How former Phoenix mayor Terry Goddard and architect Eddie Jones saved a historic church.

Eddie Jones remembers the first time he saw the ravaged Phoenix First Baptist Church on Monroe Street and Third Avenue.

“It was 2006, and I was peeking through a little hole in a window because the building was boarded up,” says Jones. “I peeked in and saw paloverdes, grass and flowers growing out of where the sanctuary used to be, and I said, ‘It’s a secret garden. It’s perfect.’”

The derelict church had sat empty for decades. Completed in 1929, the building was a stately blend of Spanish Revival and Italian Renaissance influences and the former home of the First Baptist congregation, which had relocated in 1968. The church was scheduled for a historic restoration in 1984, but early that year, a fire gutted the building, which had been falling apart for decades.

Terry Goddard, then mayor of Phoenix and a longtime preservationist and lover of old buildings, had the church’s walls shored up while he considered various uses for the building. Goddard later assisted the Housing Opportunity Center, a nonprofit that provides low-income housing, to purchase the church one day before it was scheduled to be razed. The center’s initial use of the property included a new-build structure providing fixed-rate housing, but the church itself remained empty.

Goddard, busy running the city, kept an eye on First Baptist, which continued to crumble. At some point, the roof collapsed; pigeons moved in and the altar became overgrown with plant life.

“I often thought, ‘This may never happen,” Goddard admits today. “We had a ruin but no concept of what to do with it. All I knew was I would not allow it to be torn down. But finding a commercial purpose for the church wasn’t coming together.”

Enter Jones, renowned for his distinct vision and unconventional approach to repurposing old buildings.

“Once I got inside the church and saw what nature had done—which she always does; she’s always reclaiming our buildings—the poetry began to write itself,” says Jones. “The poem was about a garden growing inside a downtown ruin, and I was determined to give that gift to Phoenix.”

Jones approached Goddard with a renovation plan that would contain his “secret garden” theme and would feature, rather than repair, the damage done by the fire.

“He talked to me about this architect named Herb Greene,” Goddard recalls, “who believed a building has virtue because of what it’s been through. Eddie thought our job was to make the place usable but not reconstruct it. His team wanted to surgically insert modern, convenient touches that didn’t disrupt what was there, including what the fire had done to the walls. And he especially wanted to keep that open-air garden.”

None of this was especially easy, according to project manager Jason Cone of Patry Building Company, which oversaw construction.

“Nothing was holding up the north wall,” Cone remembers. “The floors had all burned, and you had to hug the wall when you walked up the stairs. The bell tower was falling in. We were starting with the skeleton of a building.”

But the devastating fire had done things to the brick walls, Cone says, weathering them in a particular way that gave them a dramatic new texture. There were beautiful joists of wood that survived and could be salvaged.

“It started to feel like the walls were talking to us,” Goddard says. “An old building always tells a story. And if you just put in a bunch of drywall and paint, you obliterate that story.”

Goddard hoped Jones and company could get away with using no drywall, but the City of Phoenix had other ideas. Building codes required updated stairwells and an extensive sprinkler system, which Goddard prefers not to discuss.

“Our goal became to make the new materials and construction as minimal and as compatible as possible,” says project architect Maria Salenger. “We didn’t want to distract from the existing aesthetic.”

Salenger drew inspiration from the old courtyard buildings she remembered from her college days in Mexico—buildings that had been updated and transformed but still looked like themselves.

Goddard recalled similar buildings from his childhood in Tucson. “I’d look at the boiler in the basement of the church, and though I knew its purpose was to heat the place, I saw a gorgeous brass sculpture.”

In May 2024, Goddard officially reopened the church as The Abbey on Monroe, an arts and culture venue that, so far, is home to an event planner and a catering company. He says he’d like to have a restaurant on the premises and is looking forward to musical and theatrical performances there. He’s quick to point out the building’s wonderful acoustical qualities.

“Old buildings have soul and integrity,” Goddard says. “They have a feeling you can’t reproduce. With this church, we were handed a historical palette. And the last thing I wanted to do was paint over that palette.”

SOURCES

• Architects: Eddie Jones, FAIA, and Maria Salenger, AIA; Jones Studio, Tempe; jonesstudioinc.com.
• Civil engineer: Derick Shumaker, Cypress Civil Development/Rick Engineering Co., Phoenix, cypress-civil.com.
• Electrical engineering and lighting design: Doug Woodward and Mark Madison, Woodward Engineering, Tempe, woodward-engineering.com.
• General contractors: Dan Patry, Jason Cone, Ignacio Arizmendi, Patry Building Co., Phoenix, patry.cc.
• Landscape architects: Chris Winters and Eric Barrett, Chris Winters and Associates, Phoenix, (602) 955-8088.
• Structural engineer: Mel Slaysman, Slaysman Engineering Co., Phoenix, (602) 280-7777.