Excerpts from 'Tucson: A Drama in Time'

There are many books about Tucson history, but the newest one on the scene is a spinoff of another, seemingly unrelated, project.

John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, has been working on a five-volume project that is a memoir of his education combined with an education about nuclear weapons and the arms race from 1939-1989.

As he worked on it, he developed an extensive chronology that included Tucson events and which took on a life of its own, as he puts it.

Warnock had a new project. “Tucson: A Place-Making” was published in 2016 as volume 58, number 3, a special issue of the Journal of the Southwest, put out by the Southwest Center.

With some updates, it will soon be published as a book, “Tucson: A Drama in Time.” The chronology begins about 1 million years ago and ends in 2014 with the notation, “To be continued,” because, of course, Tucson isn’t throwing in the towel any time soon.

Warnock says that when he is out and about and people learn of his book and chronology, most have a story to tell of their family connection to the history of Tucson.

Warnock’s book is a history of the people of Tucson, the land, the cultures that made it and the community it was and has become.

Warnock has great praise for the Southwest Center and its mission. The center is part of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. It facilitates and sponsors research on the Southwest, publishing that research, and outreach and education.

Excerpts from “Tucson: A Drama in Time”

Most of us know Tucson was “born” Aug. 20, 1775, when the presidio was started. But the presidio didn’t just spring up. Before it was completed with adobe walls in 1783, it was the sight of two battles.

1775 August 20

On the east bank of the Santa Cruz, across the river from where the San Agustín Mission Church will be built at the foot of Sentinel Peak, Spanish Commandant Inspector General Hugo O’Conor founds the presidio “San Agustín de Toixón” as part of a campaign that has been ordered by the viceroy of New Spain to fortify the northern border from the Gulf of California to the Gulf of Mexico. The wood palisades that are erected at first are replaced by adobe walls starting in 1777, a job that is completed in 1783. The walls are 10 to 12 feet high and 3 feet wide at the base (before the rain erodes them). The walls of the presidio are said to have run along Washington Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Pennington Street on the south and Main Avenue on the west (current street names). Each side of the presidio will be about 750 feet long, with gates in the west and east walls, about where Alameda Street is now. Inside the presidio along the east wall a church (also named for San Agustín) and cemetery will later be built, with the commandant’s house in the center. The interior walls are lined with homes, barracks, stables, and warehouses. In the center of the presidio will be an open space called Plaza de las Armas. By 1779, the armas on the post include four bronze cannon for which 66 balls are available and enough powder that the captain could sell some to the settlers.

1779 November 6

Allande (Capt. Pedro Allande y Saabedra) has recruited Pimas, Papagos, and Gileños to serve as soldiers in campaigns against the Apaches. While the adobe walls of the presidio are being built but before they are finished, the First Battle of Tucson takes place between the presidio’s soldiers and Apaches. Not much is known about the battle, but it does represent a change in the Apaches’ typical practice of raiding.

1782 May 1

With the adobe walls not finished, the Second Battle of Tucson takes place, in which Allande’s soldiers defeat an even larger force of Apaches (Allande says 600) who this time come in from the north and surprise the presidio. In a change from their raiding tactics, they made a concerted and almost successful effort to breach the still-open entrance. Allande himself, despite a serious wound in his leg, with a few other defenders, manages to fight them off.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, will soon be published, but it has its beginnings as a volume of the Journal of the Southwest.

We are publishing excerpts on the fourth Monday of the month.

The University of Arizona began classes Oct. 5, 1891. The Arizona Daily Star helped students find accommodations by sending out a plea for rooms and board. This tidbit is not in our excerpt, but you can find that and other PDFs with this article online at tucson.com/dramaintime

From Tucson: A Place-Making, Volume 58, Number 3, Autumn 2016, concerning the beginnings of the University of Arizona:

1885

The University of Arizona is founded as a Morrill Act (1862) land-grant university. Six years later, it opens for classes. To promote the university for Tucson, Jacob Mansfeld had held an initial meeting in his stationer’s store. Pima County’s representative to the territorial legislature in Prescott, C.C. Stephens, had wanted to acquire the capital for Tucson. But by the time Tucson’s representatives were able to get to the legislative session in Prescott, Prescott and Yavapai County had nabbed that. Maricopa County had bagged the insane asylum and Normal School. Tucson lawyer Selim Franklin had then made a deft speech to the legislature on how the “Thieving Thirteenth” legislature might redeem itself by creating a university in Tucson. The bill to do so passes, on the condition that 40 acres be acquired for the purpose. Back in Tucson, and just in time to meet the deadline set by the legislature, Selim Franklin, Charles Strauss (then superintendent of public instruction for the territory), and Jacob Mansfeld convince three businessmen — E.C. Gifford, Ben C. Parker, and William S. Read — to donate the necessary land, which at the time lies in the empty desert some miles east of the town.

1887

Construction of the UA’s “Old Main,” then known as “the University Building,” is begun, to be completed in 1889, by architect C. H. Creighton. The stone is local, but the lumber has to be shipped from San Diego. The money runs out before the roof is on, but the regents manage to get federal grants under the Hatch and Morrill Acts to complete the job. In 1972, the building then known as Old Main will be the first of the UA’s buildings to be put on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2014, it is completely renovated to become the offices of the new president of the university, Ann Weaver Hart.

1890

UA’s first paid faculty member is Frank A. Gulley, a graduate of Michigan State Agricultural College. The first actual president of UA, Theodore Comstock, a mining engineer, takes office in 1894 and serves for only a year, being replaced by Howard Billman, who serves for two years.

1891

UA classes begin with 32 students in two colleges, Agriculture and Mines. Most of the students are “preparatory.” Besides Frank Gulley, the faculty are Dr. Theodore Comstock, dean of mines; C. B. Collingwood, an agricultural chemist; J. W. Toumey, botany and entomology; and V. E. Stollbrand, professor of mathematics and irrigation. The cohort is joined later by H. J. Hall, instructor in English. The first head of the Agricultural Experiment Station is Robert Forbes. UA’s “library” is in the office of Professor Gulley in Old Main.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, will soon be published, but it has its beginnings as a volume of the Journal of the Southwest.

We are publishing excerpts on the fourth Monday of the month.

Before St. Mary’s Hospital, the best Tucson had was a pest house on Alameda Street (pest houses were those places for people with communicable diseases, which in Tucson were likely to be tuberculosis and smallpox in the 1880s), and mothers. Then came the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

From Tucson: A Place-Making, Volume 58, Number 3, Autumn 2016, concerning Arizona’s first hospital:

1870

Having traveled by wagon from San Diego across the California and Arizona deserts, seven Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet come around Point of Rocks and arrive in Tucson, the townspeople having gone out to welcome them in a celebration punctuated by gunfire. Before long, they have opened a private school for girls near St. Augustine Cathedral. In 1873, they open a school for Indians at Mission San Xavier (still in existence in 2014, operated now by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, who teach at the school and reside in the convent at San Xavier). In 1880, they will open St. Mary’s Hospital, Arizona’s first hospital.

1880

At the foot of Tumamoc Hill on Sisters Lane (later Hospital Road and then St. Mary’s Road), St. Mary’s Hospital is opened by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, who had first arrived in Tucson 10 years earlier, having come by wagon from San Diego. Before this, Tucson’s “hospital” had been its “pest house,” on Alameda Street, much in use during the epidemic of smallpox that began in Tucson in 1877.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, will soon be published, but it has its beginnings as a volume of the Journal of the Southwest.

We are publishing excerpts on the fourth Monday of the month.

Many people managed to farm land in Southern Arizona successfully, but some used the Homestead Act for different purposes. From “Tucson: A Place-Making,” Volume 58, Number 3, Autumn 2016, of the Journal of the Southwest:

1880s and after

Residents and new arrivals are taking advantage of the Homestead Act, usually with no intention of farming the land.

Five people homestead the almost entirely vacant section of land east of what is to become the University of Arizona, between what will become the streets of Speedway and Broadway and west of what will become Country Club.

These homesteaders are Louis Mueller (who patents 40 acres in the southwest of the section in 1889), Eugene Brunier (who patents 120 acres east of Mueller’s land in 1890), William H. Campbell (patents 160 acres in the northwest of the section in 1898, and after whom Campbell Avenue will be named), Charles S. and Alvina Himmel Edmondson (who come to Tucson from New Orleans in 1897 and patent 160 acres in the northeast of the section in 1900), and Hugh Byrne (patents 160 acres in the middle of the section in 1906). The homesteads will later be sold or developed into subdivisions. Alvina Himmel Edmondson, who is divorced from Charles in 1927, will sell part of their homestead to the city in 1934 or 1935 to be made into a park named for her parents, the Himmels.

1898

Anna Marie Stattelman (age 26, b. Germany 1871, who had arrived in Tucson by train in 1889 with her parents and a sister) homesteads a large tract of land extending from Park Avenue to Cherry Avenue and from what is now Lester Street to Grant Road (then called North Street). Later this year, she builds a home near North Santa Rita Avenue and East Lester Street.

She will name most of the streets in the area after trees, perhaps even including Elm Street, Walnut Street (now Cherry Avenue), Pine Avenue (now Warren), Maple Avenue (now Martin), and Oak Street (Now Campbell Avenue). In 1899, she will marry Frank Lester, superintendent of the Mammoth Gold Mines. She builds several Craftsman bungalows in the area, and is one of the first people to rent homes to UA students.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, will soon be published, but it has its beginnings as a volume of the Journal of the Southwest.

We are publishing excerpts on the fourth Monday of the month.

As people learned that the dry climate of Tucson and Southern Arizona was beneficial for those with tuberculosis, they came in droves seeking, if not a cure, an easier life.

Dr. Hiram Fenner, who treated many of these health seekers, was also known for bringing the first automobile to Tucson.

From “Tucson: A Drama in Time”:

1890s

Tuberculosis continues as a scourge in the United States, the cause of 1 in 6 deaths during the second half of the 19th century. The idea has caught on across the country that living in a dry, sunny climate can be helpful to “lungers” and the advent of the railroad has made it possible for numbers of them to come to Tucson as health seekers.

The city does not have enough housing for all who come and tent cities have begun to spring up.

1900

At its site west of the Santa Cruz River, St. Mary’s Hospital opens a large circular sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, designed by Fenner. At Fort Lowell, three of the officers’ quarters and their kitchens are purchased by Mrs. Dolly Cates and her two nieces for use as a sanatorium. Shortly afterward, Dr. and Mrs. Swan begin operating a sanatorium called Swan Ranch out of the old Post Trader’s Store (and bar) that “Pie” Allen had opened next to the new fort in 1873.

In the 19th century, tuberculosis had been the leading cause of death: 1 in 4 in the first half, 1 in 6 in the second half.

1899

The first automobile appears in Tucson, a Locomobile steamer, imported by Fenner, an Ohioan who had arrived in Tucson in the 1880s, now a member of the Owls Club.

In 1905, Dr. Fenner will receive the first driver’s license in Tucson and in 1914 or 1915, he will, according to Roy Drachman, become the first doctor to make his rounds in an automobile.

It is not known who was the last to do so.

Source: “Tucson: A Place-Making,” Volume 58, Number 3, Autumn 2016, of the Journal of the Southwest.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock, professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, will soon be published, but it has its beginnings as a volume of the Journal of the Southwest.

We are publishing excerpts of the book on the fourth Monday of the month.

Imagine the city’s first Fire Department — all volunteer — and the arrival of the first fire engine. This is before the “horseless carriage.” The fire engine is pulled by hand until the new Fire Department can afford horses.

1898

The city’s first fire engine is called “The Chemical.” It had to be pulled to fires by the volunteer firemen, who would attempt to dampen the fire until more water could be brought in.

1898

A fire destroys the two-story Radulovich Building at the northeast corner of Congress and Stone occupied by some of Tucson’s principal businesses, including Charles F. Hoff’s telephone exchange. Others were W. F. Kitt ladies furnishings; Mrs. Beggs’ millinery store; Zeigler’s candy and ice cream parlor; Wells, Fargo & Co. express office; and the Western Union telegraph company. The fire shows the inadequacy of fire protection at the time (the Fire Department’s equipment is pulled by hand until a merchant lends it some horses). Fire is a danger for buildings built with the wood brought in via the railroad, though not for adobe structures.

1900

With money raised through donations and special performances at the Opera House, Tucson’s Fire Department purchases four horses to pull its fire equipment. Funds can be collected from people whose property is saved, but only if it is saved.

Tucson’s first salaried fireman, Frank C. Norton, had been hired the previous year. The second one, Alex McNeil, is hired this year. McNeil will become chief in 1938 and retire after a 40-year career.

A city directory is an excellent snapshot of the daily life of a city like Tucson.

Every address is listed and tells the name of the resident or business at that address. The homeowners and businesses are also listed alphabetically and businesses are again listed by type.

So what did the 1900 city directory say about Tucson?

According to “Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John P. Warnock:

1900

The city directory for 1899-1900 is published by Chas. T. Connell.

The introduction notes that Tucson is “perhaps the oldest place in the United States settled by Europeans or their descendants.”

This, of course, was not the case. The Spanish had founded St. Augustine, Florida in 1566 and Santa Fe in 1610.

It goes on to say, “The wealth of Tucson represents the steady accumulation of the merchants, mechanics, and shopmen. No outside capital has ever been loaned here for any kind of improvements. No one brought any money when they came to Tucson; what they have now was made in Tucson.”

Fort Lowell and the railroad are not mentioned.

The introduction notes that there are churches in Tucson for Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, with Catholics and Methodists the most numerous.

Twenty “Fraternal Organizations” are listed, including three for women.

Small businesses in Tucson, according to the directory, included: four providers of liquor and beer, a number of saloons, two banks, two ice companies, three hardware stores, a shoe store (Harry Drachman), a jeweler, an assayer, a painter and paper hanger, nine lawyers, six physicians, two druggists, two meat markets, two purveyors of guns (one also sells bicycles), several barbers, a livery stable, an ice cream store.

A roadhouse and machine shop for the Southern Pacific Railroad were also located in Tucson.

Restaurants include the Maisson [sic] d’Or, the Poodle Dog Café, the Oriental Restaurant and Saloon, and Won Tai’s Celestial Restaurant.

At least until World War I, cooking is done on wood or charcoal fires, with the wagonloads of wood being brought in by Papagos.

Tucson is still its original 2 square miles, patented in 1874, with a population now of 7,531 (city directory claims 10,000), not much increase from 1880, but a good recovery from the 5,000 of 1890.

Mexicans are still a majority, barely, at 4,122 or 54.7% — down from 4,469 in 1880 because of less immigration from Mexico.

This is the last decade in which there is a Mexican majority in Tucson.

African-Americans are numbered at 86.

Farming, ranching and, to a lesser degree, mining are the major economic activities and users of water. There is no agriculture yet in the lower Santa Cruz River Basin, but with the introduction of pump irrigation this is soon to change.

Tucson now has water, sewer, gas, electric light, telephone and telegraph services (no electric street cars yet).

The city directory claims 1,898 students in schools (an increase of 533 since 1890). Private schools listed are the Indian School supported by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, St. Joseph’s Academy for Girls, and the Orphans Home run by the Sisters of St. Joseph.

In Tucson’s public schools, both sexes have been in the same classroom since 1883 and this has become accepted practice.

“Tucson: A Drama in Time” is scheduled for publication in October by Wheatmark. The Star is publishing excerpts on the fourth Monday of each month.

This excerpt of “Tucson: A Drama in Time” concerns Leighton Kramer, who built an 8,000-square-foot home called Rancho Santa Catalina. The Kramer Ranch grounds, called Catalina Field, was the location for the first Fiesta de los Vaqueros. The rodeo moved from this location in 1932.

1922

Leighton Kramer, a businessman from Philadelphia and a tuberculosis sufferer who has been visiting Tucson since 1918 after cavalry service on the Mexican border during World War I, buys the land and structures owned by James and Lata Wheeler, and other property up to what is now Grant Road between Campbell and Tucson Boulevard. At the site of the Wheelers’ house on the north side of what is now Elm Street, he begins constructing a large house he will call Rancho Santa Catalina.

1924

North of Elm, Leighton Kramer completes his Rancho Santa Catalina, an 8,000-square-foot two-story home with 22 rooms and 5 baths and a roof of green Ludowici tiles, and it is “easily the largest and most pretentious of Tucson’s private residences,” according to a reporter form the Citizen writing in 1925. Kramer also establishes this year the Arizona Polo Association of Tucson. In 1925, with other local boosters, he will found Tucson’s Fiesta de los Vaqueros and Rodeo Parade, both still going in 2014.

1925

First year of the Fiesta de los Vaqueros at the Kramer Ranch grounds (Catalina Field) and downtown. The Blackfoot painter Lone Wolf (d.1965) draws the art for the first flier and rides in full Blackfoot regalia in this and later rodeo parades. A painting of his also is given the place of honor over the fireplace in Rancho Santa Catalina. In “Progressive Arizona” for 1925, Kramer writes that “La Fiesta de los Vaqueros (is) a name destined to be as famous in the annals of the Sunshine City as the Mardi Gras of New Orleans, the Beauty Pageant of Atlantic City, or Flower Show at Pasadena.”

Dec. 18, 1930

At Olsen and Elm, across from Leighton Kramer’s 200-acre Rancho Santa Catalina, the Arizona Inn (first phase, architect Merritt Starkweather, landscape architect James Oliphant) is opened by Isabella Greenway on 14 acres, adjoining the home she had built at the site two years earlier. The inn is to be open half the year, from November to May.

1940

Leighton Kramer had died in Tucson in 1930 and his estate was probated in 1933. Dickson (b. 1896, d.1985) and Sue B. Potter from Easthampton, New York, now buy from Hardy-Stonecypher Realty the portion of what had been Kramer’s ranch just across Elm from the Arizona Inn, including the Rancho Santa Catalina house and the Wheeler well and 80-foot circular swimming pool on the property. The Potters add the Potter Place entrance on Elm Street, build a residence and establish in Kramer’s former house the Potter School, a sporty horsey finishing/college prep school for girls grades 7-12 that operates into the early 1950s. In 1949, faculty come from Smith, Vassar, Barnard, Scripps, Ohio Wesleyan, and Princeton Theological Seminary (David Sholin, later to become the pastor at Mountain View Presbyterian, an activist in the Sanctuary Movement, the president of Amnesty International). On the remaining Kramer Ranch grounds to the north, Catalina Vista is now platted. The development looks back to the “City Beautiful Movement” of 10 years earlier, with winding streets, parks, and houses limited by covenants to “Spanish, Mediterranean, Moroccan, Mexican, Indian, Early Californian” styles. Non-whites are excluded from this development and from others in Tucson, a practice that continues into the 1960s. There are not many sales in Catalina Vista until after World War II.

The Marshall Foundation is a well-known institution to students and faculty at the University of Arizona and to most Tucsonans.

Louise Foucar Marshall left her mark on Tucson and the UA long before the foundation was established. From “Tucson: A Drama in Time”:

1900

Louise Foucar (b. 1864 in Boston to a family that had emigrated from Germany) had begun graduate study at the University of Arizona in 1898, having come to Tucson from Denver after developing tuberculosis and heart problems. In 1900 she becomes UA’s first woman professor, teaching botany. Because of earlier studies, she also taught English, French, Latin, and Spanish. In 1901 she is named head of the Department of Ancient and Modern Languages. Using money inherited from her parents, she begins buying up raw land around the university, which is still far from downtown but now accessible by the Tucson Street Railway.

1931

Louise Foucar Marshall, who in 1901 had become the first woman faculty member at UA, shoots her husband. Thomas Marshall, whom she suspected of having an affair with a former housekeeper as well as poisoning her, was struck five times. He died of an infection three weeks later and Louise Marshall is charged with first-degree murder. She was defended by local lawyers James Boyle and George Darnell in a trial that was moved to Nogales. Her defense: temporary insanity. After a long trial, the jury deliberated for about a half-hour before acquitting Marshall. She returns to developing her properties in Tucson and building the Marshall Foundation. When Marshall dies in 1956, at the age of 92, the holdings of the Marshall Foundation are worth more than $900,000. In 2014, the foundation was collecting income from 76 commercial and retail tenants and donated $1 million to scholarships and other charitable and educational causes in Tucson.

Bad Girls of Arizona: Louise Marshall $0.99 Kindle Nook Free for Star subscribers 7/8/2014

This excerpt from “Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John Warnock, tells of the early days of Albert Steinfeld, who arrived in Tucson at the age of 17.

1872

Albert Steinfeld is invited by his three uncles, Aaron, Louis and William Zeckendorf, to come work in the family business in Tucson. From his parents’ home in Denver, the 17-year-old travels alone by train to San Francisco, where he boards the weekly boat to San Diego and then takes the tri-weekly stage to Tucson. He is mortified by what he finds Tucson to be, but resolves to try to make a go of it. Aaron dies soon after this and Louis sells out of the Santa Fe business.

1878

Louis and William Zeckendorf terminate their business partnership. Steinfeld is made managing partner of L. Zeckendorf & Co. William departs on travels, returns later to open a competing store, which fails, after which William joins his wife in her hometown of New York City where he lives out the rest of his life.

1896

The L. Zeckendorf & Co. store is thriving. “The principal departments consist of shelf and heavy hardware, agricultural implements, paints and oils, tin and hollow ware, groceries and provisions, dry and fancy goods, clothing, gents’ furnishing goods, boots and shoes, furniture, carpets, wall paper and shades,” writes Bettina Lyons, selling wholesale and retail over southern and central Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Louis resides in New York. Steinfeld resides in Tucson and manages the operation.

1904

After a complex and contentious dispute with Louis Zeckendorf arising out of their ownership of stock in the Silverbell Copper Mine 45 miles northwest of Tucson, Steinfeld buys out the partnership interest of Louis Zeckendorf and is now in sole control of the store.

He changes the business’s name to Albert Steinfeld & Co., and builds a big new store on the corner of Stone and Pennington that has a grand opening in 1906. Bettina Lyons writes, “The Citizen marveled that only two other department stores in the West — one in Denver and the other in San Francisco — rivaled Tucson’s new emporium. ‘When Steinfeld arrived in Tucson, thirty-four years ago, the Zeckendorf business amounted to only $40,000 per year,’ it reminded its readers. ‘It had just two clerks to wait on customers and keep the books. Now the annual business of A. Steinfeld & Co. aggregated $1,500,000 and required a force of 150 people.’”

Steinfeld and his descendants will operate the business into the 1980s, when it closes and the building is demolished.

An excerpt from “Tucson: A Drama in Time,” by John Warnock:

1905

Levi Manning and Leo Goldschmidt subdivide the land they had bought between Main and the Santa Cruz River, then known as “The Flats,” later as the “Goldschmidt Addition” and then as “Snob Hollow” on Granada Street. The houses will be two-story houses in set-back American (not curb-side Sonoran) style. Goldschmidt (b. Hamburg 1852, d. Tucson 1944), brother-in-law of Jacob Mansfeld, had worked in Zeckendorf’s store after coming to Tucson, then started a furniture store that did well, then in 1888 had bought into the Eagle Flour Mill (with four stories, Tucson’s tallest building) that had been founded in 1898 by E. N. Fish and partners two blocks northwest of the train depot. Goldschmidt ended up owning it, and remained president of the company until 1922 when he sold out to a Phoenix firm and retired. In 1919, with Mose Drachman and Judge W. H. Sawtelle, he will build the Hotel Congress and the Rialto building, both now on the National Register of Historic Places.

1905-1907

Levi Howell Manning is elected mayor. As he had promised in his campaign, he outlaws gambling and requires the police to start wearing uniforms. In 1907, he builds a 37,000-square foot mansion in Snob Hollow at the foot of Paseo Redondo, designed in a combination of architectural styles by Henry Charles Trost; it has stables and what may be the first private swimming pool in Tucson. The house is sold to the Elks club in 1949, then is operated as a wedding and meeting venue, and is purchased in 2013 by the El Rio Community Health Center for its administrative offices.