4
Talk of Arizona
Fall 2014
after a City Council man that a real estate developer wanted to honor. A few years later, it became Feldman Street, after Alther M. Feldman, an immigrant who ran a photography business and was a land developer. Feldman owned a nearby home.
In 1903, George Kitt, a prominent Tucson businessman who had been to New York City, proposed The Speedway during a late-night bull session with other Old Pueblo movers and shakers in a bar, Leighton wrote.
Kitt would have been familiar with the Harlem Speedway, which opened in 1898. It was built after New Yorkers tired of the local gentry racing their carriages and horses through regular streets.
Bicyclists and later cars were forbidden by law from the Speedway until 1919. It was paved and part of it eventually incorporated into Harlem River Drive.
Continued on next page