Gilbert, Arizona

CHAPTER VII

Infrastructure— 1950s through 1980s

T he sewer system was installed throughout Gilbert beginning in 1947. Developers began to look at the Gilbert area as a place to build homes on cheap farmland. One of the first modern subdivisions was Gilbert Estates, built by Irvin Peden in the mid-1950s. Irvin grew up in Gilbert and continued development the remainder of his life. The Gilbert Estates subdivision is west of Gilbert Road and south of Elliot. The streets are a quarter-mile long and the homes are less than a thousand square feet—up to 1,230 square feet on aver age. The lots are also small, but much larger than the original lots in Gilbert that were only twenty-five feet wide and one hundred feet deep. The homes are on Catalina Street and Sahuaro Street. Our 1,230-square-foot home on Catalina Street was purchased for $11,300 in 1959. Below is a picture of the home initially built for Dr. Bill Statler in 1954 on Sahuaro

Street. The home typifies the size and style of that era. Most homes in Gilbert were frame construc tion from the 1920s and ’30s and were built on the narrow twenty-five-foot wide lots. A frame home on Delaware Street across from the Southern Pacific Railroad Section houses was sold to my dad in 1939 for two hundred dol lars. The home consisted of two rooms, which my dad soon expanded to three bedrooms, a small living room, and a kitchen. There was no indoor bathroom, but there was an outside privy. People bathed in large washtubs in those days, and children all had a bath on Saturday morning. Later, a cesspool was dug and an inside bathroom was installed, making the home very modern for the 1940s. It was after the sewer system was built that people hooked their disposal systems to the new service.

k 1954 home in Gilbert Estates

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