Rincon Heights Neighbors

Rincon Heights Neighbors

A Brief History

Rincon Heights Neighborhood has a rather long history beginning in the 1880’s when most of the area was an open plot of land. The area was composed of several plots, some of which were known as Drake’s Addition to Tucson, or Rincon Heights. Eventually these plots were divided up into smaller lots, which generally came out to being 25ft across. Most of the houses in the Rincon Heights Neighborhood occupy two of these plots.
Starting at the west end of the neighborhood, there is a chronological order of when the buildings were constructed. The structures at the far west end of the neighborhood were built during the pre-depression 1920s, while most of the eastern part of the neighborhood was constructed during the 1940s. In general, the western houses were either a regional style or a California style of architecture. The outer walls were mostly constructed of brick, while the inner walls were all made from wood. In 1922, the roads in the neighborhood were graded; sewer and water access were added to the area. When the Great Depression hit, construction was halted, and wasn’t restarted until the late 1940s.
By going to some of the corners of the neighborhood you can find a stamp (this is given by the construction company) that reads “WPA 1938.” This was the year that the neighborhood was paved. The organization was the Work Project Administration, which was a government run program, set up to build roads and do general social construction.
Construction in the neighborhood began again after World War 2 because of the post war economic prosperity. These houses were a larger version of the original California style and were still of similar brick construction and had the same general building materials.
Since then, there has been more recent construction consisting of the apartment buildings to the far west of the neighborhood built in the 1980s made from concrete, architecturally using block shapes, with brick or wood.
The neighborhood then and now is a landmark in Tucson.