Located in the Historic Pima County Courthouse, the Southern Arizona Heritage & Visitor Center is the starting point to discover all that Southern Arizona and the Sonoran Desert have to offer. The Visitor’s Center showcases interactive exhibits designed by, with Ralph Appelbaum Associates, to introduce you to new places and provide inspiration to guide your journey to Tucson. The new exhibits are inserted as free-standing components within the historic shell to retain a distinction between the new finishes and original structure beyond. Step under a wood “ramada” to chat with a docent or explore the topographic map, experience a summer monsoon through sound and light at the diorama, and tour various regional themes via the story portals that flank the sides of the space. The Center also includes a small theater, a changing gallery, and a gift shop. A fragment of the historic Presidio wall has been preserved and its previous location is highlighted on the floor surface, continuing a line in the courtyard that indicates the same.

The Visitor Center also includes an auditorium and additional changing gallery on the other side of the courtyard near the entry to the UA Gem and Mineral Museum. Upstairs, a Law and Order exhibit leads to the restored Dillinger Courtroom with its own exhibit about its namesake’s capture and trial. The Courtroom has been painstakingly preserved to showcase its original beauty from 1929 while modernizing the room for Pima County’s current and more flexible needs. This work was done as part of PMM’s comprehensive restoration and adaptive reuse of this landmark historic structure in collaboration with Pima County.

PROJECT INFO

Location : Tucson Arizona

Year Complete : 2020

Size : 7,000 square feet

Cost : $2.5M (TI Construction) and $1.6M (Exhibits)

Photography : Logan Havens