PHOENIX—Gone are the days when tenant Barry Schwartz watched blazing sunsets spill across downtown Phoenix from the windows of the historic Louis Emerson House.
Back then, the sky felt bigger than the skyline, he said.
Then came the towers.
Over eight years, Schwartz, 67, watched the Evans-Churchill neighborhood at Fourth and Pierce streets change around him. High-rises, parking lots, and steady traffic replaced the open vistas that once stretched beyond his windows.
Today, the century-old house at 623 North 4th St. stands as a lonely holdout amid what Schwartz calls the area’s “correctional facility” architecture.
“It has real character,” Schwartz said. “If you look at it in contrast to everything else around it, there’s no other character here.”…