**History**
By Haley Hoekstra • March 11, 2026
Downtown Phoenix is a living archive of (her)story. From Victorian-era homes at Heritage Square to the resilient legacy of the Swindall Tourist Inn, the women who shaped our city left their mark not only on policy and progress but on the very places we walk past every day.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we partnered with the Mayor’s Office Official Historian Steve Schumacher and City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Officer Helana Ruter to uncover the stories woven into Downtown’s most iconic landmarks and explore how preserving these spaces helps shape a more informed, inclusive future.
Helana Ruter, City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Officer
With over 20 years of experience, Helana has worked for both city and state-level historic preservation offices and has authored building and district nominations for listing in the National Register.
Historic Places and Women’s Experiences
The historic properties that remain in Downtown provide snapshots of the past. Heritage Square is an interesting example. We know that early on, the women residents of Rosson House were well-to-do, the type to live with all “modern” amenities and live-in help. At the same time, other dwellings at Heritage Square were constructed in a more modest architectural style and size, geared toward the working class. The women who lived in the more modest homes on the north side of Adams in the Square took on boarders early on to help make ends meet. Interestingly, by the 1920s, this was also the case with the owners of Rosson House, who ultimately modified the building to accommodate 19 separate boarding rooms. When the city faced the decision of how to restore the Rosson House in the 1970s, it was determined to return it to its earliest era and reflect the living standards of the prominent families. We can get a sense of the lives of such women and the importance of the domestic sphere to them by touring Rosson House today.
Homes like the Stevens, Duplex, or Teeter Houses didn’t have to be as drastically altered to be restored to a specific period because they had, from the beginning, reflected a more modest lifestyle in which renting rooms was the standard for women looking to support themselves. It’s important to recognize that many women worked outside the home. Women were employed as educators in the Monroe School (now Children’s Museum), Carver High School, and Phoenix Union High School (now the ASU/UofA Biomedical campus). They also took on secretarial roles for financial firms in the Luhr’s Building, Luhr’s Tower, Professional Building, Security Building, and Title and Trust. I grew up listening to stories from my mom, who worked downtown with her sister and several female cousins as secretaries for major insurance companies and stockbrokers. She conveyed the excitement she felt as a working woman downtown in the mid-twentieth century, and, incidentally, she expressed her love for Luhr’s Tower.
As banking towers and hotels continued to rise downtown in the 1970s and 1980s, we know that women had more opportunities for advancement, occupying new roles. This changed the makeup of physical working spaces as offices were no longer the exclusive domain of men. The early twenty-first century saw several former historic office buildings converted to residential living or hotels. However, one can still stop by or grab a drink in a hotel to toast those women workers who came before.
Interpreting and Protecting Historic Sites
Sites like the Rosson House and the Stevens-Haugsten & Duplex Houses aren’t just beautiful structures—they’re storytellers. I think the great thing is that we are constantly learning new things about these buildings as the large-scale digitization of records like census, newspapers, city directories, recorded documents, etc. can really help to tease out who lived where and when, what their professions were, what clubs or organizations they belonged to, etc. Women were not always headline makers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (unless you were Winnie Ruth Judd on trial at the City-County building), so piecing together their lives can be more challenging. As research tools advance, we have the opportunity to reinterpret women’s spaces.
While researching the Stevens and Stevens-Haustgen Houses and Duplex, I found a tangible connection to the Haustgen family of women who came to Arizona from Luxembourg at the behest of relative Ed Haustgen in 1914. These women set up their own livelihoods in Phoenix. While Anna Haustgen was a dressmaker, her sister Marguerite Haustgen became very involved in real estate. Marguerite purchased both the properties that would become known as the Stevens and Stevens-Haustgen houses. She, her sister Anna, and her mother Mary lived in the Stevens House while renting out the Stevens-Haustgen House to one Jennie Adams, a nurse. Marguerite was responsible for building the duplex to increase the family’s rental income. She had pages of real estate transactions on file with the county recorder by the time of her death in 1952, when she was living in the Stevens-Haustgen House. It’s also interesting to note that in the census year 1930, each house on the north side of Adams in the Square had a female head of household, including Marguerite, Jennie Adams, Eliza Teeter, and Mary Silva.
We’re incredibly lucky that city leaders decided to take on the property in the 1970s and restore the historic buildings. Block 14, as Heritage Square, was designated in the Phoenix Historic Property Register in 1989, which ensures that design review protections are in place for proposed construction/alterations to the historic resources. The city continues to invest in rehabilitating the buildings there to accommodate public use, and we hope to continue adding more information to share with the public about residents’ lives, electronically, on walking tours, or through interpretive materials.
The Responsibility of Memory and Community Engagement
The preservation of places like the Swindall Tourist Inn ensures that stories of both hardship and triumph are not forgotten. The Swindall Tourist Home is the only remaining example of public hotel accommodations for African Americans in Phoenix during the era of segregation. Originally constructed as a private home for the Steyaert family, by 1920, Mrs. Steyaert began taking in African American boarders. Located in an area of Phoenix that was home to many African Americans, Mrs. Steyaert provided needed accommodations to supplement her income. In 1940, Golden and Elvira Swindall purchased the home and continued to use it as a boarding house for African Americans. The Swindall House served an important function as a temporary residence for African American visitors to Phoenix. The Swindall house continued to provide needed housing for African Americans until well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations.
Preserving buildings such as the Swindall Tourist Inn allows people to engage in challenging and complex history. It’s not two-dimensional words on a page but a physical place you can visit and picture what people’s lives were like. We have a great responsibility to ensure that all aspects of our history are acknowledged and understood, as the saying goes: the past is prologue.
We were very fortunate to have two planners in our office work on the creation of ethnic heritage story maps based on surveys of African American, Hispanic, and Asian American Heritage in Phoenix. One of those planners, Crystal Carrancho, has since passed away. Still, with her GIS skills and desire to celebrate underrepresented communities, she helped create these maps that people can engage with remotely, from anywhere today. To learn more about important properties such as the Swindall Tourist Home, folks can visit the city’s website.
Steve Schumacher, Official Historian of the Phoenix Mayor’s Office
A west Phoenix native, Steve Schumacher has always been a historian at heart and channels his passion to raise awareness of Phoenix’s history for all citizens and visitors.
Uncovering Less-Known Figures of Phoenix’s Past
One standout figure is Helen Purcell, who made history in 1988 as the first woman elected Maricopa County Recorder. Working in the heart of downtown at the county offices, Purcell modernized voting systems and became a national voice for election integrity and accessibility. While not always a household name, her decades of public service shaped how millions of Arizonans participate in democracy today. Her presence in local government reflects the steady rise of women into leadership roles in institutions centered in Downtown Phoenix.
Trinidad Escalante Swilling played an important yet often underrecognized role in the founding and early survival of Phoenix. As the wife of Jack Swilling, she was more than a supportive partner—she helped manage daily operations, maintain community ties, and sustain the settlement during its fragile beginnings in the late 1860s.
Trinidad brought deep regional knowledge and cultural connections. Having lived in Arizona and northern Mexico, she understood the land, local trade networks, and the importance of irrigation in desert survival. When Jack Swilling helped organize efforts to rebuild ancient Hohokam canals to bring water to the Salt River Valley, Trinidad supported the enterprise by overseeing household logistics, hosting travelers and workers, and helping stabilize the small but growing community. Frontier towns depended heavily on women’s labor—often unpaid and undocumented—and her work helped make permanent settlement possible.
After Jack Swilling’s arrest and death in 1878, Trinidad faced hardship but remained tied to the early story of Phoenix. Her life reflects the broader experience of Hispanic and Indigenous women whose contributions were foundational but rarely centered in official histories. Through endurance, cultural knowledge, and community-building, Trinidad Escalante Swilling helped shape the human foundation of what would become modern Phoenix.
The legacy of Frances Willard Munds stands out. Though active statewide before Arizona achieved statehood in 1912, her advocacy for women’s voting rights deeply influenced early political culture in Phoenix. As one of Arizona’s first female state senators, Munds helped normalize women’s presence in government at a time when political power was almost exclusively male. Today, when you walk around the government buildings downtown, you’re seeing a civic landscape shaped in part by the groundwork she and other suffragists established more than a century ago.
Together, these stories remind us that Downtown Phoenix is not just a center of business and development—it’s also a stage where women quietly and persistently reshaped politics, civil rights, and public life.
The Impact of Historic Spaces on Women’s Contributions
At the Rosson House, built in 1895 and associated with the Rosson family, the domestic sphere becomes visible as a site of influence rather than confinement. Women managed households that doubled as centers of social networking, informal business exchange, and civic discussion. Hosting gatherings, organizing charitable efforts, and maintaining social ties were essential to stabilizing a rapidly growing frontier town. The home reflects how middle-class women contributed to Phoenix’s cultural refinement—introducing educational expectations, social etiquette, and community engagement that helped transform a dusty settlement into an established city.
The Stevens-Haustgen House and neighboring duplex structures tell a slightly different story—one tied to working- and middle-class resilience. Duplex homes, in particular, highlight how property ownership and rental income could provide economic agency for women, whether as widows, wives managing family assets, or independent earners. These homes illustrate that women were not only caretakers but also economic actors who shaped neighborhood stability and growth. Together, these preserved spaces show that women’s labor—domestic, social, and financial—formed a foundational layer of Phoenix’s early development, even when their names were not prominently recorded in public records.
Continuing the Legacy of the Swindall Tourist Inn
The story of the Swindall Tourist Inn is powerful because it represents resilience in the face of exclusion. Located near downtown, it became more than just a business—it was a refuge, a meeting place, and a symbol of dignity at a time when discrimination was legally and socially enforced.
It is especially important for Downtown Phoenix to uplift stories like this because they broaden the narrative of who built and sustained the city. Women—particularly women of color—often created parallel institutions when mainstream systems excluded them. By preserving and sharing the history of the Swindall Tourist Inn, the city acknowledges that its growth was shaped not only by civic leaders and developers, but also by women entrepreneurs who strengthened community networks under difficult circumstances.
During Women’s History Month, highlighting places like the Swindall Tourist Inn reinforces that women’s contributions were not limited to homes or supportive roles—they were economic leaders, risk-takers, and community anchors. Recognizing these stories fosters a more inclusive downtown identity today, one that honors resilience, diversity, and the grassroots foundations that helped Phoenix thrive.
