leather briefcase swinging in his grip.
He talks about the building with ad-
oration, as if it were his child, pointing out the Austrian crystal chandeliers and greeting guests walking out of the dented copper elevators with a “Good afternoon.”
“You’re in the best corner of town,” he says, his voice laced with a thick New York accent.
But Melikian’s little piece of the past is being overshadowed as skyscrapers, corporate-owned hotels and high-rises gradually replace the buildings the family wants to save.
“(Phoenix has) lost its identity,” said Greg’s son, Robert Melikian, who is active in the historic-preservation community. “I feel like we’ve lost so much of it, we can’t re-create it. There are too many huge, unwalkable blocks downtown to re-create a living, walking environment.”
The historic San Carlos
The San Carlos is a historic landmark and a fixture in downtown Phoenix, making its name the day it opened in 1928 as the city’s first air-conditioned high-rise hotel.
That luxury — the unheard-of ability to not swelter in the summer heat — drew celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. For years, anyone from senators to singers would mingle in the card room and sunbathe on the pool deck.
More recently, ghost stories of a woman who once jumped from the roof haunting guests at the feet of their beds have drawn spirit chasers sporting gear comparable to a “Ghostbusters” movie.
“They sneak in on a monthly basis,” Robert said. “We find them in the stairwell in the middle of the night. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how they get in. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they all claim they successfully find the ghost.”
Robert admits an independently-run hotel in the inner city is a “tricky thing for guests.”
Because it’s not a well-known corporate hotel brand, travelers are often skeptical about booking rooms. Occupancy rates run about half of other Phoenix hotels throughout the year, and Robert said they cut prices by 10 percent to keep up with competitors.
Nevertheless, the building draws a special clientele.
More common than celebrities these days are the everyday guests inquiring about their own histories and families.
“The San Carlos has turned into a magnet of historic stories because it’s a real draw for people who were connected to its past,” Robert said.
“Their parents stayed there during World War II, they were born there, they went there to visit Clark Gable on the fourth floor because he was always there. Former guests, former employees come back. Unfortunately, Phoenix has torn down so much, there aren’t many buildings left connecting people.”
Melikian is historic in his own right
Before the Melikian family began preserving history, they made it.
At age 20, Greg Melikian was in Reims, France, in 1945, working as a high-speed-radio operator under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Allied Powers.
It was the late-night shift and a few radio operators were packed into a room. There was an air of anticipation mingled with what Melikian described as the “di-di-di-da-di-di-di-da-da-dadas” of the radios around him.
At 3:30 a.m., three officials pushed into the room and asked, “Which one of you is the youngest?”
Greg was.
“We need you to send this message and tell the story for the rest of your life,” they told him, giving him a note he would broadcast to every Allied command center and later donate to Arizona State University. The message would change the world:
“A representative of the German High Command signed the unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air force in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command at 0141 hours Central European Time May 7, 1945.”
The war in Europe was over.
Building a business, a community
After his military service, Greg earned his law degree and later became a civil night-court judge in New York City.
In the 1950s, he began buying and restoring historic New York properties and, later, Arizona properties.
In 1969, he and his four children moved to Phoenix. Since then, Greg has built a name for himself as a philanthropist and preserver of history.
“We’re known as the historic-preservation family,” Greg said.
Over the years, he’s collected a list of military and civic honors, including being named a “chevalier,” or a knight, in the French Legion of Honor and given the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, an award bestowed upon those who have “inspired service to our nation.”
The son of Armenian immigrants fleeing genocide, he is also active in the state’s Armenian community.
In 1984, he created the Melikian Center at ASU, which supports training students to speak less commonly taught Eastern European and Eurasian languages.
Melikian still runs the San Carlos with his children and Angela Hentz, the general manager for the past eight years. Wearing a light yellow buttondown polo shirt and brown khakis ironed to a crease, Greg struts the lobby like a king in his own palace.
“General Greg Melikian — he’s 94 and still drives,” Hentz said. “He’s here probably two or three times a week.”
Next in line for the family business
Although Greg has focused on the San Carlos as if it were another of his children, his son Robert has expanded outward, to other historic properties in metropolitan Phoenix.
When the family began piecing together what the San Carlos looked like in the 1920s through old photographs and stories, Robert and his three siblings were attending ASU.
As a student, Robert found himself drawn to a 1920s home in a neighborhood near the Tempe campus. The home, built by music professors at the school, was lined with hardwood floors and dominated by a stage. The room, he said, was built for music and connection. “I love the old buildings,” Robert said. “To me, it’s a calming feeling of fireplaces and nice ceilings, and I think most people do like that. They’d rather go to a restaurant with some character to them, some charm, some local identity, not just a cookie-cutter building they can go to in any city.”
He bought the house, his first building purchase of many. Today, the family owns 10 historic buildings around the state, in addition to the numerous properties they have bought, restored and sold to owners they believe will continue preserving the building.
Robert has become a voice for historic preservation in downtown Phoenix, working to educate residents on the properties that have been bulldozed and have faded from the landscape.
He’s written two books, “Hotel San Carlos” and “Vanishing Phoenix.” Most recently, he co-wrote a photo book, “Phoenix Past and Present,” telling the story of the city’s architecture through 84 side-by-side pictures.
Through his work, he hopes to capture the history that has been lost and highlight details often missed by those not looking: the sturdy red-brick buildings that line Phoenix’s art districts, the embellishments and pillars high over the heads of passers-by, the Victorianstyle homes tucked away in Valley neighborhoods.
“Once it’s bulldozed, that’s it,” Robert said. “You can’t replace that connection between people — all those memories, what the building stood for.”
Making rules to protect history
The city of Phoenix offers limited protections to historic buildings.
To be considered “historic” under city code, a property generally must be 50 years old or older, historically significant and not altered in a way that compromises the building’s integrity.
If it meets the criteria, the property can be added to the Phoenix Historical Property Register. The register so far lists 35 residential districts, eight nonresidential districts and 215 individual properties. The Hotel San Carlos, the Hotel Westward Ho, the Orpheum Theatre and the Heard Museum are among the list’s more iconic buildings.
Smaller buildings, registered or not, are often more vulnerable to demolition because they hold less of a spotlight.
If a property owner wants to demolish a building listed on the register or in a historic neighborhood, there is a oneyear demolition delay, said Michelle Dodds, historic-preservation officer for the city of Phoenix.
“The Phoenix register doesn’t prevent a demolition; it delays it,” Dodds said. “The whole intent behind that is to try and convince them not to — to convince them to look for other alternatives, or maybe find a new buyer.”
After the year elapses, the building can be demolished.
It’s those demolitions Robert aims to stop. In 2015, for instance, a Roosevelt Row building with a historic Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia mural painted on the brick wall faced demolition when a property owner announced plans to build a high-rise apartment building.
Robert said he offered $350,000 to move the building to his own lot and restore it. Alongside him were a number of Phoenix residents and the DeGrazia Foundation, a Tucson organization and gallery preserving the artist’s work, which spent months speaking to property owners trying to save the mural.
That building and the mural were later demolished.
“There’s a public benefit to these historic buildings, not just for the temporary owner,” Robert said. “And they are temporary owners of the buildings. If one link in the chain is broken, we lose it forever. All of us. It’s a shame. We trade historic buildings for people’s big bank accounts.”
Third generation of historians
That scarcity of the old in a growing city was something Robert pushed his daughter, Alexandra, to appreciate as she grew up around the San Carlos.
Alexandra, now 21 and living in Los Angeles, recalled taking trips around the city with her father as a child to visit his projects.
“It gave me a different perspective, more of an appreciation for older buildings and just history in general,” she said. “It’s something people my age or many of my friends don’t really have, especially in Phoenix, where it’s incredibly common for old buildings being torn down to just be turned into strip malls.”
In high school, she landed on her own preservation project when she began taking photos of historic buildings around the Valley and turning them into playing cards.
She said it was a sort of sentiment from her childhood. It was a combination, she said, of the hours she spent playing cards with her parents when they had little else to do and years wandering the building tethered to the Melikian identity.
“It was to bring awareness to all the buildings and the history we do need to save,” she said. “They keep these cities beautiful and interesting. They give it (Phoenix) a unique feel.”
Alexandra said she sees herself returning to preservation in the coming years. But by then, the San Carlos may have entered a new era.
In the next five years, Robert said, he hopes to hand off the building to an owner who will safeguard one of the few segments of 1920s Phoenix left standing.
“It is a magnet for history; it unites people,” he said. “If we sell it, we’re going to sell it to people who keep it standing.”
“They sneak in on a monthly basis. We find them in the stairwell in the middle of the night. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how they get in.” Robert Melikian On ghost hunters at the Hotel San Carlos