Tempe is sophisticated and cool. But it looked very different in the 1870s. Instead of the suburban college town it is today, it was a rural community where people came from all over to work in agriculture. Among those who took advantage of Tempe’s fertile farmland was Danish immigrant Niels Petersen, who became a U.S. citizen in 1878 and homesteaded 160 acres of land in town. Today, the house on that property, known as the Petersen House, is one of the last visible reminders of what Tempe used to be.
In 1892, Petersen commissioned a two-story, Queen Anne-style house designed by James Creighton, whose other Arizona projects included Old Main, at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the Tempe Hardware Building, on Mill Avenue. At the time, the house was considered one of the most elegant homes in the Salt River Valley, and it endures today as the oldest Queen Anne-style brick house in the area.
Shortly after the house was completed, Petersen moved in with his new wife, Susanna, whom he’d married in her hometown of South Montrose, Pennsylvania. Later in the 1890s, Susanna’s nephew Edwin Decker moved in while he was attending Territorial Normal School, now known as Arizona State University. Niels went on to serve in the Territorial Legislature and became one of Tempe’s leading citizens. After the deaths of Niels in 1923 and Susanna in 1927, Decker and his wife inherited the Petersen property and lived there.
The Petersen House underwent some renovations with the Deckers as the primary owners. As Victorian-style homes went by the wayside in the 1930s, the house’s look was altered by the addition of some elements of more trendy Craftsman Bungalow-style homes.
Decker died in 1948, and his wife, Una Belle, began renting the house to local artists in 1951. Una Belle died in 1968, and the house was donated to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which looked after it until it was handed off to the city of Tempe in 1979.
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and after an extensive restoration effort in 1989, it received the Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation. Still owned by the city, it’s been converted into an attraction operated by the Tempe History Museum. Tempe residents and other visitors can take occasional tours of the home or play at the park adjacent to the building.
TEMPE Petersen House Museum, 1414 W. Southern Avenue, 480-350-5100, tempe.gov/museum