The Downtown Coffee Shop Replaced by Arizona’s Tallest Building

A restaurant entrepreneur arrived in Phoenix in 1953 and decided to take residents into the future, architecturally speaking. Ovide. A. Helsing, a native of Mobile, Alabama, had operated a chain of 26 restaurants in Chicago and a coffee shop in Miami before relocating to the Southwest. Helsing would continue his successful business run in Phoenix, including developing the Ramada Inn chain, fine dining restaurants, cafeterias, and a half-dozen eponymous coffee shops. His first venture in 1955, along with co-owner Earl R. Treulich, would be Helsing’s Coffee Shop, located Downtown at what could t