Arizona Inn History | National Register of Historic Places Tucson

The Arizona Inn has been family owned and operated since it was built by Isabella Greenway, Arizona’s first Congresswoman and close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. The Arizona Inn is proud to be a 20 year member of the National Register of Historic Places, added in 1988 for its period of significance between 1925 and 1949.

The Inn was conceived and built in the philanthropic spirit of the New Deal by Isabella Greenway to help disabled veterans of World War I preserve their jobs in her furniture factory, “The Arizona Hut”.

When her furniture factory ran into financial trouble following the stock market crash of 1929, Isabella characteristically rose to the occasion and built the Arizona Inn as a place to create demand for their furniture and to keep the factory going.

Today, the Inn is unique in its onsite cabinet-making shop with its own master craftsman who creates custom furniture pieces for the Inn and restores and copies some of the original Hut furniture so that the spirit, style, and idea of the Inn is kept alive. The furniture is still used today in the guest rooms, dining rooms and public spaces.

Since 1930, generations of the Greenway family have lovingly protected, managed, renovated and restored this world-renowned resort. Today, visitors still find an Inn that feels like a family’s country estate...fulfilling Isabella Greenway’s original mission to provide guests a sophisticated desert retreat offering privacy, quiet and sunshine to its guests.