D.B. Morgan House 301/365

This is a post about a historic house but before I give what sketchy information I know about this house and its original owner I want to tell you that my birth name was Frances Kathryn. I’ve always liked that spelling of Kathryn but was never too fond of Frances, although I was given that name in honor of someone who turned out to be my favorite aunt as the years would go by. I was known (and still am, to all my relatives and a handful of long-time friends and acquaintances) as Scooter, but when I entered the first grade Scooter was not an acceptable name so I had a choice of being called Frances or Kathryn or Kathy. Somehow Kathy stuck and that has been my name that most people know me by for the last 60 years. But as I became an adult and needed a really legal sounding name, and still disliking that Frances, I started signing all my documents as F. Kathryn and that stuck up until about 15 years or so ago when the banks and other agencies under very serious government regulation decided we all had to have a first name, middle initial, last name moniker and it had to match what was on our official ID, either passport, state ID or driver’s license, and, yes, my driver’s license has that dreaded Frances on it. But in all my years of walking around on this earth I have never known or heard of or read about anyone whose name was F. Kathryn. I kind of liked that because it made me unique. No Mary Ann, no Betty Lou, no Peggy Sue, but F. Kathryn. I liked the sound of it.


And so you say, what does this have to do with this lovely house? Well, just hang on. You may not find this terribly interesting but I’m rather fascinated by this little story, so here goes.

About a half mile from where I live is a very exclusive area of our city where many wealthy residents in the 1920s built their very stylish homes, some of them actually mansions. Several have been displayed on this blog already, my favorite being the E. Payne Palmer House, with a close runner-up the Judge Fred C. Jacobs House.  Now, you must realize the 1920s is absolutely ancient in Arizona because there wasn’t much of anything here except the original Americans and Spanish explorers until after the Civil War. So as the 1920s rolled around, that decade found Phoenix to be a jivin’ place with new buildings going up all over further and further from the city’s center in an area which is now considered Central Phoenix.

One D.B. Morgan built this beautiful very contemporary home in 1927. By today’s standards, it is still considered to be a very contemporary home. The white-washed stucco is maintained in perfect condition and the blue tile work strategically and decoratively placed. It sits on a large estate of three lots behind a wrought-iron fence (as many of these homes on Central Avenue do).

Who was D.B. Morgan? According to the 1930 Phoenix City Directory, he was an attorney at the J.H. Page & Company law firm. His good friend and law partner, Kinter Koontz, built his home the same year about half a block south of Morgan. It eventually will be photographed and featured on this site.

Now here’s the fun. D.B. Morgan’s wife, according to that City Directory, was F. Kathryn!

Oh, and BTW, this house is listed on the City of Phoenix Historic Property Register.