Downtown Phoenix’s Sahara Motor Hotel: Where Influential Women Left Their Mark

The 1956 opening of the Sahara Motor Hotel was a madhouse. Thousands filled its courtyard, overflowed onto adjacent streets, and packed the roof of the First National Bank building’s garage and other nearby vantage points. The motor hotel at 401 North First Street was a midcentury architectural gem with cast-in-place concrete and large expanses of glass, but it wasn’t the building most came to see. Sahara Motor Hotel postcards. Photo Credit: Arizona Memory Project George Goebel, the star of the self-titled NBC comedy series that ran for six seasons from 1954-59, brought his show to celebrate t