Tempe Historic Property Survey

William C. Park came to Tempe in 1882. He built this adobe house in 1883, and lived there until 1887, when he and his family moved to Mesa. Dr. Fenn J. Hart bought the house and opened a drug store in Tempe in 1888. Dr. Hart became the first mayor of Tempe, appointed by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors when the the town was first incorporated in 1894. He served as a physician for the Red Cross in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. He returned to Tempe for a few years. Though he spent much of his career working for mining companies all around the state, he still owned the house until 1919, when he moved to Phoenix.

The Park/Hart House was an outstanding example of the earliest Anglo-American style of architecture in Arizona. It had 18 inch thick plastered adobe walls and a steep pitched roof. The original portion of the house was the two front rooms built by William C. Park in 1883. About 1898, a wing was added to the back to form a T-shaped plan, and a veranda was built around the three sides of the addition. By the 1980s, the veranda had been enclosed with frame and plaster walls, and asphalt roofing covered the original wood shingles, but the house still retained much of its original appearance. The house was demolished in 1983.

Go to the Tempe Historic Property Survey