Monroe Street Abbey: Downtown Phoenix’s Majestic Ruin Turned Event Venue
“It’s almost inevitable that when someone enters from the front, they’re amazed as they step into the courtyard. Then there’s an 'aha moment’ when they look up and see the rose window; it’s spectacular,” former Phoenix mayor Terry Goddard says. “Then they usually compare it to some of the great ruins in Europe. I’m not saying it’s on par with the Roman Colosseum, but at least it’s a local example of an elegant ruin that now has a new life and purpose.”
Goddard is discussing the Monroe Street Abbey, an open-air arts and culture venue that is a stunning example of adaptive reuse from its former life as a church. But what makes this project so impressive is that a fire had gutted the building, leaving only the outer walls standing. If ever there was a challenging structure to repurpose, this was a textbook case.
The building in question, the Phoenix First Baptist Church, opened at the northwest corner of Monroe Street and Third Avenue in 1929. Its congregation, established in 1883, originally worshiped in a smaller church on the same site. The new Italian Gothic Revival-style building was designed by Supervising Architect George Merrill of the Department of Architecture of the American Baptist Home Mission Society in New York. Local architects Fitzhugh and Byron prepared the working drawings and supervised the construction of the building.
The $170,000 brick structure with a cast-concrete façade featured a 1,250-person auditorium along with a large choir loft and pulpit, according to an article in The Arizona Republican. The pastor’s study was in the seven-story bell tower, while the Christian Citizenship League occupied the basement. A striking feature of the church was its circular rose window fronting Monroe Street.
In 1968, the congregation moved to a new church at Central and Glendale Avenues, following many of its members north. The inability to expand the building and parking issues influenced the relocation.
The congregation leased the old building to the Urban League, which offered adult education until 1980. “I went to classes there and earned my GED and a job at Mountain Bell telephone through them,” Marcia Landis says. “The church was intact then.”
The building was purchased by an investment group led by former Phoenix Suns player Alvin Adams. In 1982, the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was scheduled for conversion into The Abbey, an office complex. “It was going to be the prototypical example of how older buildings could be repurposed,” Goddard says. “They had Jim Garrison, who later became the Arizona State Historic Preservation Officer, doing the designs.”
Two weeks after Goddard was inaugurated as mayor in 1984, a large fire gutted the church. People living in the otherwise vacant building without permission were likely responsible for the blaze.
“The whole time I was mayor, there was temporary shoring on the streets along Third Avenue and Monroe,” Goddard says. “Shortly after I left office in 1990, that shoring disappeared, as we don’t like to give up lanes of traffic in the city easily. Now, the building was in jeopardy—four stories of unreinforced masonry just hanging there.”
The city was ready to demolish the building, but backed off once Goddard secured a $40,000 loan from the National Trust. The property was put in escrow through a nonprofit he established, the Housing Opportunity Center. Goddard had the church’s concrete walls reinforced while pondering adaptive reuse ideas for the burned-out relic.
Working with architects Eddie Jones and Maria Salenger, a plan was devised to emphasize the fire damage rather than repair it. The goal was to tastefully bring the building to code without diminishing its breathtaking remains, highlighted by a courtyard open to the sky.
Preservation work began on the $6 million project in 2022, partly funded by federal historic tax credits. Two years later, Goddard reopened the church as the Monroe Street Abbey, an open-air arts and culture venue. “People have been incredibly embracing of its ruined state, to let the walls speak for themselves,” he says. “The fire-blackened wood and spray-painted graffiti are all important parts of the story.”
Goddard cites the rose window, the bell tower, and the columns as his three favorite architectural elements. “We had EverGreene Architectural Arts from New York spend three months on scaffolding, making sure everything loose on those columns was fixed and waterproofed,” he says.
What was the most challenging part of the preservation for Goddard? “Everything,” he says. “It was all difficult as it's not my career, as I’m a lawyer, and I had to learn a whole new set of skills.”
Goddard had seen many buildings demolished in Phoenix that could have had productive second lives. He wanted to show the development community how simple it was to repurpose a structure. He was surprised at the journey. “It was not easy, it was not simple, but it’s worthwhile,” Goddard says. “It was a building worth saving.”
The unique venue hosts the upcoming Ultimate Not-Necessarily-Annual Easter Parade & Matzo Ball on Sunday, April 5th, from 2-6 p.m. The free event, first held in 1985, will honor two women who recently passed, both champions of Downtown Phoenix: restaurateur Estelle Speros MacDonald and journalist Jana Bommersbach.
“A parade featuring fabulous handmade hats, joyful community, and delightful chaos will assemble at the Abbey to stroll through the neighborhood,” says Scott Jacobson, who co-hosted the initial event in 1985. The partygoers will return to the Monroe Street Abbey to hear live jazz by Ted Goddard's (no relation to Terry Goddard) ten-piece band playing Prince Shell's arrangements, a featured performer at Estelle Bistro, operated by MacDonald from 1984-85 in the San Carlos Hotel.
“It's the most wonderfully wacky celebration where Easter meets tradition!” Jacobson says.
Douglas C. Towne is the editor of Arizona Contractor & Community magazine, www.arizcc.com