By Bill Otwell FAIA

The City of Prescott is a living laboratory of architectural preservation and restoration.  Early projects include the 1979 restoration of the 1903 Carnegie Library and the 1981 adaptive reuse of the 1896 City Jail and Firehouse for the Chamber of Commerce. These projects inspired forty plus years of preservation activity. The most recent project is the restoration of the 1931 Post Office and Federal Courtroom on Goodwin Street, where two vacant courtroom floors are now professional offices and an event space.  A postal station still occupies the ground floor.  These projects were successful due, in part, to historical resources available at the Sharlot Hall Museum archives.

Long before the current preservation era, in 1927, historian Sharlot Hall gained access to the 1864 Governor’s Mansion for a museum.   The structure was built as a home and office for John Goodwin, the first Territorial Governor, and Richard McCormick, the first Territorial Secretary. When compared to the shanties and tents on Granite Creek, it seemed like a mansion. The ponderosa pine log structure still stands on the museum campus as the oldest territorial building on its original site in Arizona. On June 11, 1928, Sharlot opened her museum in the restored building. 

Sharlot’s museum will be 100 years old in 2028. The campus includes five additional historic structures worth exploration. Three of these were relocated to the campus to save them from demolition. Uprooting historic structures and moving them to a new location is not considered an ideal treatment, yet sometimes it’s the only option.