Heritage Square: The Last Block of Old Phoenix
Arizona
Downtown Phoenix was nearly erased. Heritage Square is the one block that survived.
The centerpiece is the Rosson House, built in eighteen ninety-five in the Queen Anne Victorian style, a design that may follow plans by architect George Franklin Barber and occupied by a succession of Phoenix families for decades. It sits on what was once the original residential core of the city.
Urban renewal in the nineteen sixties and seventies demolished most of that original neighborhood. Mayor John D. Driggs intervened in the nineteen seventies to save the Rosson House and the handful of historic structures around it. Preservation began in nineteen seventy-six, and the park opened in nineteen eighty.
Today Heritage Square contains homes dating from eighteen ninety-four to nineteen twenty-nine, the last surviving residential block from Phoenix's frontier era. The rest of what was once a neighborhood is now sports arenas and surface parking.
