First Latter-day Saint Chapel in Phoenix

The Latter-day Saints in Phoenix started small: nine members in 1912, meeting wherever they could find a room. Before they built their first chapel here, the congregation had worshipped in a Knights of Pythias hall, a laundry, an old Spanish-style building, and a room over a bicycle shop. By the time the three-hundred-member Phoenix Ward raised this meetinghouse under Bishop J. Robert Price, the church had put down roots in a city where Mormon canal-builders had helped reopen the valley to farming a generation earlier.

What the plaque says

The first meetinghouse in Phoenix for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) was built on this site by the three-hundred-member congregation of the Phoenix Ward. At the time, J. Robert Price was bishop., Since their beginning in 1912 with nine members, the Latter-day Saints in Phoenix had met in four different locations, the Knights of Pythias Hall at 23 East Washington Street, a laundry at 534 West Washington Street, an old Spanish-style building at 121 South First Avenue, and a room over a bicycle shop at 237 North Fifth Street.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Phoenix — 0.5 mi
  The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one
• Heard Museum — 1.5 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Taliesin West — 17 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on

More markers nearby

• Saint Mary's Basilica — 0.3 mi
• Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. — 0.4 mi
• Maricopa County Courthouse — 0.6 mi
• J. W. Walker/Central Arizona Light & Power Building — 0.7 mi