The Salim Ackel House 242/365

This beautiful Colonial Revival house listed on the National Registry of Historic Places was built in 1922 by Salim Ackel. A 1912 business directory shows Ackel as the proprietor of a dry goods store at 16 B Washington Street. He later formed and became president of Ackel Investment Company and invested in different real estate ventures in Maricopa County, including a citrus grove and the Jefferson Hotel at 101 South Central which is now known as the Barrister Building and which would have been across the street in proximity to the dry goods store. The opening scenes from the movie Psycho were shot in a room of the Jefferson in approximately 1959.  The Jefferson Hotel is listed on the Phoenix Historic Property Register so look for it at a later date on this blog.

Ackel and his wife Brigida were married in 1900 but divorced in 1938. A search of the name Brigida Ackel shows a mention at ancestry.com that Brigida had been married to Salomon Ackel, so one must presume that Salomon and Salim are one and the same. One of their four children was Edward Salim Ackel, so the names became a little confusing as to whether it was father or son who was the builder of this home. A little more digging told me that Edward Salim was born in 1905 so it seems unlikely that he would have built this grand home at the age of 17. Then switching the search to Salomon, I found a cemetery record indicating that he was born in Turkey in 1873 and died in 1951 and is buried in St. Francis Cemetery. Brigida was born in Mexico in 1884, which would have made her 16 years old at the time she and Salim (or Salomon) were married in 1900. She is described as a resident of Mesa when she died in 1978.

The home today is owned by a Phoenix attorney and his wife who is a news anchor at a local television station.