Hearing set in ASU eminent domain case over historic 124-year-old Phoenix home

The Arizona Board of Regents wants immediate possession of the 124-year-old Louis Emerson House in Phoenix. The eminent domain case, tied to Arizona State University’s planned health headquarters, heads to court June 19.

Meanwhile, a petition to save the downtown home has topped 3,800 signatures.

The board filed its petition on May 22 to take possession of the historic home and the land on which it sits for its upcoming multimillion dollar ASU Health headquarters.

Judge Michael Valenzuela is scheduled to hear the board’s order to show cause on June 19.

Barry Schwartz, who lives in the home, created the petition on May 23, one day after the suit was filed, urging the regents and ASU to halt plans to demolish the house.

Schwartz calls the house one of the few pre-statehood homes still standing in central Phoenix.

“Phoenix has already lost countless historic homes and landmarks to redevelopment, leaving fewer and fewer physical reminders of the city’s past,” Schwartz argued. “Progress should not come at the expense of our irreplaceable cultural heritage.”

The petition had 3,827 verified signatures as of Friday morning.

What is the Louis Emerson house?

The city of Phoenix added the Emerson House, at 623 N. Fourth St., to the Phoenix Historic Property Register in May 1990, according to the city’s list of individually designated properties, which gives a 1902 construction date.

A Phoenix historic building survey noted the cottage’s Queen Anne details, including a sunburst gable decoration and sunburst and spindle work on the porch, and called the home significant as an early house in the Churchill Addition, one of the first residential expansions made possible by Phoenix’s early street railway system.

The home was originally built by Louis Emerson, a meat market employee, in 1902.

ASU announced in March 2025 that its health headquarters, housing two new health schools, would be built downtown on a site bounded by Fillmore and Pierce streets to the north and south and Fourth and Fifth streets to the east and west, with plans to open in time for the fall 2028 semester.

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