Josias Joesler’s elevation and plan for what is now St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church.
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Architect Josias Joesler designed a modest chapel and plaza for St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church in the early 1930s.
It sat next to a tearoom and a sales office that Joesler and his patrons, John and Helen Murphey, installed near the intersection of North Campbell Avenue and East River Road.
Joesler designed homes and the Murpheys built them on 7,000 acres of land north of the chapel — the first large-scale incursion into the Foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains.
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Swiss-born Joesler was an “architectural linguist” who borrowed from many styles, said architectural historian R. Brooks Jeffery.
Joesler designed more than 400 homes and buildings in Tucson, including Broadway Village at the corner of East Broadway and Country Club Road.
Joesler produced mini-versions of Tudor mansions and Italianate villas, and dabbled in Art Deco, Moderne and Modern.
His Foothills homes are notable for their siting and minimal disturbance of the lush Sonoran upland vegetation.
St. Philip’s has undergone a number of additions since 1936, including east and west transepts, an art gallery, a memorial garden, a children’s center and a recital hall.
It is on the National Registry of Historic Places.
