Flat roofed adobe rowhouses meet the sidewalk in bright paint, with Teatro Carmen's yellow facade a block over on Meyer Avenue.
What Barrio Viejo looks like
runs between flat roofed adobe rowhouses painted in pink, cream, yellow and grey. Each wall meets the sidewalk with no front yard or setback, doors and window frames painted their own trim color, often red or blue against a paler wall. Courtyards sit behind the street walls, reached through a zaguan passage rather than a door that opens straight onto the block.
At the corner buildings keep the same proportions, one storey and flat roofed, their trim painted in contrasting reds and blues under overhead utility wires strung pole to pole. A block south, at Convent and Simpson, the Las 4 Esquinas building has its name hand lettered across a yellow adobe wall facing the intersection. A stop sign stands at the kerb in front of it.
stands on South Meyer Avenue behind an arched entrance and a pair of diamond glass block windows, its name still lettered over the door. The building's barrel parapet rises above a plain cornice line, one storey taller than the houses around it. A whitewashed neighbor with a private entrance gate stands just beyond it on the same block.
is a shrine on South Main Avenue, built into the remains of a brick wall about fifteen feet tall and thirty feet wide. Its two sides descend in staggered segments, and candles in glass jars sit along its ledges. Visitors press slips of paper into the cracks between the bricks.
Shot in Barrio Viejo
Teatro Carmen's facade on South Meyer Avenue appeared in Boys on the Side in 1995 and again in Goats in 2012. Both films kept the building as itself rather than standing in for anywhere else.
Teatro Carmen
South Meyer Avenue. The same facade carried two productions, thirteen years apart, both playing it as the real Tucson theater it is.
Boys on the Side, 1995
Teatro Carmen
Teatro Carmen's mission revival facade dates from 1915 and stands behind an arched entrance and diamond glass block windows on South Meyer Avenue. Boys on the Side (1995) used the building's exterior as itself, in the film's Tucson set second half. Street View
Goats, 2012
The same facade reappears in Goats (2012), again playing itself rather than standing in for another city. Its single arched bay and barrel parapet make it one of the district's most recognizable corners on Meyer Avenue. Street View
What Barrio Viejo can double for
Chihuahuita in El Paso, Texas
Chihuahuita's adobe rowhouses went up between 1890 and 1925 in the same wall to wall vernacular as Barrio Viejo, flush with the sidewalk and built from the same material. Look along South Santa Fe Street for the closest match to the scale here. Chihuahuita sits closer to the river and the rail yards, so wider shots need careful framing to keep modern industrial structures out of the background. Try searching adobe rowhouses flush sidewalk now.
Mesilla in Mesilla, New Mexico
Mesilla's thick walled adobe buildings around its plaza date from the 1850s through the 1880s, old enough in color and texture to pass for Barrio Viejo's earliest rows. Most face a central plaza rather than a street grid, so the closest matches are the side streets off it. Wider shots risk showing the plaza's bandstand and gift shop signage, which look distinctly like Mesilla instead of Tucson. Try searching thick walled adobe plaza buildings now.
