O'Connor, Sandra Day, House

About this property

The Sandra Day O'Connor House is the historic home of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice from Arizona, Sandra Day O'Connor. Originally built in Paradise Valley, Arizona, it was disassembled and moved to Tempe over two years beginning in 2007 to become the home of the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. The home was built in 1957 of adobe brick made from mud collected at the nearby Salt River. It is one-story with three bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows and is approximately 1,700 sq ft (160 m2). The design is mid-century modern with significant influences of Frank Lloyd Wright. O'Connor and her husband placed some of the brick during the construction, and applied skim milk as a preservative. The original location was on Denton Lane in the town of Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix. In addition to Wright influences such as the large floor-to-ceiling windows that connect the inside to the outside environment, large overhangs to block the desert sun, and a modern "minimal palette of materials", the long narrow shape reflects the California ranch popularized by Cliff May. The house also features exposed adobe brick on the interior, red concrete floors and exposed wood structural beams. It was O'Connor's desire that the design of the house evoke memories of her childhood home, an adobe ranch house in Duncan, Arizona. A post-O'Connor owner of the property planned to demolish the home in order to build a larger residence on the lot. A preservation effort ensued which raised $2 million in private funding and the house was disassembled beginning in 2007. Each adobe brick was removed, individually numbered, and stacked for transport to the new location. Other parts were moved in large assemblies. In May 2008, land in Tempe's Papago Park was allocated by unanimous vote of the Tempe City Council. Reconstruction was completed in 2009. The house was rebuilt in its original geographic orientation. The new location is within the Carl Hayden Campus for Sustainability at the park, is adjacent to the Arizona Historical Society Museum, and overlooks the city of Tempe and the Salt River. The site was designed by landscape architect Christy Ten Eyck. O'Connor made her residence in the house from 1958 to 1981, when she was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan. O'Connor frequently entertained political figures at the house, including U.S. Senator and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and former Democratic governor Bruce Babbitt. "Anyone who was anyone in Arizona politics in the 1960s, 1970s was in that house having dinner with Justice O'Connor," according to Arizona State Preservation officer Kathryn Leonard.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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