Christopher’s at the Wrigley Mansion

Christopher’s at the Wrigley Mansion + Wrigley Mansion Site improvements intends to extend the life of the 1929 Wrigley Mansion (U.S. Historic Register of Historic Places) with full accessibility to all levels for guided public tours including its restaurants and bars for first time in its long history with new south ADA ramp, revised north ADA ramp, easy to navigate site signage, while adding two new indoor/outdoor programs (a new 26-seat al-fresco restaurant / garden patio and a second outdoor wedding venue) collectively promoting a renewed, more inclusive engagement with the greater Phoenix community by simultaneously preserving and engaging its most historically intact Spanish Colonial façade that faces its equally historic prospect view of the valley.

A new James Beard award-winning chef restaurant amenity replaces an un-shaded and un-enclosed triangular patio with an al-fresco (open-air) garden pavilion that is ideally positioned to open up 50% of its façade and roof; to a native garden and valley floor views to the south/east and historic eucalyptus grove to north; respectively. In deference to the Wrigley Mansion, the new Christopher’s is intentionally designed to recede – as a shadow by day when closed and when open into the desert night – with elegant dark finishes that allow – the food, who you are with, and the Wrigley’s re-illuminated façade with its iconic hyper-panoramic view – to be the stars.

This historic preservation and addition project received approvals from City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Department and two HOA’s due to its radical-yet-subservient approach to renewing a historic property in line with the 1964 Venice Charter, considered the founding document of the “modern preservation movement.”