Tempe Historic Property Survey

This house was built in 1896 as the town home of prominent Arizona cattle rancher, freighter and merchant, Wolf Sachs. Born in Russia about 1853, Sachs immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty. His self-made career began at Philadelphia's Union Market, where he worked as a merchant until 1877. He migrated to the West the following year. He was attracted by the mining boom at Tombstone, and settled in Cochise County. Sachs pursued mining, prospecting, and wholesale freighting. In 1886, he began cattle ranching near Willcox. He was also associated with the prominent Willcox-based forwarding and commission house of J. Lieberman and Company. Through this company he purchased ranch lands in the Salt River Valley and moved to the Tempe District in 1892. Sachs grazed large herds of "butter fat" cattle on his extensive alfalfa pastures in Tempe and Buckeye, and became one of the Valley's most influential citizens. In 1896, he became one of the first elected members of the Tempe Town Council, and in 1897, he helped organized the Salt River Valley Cattleman's Association. By 1901, local newspapers referred to him as one of the "ten cattle kings of Arizona." Sachs began construction of his town home in Tempe in late 1895, shortly after his marriage to his deceased brother's wife, Leona.

The Wolf Sachs House is an outstanding example of Neo-Colonial Revival-influenced residential design. The house is a one-and-a half-story brick structure, measuring 33 feet by 42 feet. The original four-room house is symmetrical in plan and elevation, and is covered with a truncated, hipped roof. Evenly-located dormers provide light and ventilation to attic rooms which were added within the first ten years after construction. These elements, with their curved roof forms, are unique to this house and are a significant part of its architectural character. Constructed in a modest Neo-Colonial format, the house features period details such as simple classically derived wood pilasters and architrave at the central entry, plainboard frieze, an enclosed eaves with molded cornice. Pairs of double-hung windows set in segmental arched openings flank the main entrance and complete the symmetry of the façade. A shed-roof, wood-frame rear porch served originally as a kitchen. Minor modifications were made to the house about 1920, when the house was converted into apartments.

Garfield Goodwin purchased the house in 1921.  Later his son, Kemper Goodwin, and grandson, Michael, owned the house.  The Goodwin family sold the house in 1983.

In the late 1980s, the house was dismantled and rebuilt at Olde Towne Square, a modern office complex comprised of five relocated historic homes.

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