Dilapidated and thriving strip centers, small old brick warehouses, industrial and commercial properties, single family homes and estates, and many of the city's high-rises all have Central Avenue addresses.

On Central or in the immediate vicinity lie officially recognized and protected historic neighborhoods and a variety of cultural, performance, and sporting venues.

A replat of Phoenix's original townsite in 1895 was the first to officially show numbered streets and avenues starting from the east and west sides of Central.

Near North Mountain, architect William Robert Norton subdivided the first parts of Sunnyslope in 1911 amidst a "squatters' community of asthmatics and tuberculosis patients" whose makeshift dwellings were illegal in the city proper.

The Heard Museum (2301 N) opened in 1929 with little fanfare but would grow to be a highly respected institution of Native American culture and history.

As Phoenix sprawled north, developers found plenty of available land on Central Avenue and began capitalizing on the cachet of the youthful city's signature boulevard.

Architect Wenceslaus Sarmiento's largest project, the landmark Phoenix Financial Center (3443 N, better known by locals as the "Punch-card Building" in recognition of its unique southeastern facade) was also first finished in 1964 for banker and developer David Murdoch.

Development on North Central Avenue began anew in the 1980s as part of that decade's real estate boom with a second wave of office towers.

It is likely the last structure to be built that tall that far north, thus capping the build-out potential of the Central Avenue skyline almost five miles (8 km) from the origin downtown.

Floorplans of office towers built in previous decades had become functionally obsolete and contributed heavily toward Midtown's high vacancy rates.

After numerous failed initiatives, Phoenix voters approved the Transit 2000 Regional Transportation Plan which dedicates a percentage of funds raised through a 4/10-cent (four cents on ten dollars) sales tax to build the METRO Light Rail line.

The 20-mile (32 km) initial phase, which opened for service in late December 2008, runs from 19th Avenue/Dunlap station, to Camelback, down Central, and then down Washington Street en route to Tempe and Mesa.

[19] The alignment of light rail down the center of Central permanently reshaped its physical layout and impacted the future of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Light rail influenced growth as Phoenix adopted transit oriented development zoning standards in 2003 within 1/2 mile of stops,[20] rendering an autocentric Central Avenue a thing of the past.

[22] Tapestry's construction brought down the second-to-last estate home in the Central Avenue Corridor; the 1917 Ellis-Shackelford House (1242 N) still remains[23] north of Margaret T. Hance Park.

Also that year, Century Plaza [25] (3225 N), originally built in 1974 as offices, had a complete exterior and interior remodel as part of its conversion to condominiums.