Olde Towne Square
Olde Towne Square is a collection of five Territorial-era houses
that were dismantled and rebuilt on a new site. Four of the
buildings were moved from the Centerpoint redevelopment area.
The fifth, the Woolf/Cole House, had been demolished 20 years earlier,
but the pieces had been kept in storage. Because the houses were
rebuilt and lost many of their authentic original details, they
were no longer eligible for listing on the National Register of
Historic Places. However, the project demonstrated a new
approach to saving some of Tempe's historic buildings that would
have been lost. The project was designed by Stuart Siefer, a
local architect who had been involved in the rehabilitation of
other historic buildings in downtown Tempe. It was completed in
1992.
Three of the buildings in Olde Towne Square were built by J. W.
Woolf and Milton Meyer, pioneer homebuilders in Tempe. They are
easy to distinguish: they were all built of rustricated concrete
blocks, made to resemble real stone blocks, with ornate
Corinthian style concrete columns. In the early 1900s, the Neo-
Classical style Woolf-Meyer houses were striking examples of the
most modern style of construction.
Return to the beginning of Doors to the Past
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Go to the Tempe Historic Property Survey
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