PHOENIX — A construction project in central Phoenix has recently allowed a century-old piece of Valley history to be uncovered.
"We knew it was there," Marshall Shore, the Valley's "Hip Historian" said looking at a hole in downtown Phoenix. "We didn't know how big it was. There was kind of these myths about where it was, what it was."
The dirt hole, about the size of a house, in the middle of a parking lot at Central Avenue and Fillmore Street, is the famed Gold Spot bowling alley.
And it hasn't seen daylight in 100 years.
The Gold Spot was a bowling alley built into the basement of a sporting goods store in the 1920s. It lasted until about 1950 when it was closed down.
Since that time, the building above the bowling alley became a car dealership, then a radio station before the building was knocked down completely. The basement was later sealed and a parking lot was built over the top.
Yes, they paved the Gold Spot and put up a parking lot.
Since then, only a handful of people have seen what was left of the bowling alley. The construction of the light rail line down Central Avenue required workers to fill in parts of the basement with concrete to support the expansion of the street.
The City of Phoenix saved the glass block skylights that were set into the sidewalk and made a historical display out of them.
But now, 100 years after it opened, what's left of the Gold Spot has been unearthed.
"And then suddenly be able to have it see the light of day is kind of incredible," Shore said.
There's just one catch.
The Gold Spot has only been uncovered...because it's being destroyed.
"This is basically almost 100 years old and the fact that we've unearthed it...and now demolishing it," Shore said.
There's a large construction project at Central and Fillmore and the basement bowling alley is not part of the design. Crews broke the concrete above it and stripped out everything inside last week.
But Shore hopes seeing what's left of this part of Phoenix's history might inspire people to keep searching for more secret history.
And the Gold Spot might live on, even as it's torn down.
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