Churches and other views in 1884 Phoenix, Arizona

I'm enjoying the book "History of Arizona Territory 1884", and especially the wonderful drawings. This one is my favorite, and I've asked my top history adventurer, who prefers to remain anonymous, to help identify these places as accurately as possible.

Let's start with the view on Main Street, which is Washington. You're looking west at about 3rd Street. Ira Stroud's Livery is on the right, and the Gregory House is on your left. Of course, this is an idealized view of it, but Phoenix did have trees planted along Washington. Now let's take a look at the churches.

A church that's still in the same place nowadays, although a new building was built in 1915, is St. Mary's, which is on Monroe and 3rd Street.



St. Mary's Catholic Church is number 19 on the 1885 Dyer map

The Presbyterian Church was built in 1889, and was at 3rd Avenue and Adams. The new one, built in 1927 at Monroe and 4th Avenue, is still there. By the way, the Presbyterians built the first church in Phoenix, although originally it wasn't very impressive.




The Methodist Church was at 2nd Avenue and Washington, and the Methodist Church South, was at Central Avenue and Monroe. The south meant its association with the American South, not that it was south of the Methodist Church in Phoenix (in fact it was north).




The Baptist Church was on 2nd Avenue between Jefferson and Madison.



By the way, you serious Phoenix history buffs have already noticed that I'm using the numbering system, instead of the names which Phoenix began with originally, and which would have been in use in 1884. At the time Phoenix was only 15 blocks wide, so the names would have been fine, but as it grew, numbers replaced them, with Avenues to the west of Center (which became Central) and Streets to the east. The names of Presidents, of course, has remained the same.

And here's the list:

Centre Street changed to Central Avenue
Montezuma Street changed to 1st Street
Maricopa Street changed to 2nd Street
Pima Street changed to 3rd Street
Pinal Street changed to 4th Street
Arivapai Street changed to 5th Street (actually, this is a misspelling, the actual Indian tribe is Aravapi)
Tonto Street changed to 6th Street
Apache Street changed to 7th Street

Cortes Street changed to 1st Avenue
Mojave Street changed to 2nd Avenue
Papago Street changed to 3rd Avenue
Yuma Street changed to 4th Avenue
Cocopa Street changed to 5th Avenue
Hualpai Street changed to 6th Avenue
Yavapai Street changed to 7th Avenue

As for the hospital, well, your guess is as good as mine. It just looks like a big building, and it could be part of what would later be called the Insane Asylum, which was miles away from Phoenix (the equivalent of 24th Street and Van Buren), and it would stand to reason that it would located well away from the city, which would mean anywhere west of 7th Avenue, or east of 7th Street in 1884.


Thank you for visiting the churches and other views in 1884 Phoenix, Arizona!


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