F.Q. Story: Phoenix's Streetcar Suburb

This neighborhood has one of the more unusual origin stories in Phoenix real estate. The land was purchased in eighteen eighty-seven by Francis Quarles Story, a Boston wool merchant who held it for three decades before selling it in nineteen nineteen. A Phoenix development firm bought the parcel and advertised it in the Arizona Republican in March of nineteen twenty as, quote, the real estate event of the season.

At the time, Phoenix had a population of only twenty-nine thousand people. The F.Q. Story Addition was marketed as a streetcar suburb, positioned near the Grand Avenue and Kenilworth car lines so residents could ride downtown without a car.

The six hundred and two homes that followed were built mostly through the late nineteen twenties in Tudor Revival, Spanish Revival, and bungalow styles. As the automobile took over mid-decade, the newer homes added garages and porte cocheres. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-eight.