Lewis Douglas (aka Bishop Harte) House 279/365

The Lewis Douglas House is on the National Registry of Historic Places and the City of Phoenix Historic Property Register. It is also known as the Bishop Harte House. Built in 1923, this beautiful home sits on approximately 1.66 acres of land in the heart of what is now known as the Central Corridor and has approximately 4,000 square feet of living space.


Lewis Douglas (1894 – 1974) was born into a wealthy Arizona mining family. After receiving an education at Amherst and MIT and serving in World War I, he settled in the mining town of Jerome (named for Leonard Jerome, a wealthy New York financier who was Winston Churchill’s grandfather), and at the age of 29 began a long political career. He was a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, a U.S. Congressman, appointed by FDR as Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and in 1947 was named US ambassador to Great Britain. He died in Tucson in 1974 from complications of surgery and his ashes were spread over Jerome.

In 1976 the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona deeded the house to Bishop Joseph Meaken Harte, the second bishop of the diocese. Born in 1914, Bishop Harte was elected bishop of the diocese in 1962. He and his wife Alice lived in the home until their deaths in 1999 (just ten days apart) and his estate deeded the house to a private individual. In 2008 the home sold to a prominent neurosurgeon for just under $2 million.