Here at 600 Washington St in Heritage and Science Park, you face the Arizona Science Center. This institution began as the Arizona Museum of Science & Technology, conceived in 1980 by the Junior League of Phoenix as a pilot science center, and it opened to the public in 1984 in a small 10,000-square-foot storefront exhibition space tucked into the parking garage level of the downtown Phoenix Hyatt. In that first year more than 87,000 people came through its doors.
Sustained demand led to the Antoine Predock–designed building you see now: a 120,000-square-foot facility completed in 1997, which prompted the move to this location and the renaming of Heritage Square to Heritage and Science Park. Inside you’ll find daily demonstrations throughout the center, shows in the Dorrance DOME, and a five-story, giant-screen IMAX Theater. Listen for the murmur of discovery—the hum of exhibits, the cadence of demonstrations, the promise of a dome show.
Picture the small storefront that began it all, tucked into a parking garage, now grown into the buildings, walkways, and plazas of Heritage and Science Park.