Coronado, Phoenix: buying a home in the bungalow historic district

At a glance

Choosing Coronado in Phoenix: many bungalows, small square footage

Coronado is a big district of small houses: most are one-story bungalows built between 1920 and 1935. That gives you choice and a lower entry point than the Willo and Encanto side of Central Avenue, at the cost of square footage. The Assessor's median value for a Coronado single-family home is $462,250, against $678,250 in Willo and $1,024,000 in Encanto-Palmcroft.

Coronado fits if

• You want a bungalow. Bungalows outnumber the next most common style, Spanish Colonial Revival, by about five to one (621 to 122).
• A two- or three-bedroom house is enough. The middle half of Coronado homes run from 986 to 1,587 square feet.
• You want to compare many houses. With 1,014 single-family homes, Coronado has six times as many as Roosevelt (167), so you have far more houses to watch.

Look elsewhere than Coronado if

• You need space. Willo's median home is 1,739 square feet and Encanto-Palmcroft's is 2,396. Start with the Encanto-Palmcroft guide if you also want a bigger lot.
• Price comes first. Garfield's median Assessor value is $331,800 for a house of about the same size; the Garfield Historic District guide covers the trade-offs.
• You want curving streets. Coronado is a grid of small blocks with alleys. Palmcroft and Encanto are the planned, curving alternative.

Where the Coronado Historic District is

Coronado's city boundary runs from Seventh Street east to 14th Street, and from Virginia Avenue south to the alley north of McDowell Road. Streets on the city's Coronado map include Palm Lane, Coronado Road, Granada Road, Monte Vista Road, Sheridan Street, Oak Street and Almeria Road, plus the north-south runs of Hubbell, Dayton, Mitchell, Richland, Edgemere and Evergreen streets.

The name is newer than the houses: the area came to be known as the Coronado Neighborhood only in the 1970s, and Coronado Road runs through the middle of it.

Greater Coronado and its three historic districts

The Coronado Neighborhood Association uses a wider map. Its Greater Coronado runs from Seventh Street to 20th Street between Thomas Road and Interstate 10, and it contains three historic districts: Coronado, Country Club Park and Brentwood. A house marketed as "Coronado" can sit in any of the three, or outside all of them, and each district has its own boundary and its own period of significance. Check the parcel before you assume which rules apply.

Coronado's edges: Seventh Street and McDowell Road

Two older buildings mark the edges. Emerson School was built in 1921 in the Neoclassical Revival style on Seventh Street, at the district's western edge. Good Samaritan Hospital was dedicated in 1923 near McDowell Road and Tenth Street, at the south edge.

Coronado house styles, from bungalows to Pueblo Revival

Suburban living in Coronado dates from 1907, but most buildings went up between 1920 and 1935. The Assessor's records agree: the median Coronado home was built in 1930, and 89% were built before 1950. Here is where to look for each style.

Coronado bungalows

The typical Coronado bungalow is a modest one-story house with one, two or three bedrooms. Builders used river-washed stone pillars, variegated brick, half-timbered gables and a mix of window patterns, so two bungalows on the same block rarely match. For good runs of them, walk the 2500 block of Edgemere and the blocks along Coronado and Granada roads; the 2500 block of North Eighth Street has an all-rubble-stone bungalow.

Spanish Colonial Revival homes in Coronado

The 122 Spanish Colonial Revival buildings cluster in three places: Tenth Street between Virginia Avenue and Sheridan Street, the 2300 block of Evergreen and the 2500 block of North Eighth Street. If you prefer stucco and tile to brick and stone, those blocks are where to walk first.

Tudor Revival and English Cottage houses in Coronado

Coronado's Tudor Revival and English Cottage houses are on the west side of Twelfth Street. If a Tudor is the house you want, F.Q. Story has whole rows of them.

Ranch houses on East Granada Road

The later end of the period shows on East Granada Road between 13th and 15th streets, which has a run of Ranch houses. The district's period of significance runs to 1942, so some of these are early Ranch designs. If postwar houses are what you want, the Phoenix mid-century modern guide covers the neighborhoods built after the war.

Pueblo Revival, International and Art Moderne in Coronado

A handful of other styles appear: International, Neoclassical Revival, Pueblo Revival and a few Art Moderne buildings. Look for a Pueblo Revival house on the 2500 block of North Twelfth Street and a two-story variegated-brick apartment building on East Palm Lane.

Howard Grimm's two-tone brick in Coronado

Builder Howard Grimm built several Coronado homes and was known for two colors of brick: a lighter brick for the main walls and a darker one at the corners. It's a detail worth spotting on a tour, and worth protecting if you buy one: the city's guidelines discourage painting masonry that was never painted.

Lots, alleys and rear units in Coronado

Coronado's plan is rectilinear: small blocks split by narrow alleys, fifty-foot lots and consistent setbacks. The Assessor's median single-family lot is 6,700 square feet, and the middle half fall between 6,472 and 6,817. Lots are nearly identical, so when two Coronado houses are priced differently, the difference is the house, its condition and what sits behind it.

Garages, porte-cocheres and the Coronado alley

Garages were built at the rear of the lot, and some houses have a porte-cochere over a concrete driveway. Expect to reach parking from the alley or a narrow side drive, and look at the garage as a building in its own right when you tour: on a 50-foot lot, the garage and the alley side are where any storage or workshop space has to come from.

Coronado rear units and guest houses

Rear units have a long history here. During the Depression some owners rented the main house and lived in converted garages, and the practice continued, reflected in zoning first adopted in 1930. That history does not make any particular rear unit legal today. If a listing counts on rental income from a guest house, confirm its zoning and permit status for that parcel before you rely on the rent.

Coronado duplex halves

The 1993 National Register amendment reclassified dozens of Coronado houses from non-contributing to contributing, many of them described as halves of historic duplexes. A duplex half can be a lower-cost way into the district, but ask how the two sides share the lot, the roof and the utilities before you write an offer.

How Coronado grew: plats, a streetcar and a park

Coronado was assembled from three early plats, then split into dozens of smaller subdivisions. That patchwork explains why style and house size change from one block to the next.

Coronado's first plats: Syndicate Place, Homewood Tract and Ranchitos Bonitos

Syndicate Place (1907, 80 acres) came first, followed in 1908 by Homewood Tract (160 acres, Suburban Realty) and Ranchitos Bonitos (160 acres, James Realty Company). Homewood's backers included Dwight Heard. Later plats carved from these tracts include Hurley Heights (1914), Palm Gardens (1926) and, in 1928, Homewood Park, Coronado Park and Roycroft. Early prices were small: lots in the Fowler Tract, between Seventh and 12th streets from Sheridan to Virginia, sold for $375 to $650, and elsewhere a house and lot cost $1,900 to $2,700.

Hurley Heights and Coronado's annexation

Hurley Heights took its name from Cornelius C. Hurley, who ran cattle there in the early 1900s; a footpath called Hurley Way led north from his homestead to Emerson School. It was the first part of Coronado annexed to Phoenix, in 1919. Most of the rest followed in 1925 and the remainder in 1938.

The Tenth Street streetcar in Coronado

The Brill streetcar line was extended up Tenth Street to Sheridan in 1914, and the last streetcar ran through the neighborhood on April 28, 1946. The Spanish Colonial Revival run on Tenth Street between Virginia and Sheridan sits on that old route.

Coronado Park and the New Deal Grocery

The city bought Coronado Park from the James Realty Company on February 6, 1935, for $12,050, and in 1936 built a pool, a lighted ballpark and fields with $50,000 in city and WPA money. The park's two original buildings and its street lamps were counted as contributing to the district. The New Deal Grocery on East Sheridan is another named building inside the district.

What HP zoning means for a Coronado home

Every property in the district carries the city's HP (Historic Preservation) overlay on top of its base zoning. You can confirm it by looking for an "HP" or "HP-L" suffix on the parcel's zoning on the city zoning map. The overlay is what turns the history above into rules you live with; the guide to Phoenix HP zoning covers the process in full.

Coronado HP review: Certificate of No Effect or Certificate of Appropriateness

Any building permit that affects the outside of a Coronado house needs either a Certificate of No Effect, which staff approve for minor work, or a Certificate of Appropriateness, which goes to a public hearing before an independent hearing officer. The first step for the larger kind is a pre-application meeting with a city historic preservation planner. The rule covers non-contributing houses and new infill too, so buying one of the 337 structures the 1985 survey rated non-contributing doesn't free you from review. Small one-story rear additions, rear patio covers, walls and fences are the typical staff-approval items. Reviewers use the city's General Design Guidelines for Historic Properties; there are no separate Coronado guidelines.

Demolition in the Coronado Historic District

Demolition needs its own HP approval, with a sign posted on the property. For a contributing house the city can delay demolition for up to a year while it looks for alternatives, and an applicant who is denied can ask for an economic hardship hearing. If your plan depends on replacing a house, assume it won't be approved quickly.

Coronado on the National Register

Separately from the city overlay, the Coronado Neighborhood Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 13, 1986, and a boundary increase around 13th and 14th streets between Monte Vista and Grand roads followed on December 8, 1993. The National Register listing adds no city rules. What it adds is eligibility for the state's historic property tax program, open only to contributing houses; the Arizona historic property tax guide works out what that can save on a Coronado bill.

The Historic Preservation Office is at 200 W. Washington St., third floor, and answers at 602-261-8699.

Coronado home values next to nearby districts

The table uses Maricopa County Assessor full cash values for tax year 2027. They are the county's figures for taxing a home, not sale prices, but because the same method applies to every district, they show how the districts compare.

Census figures land on either side of the Assessor median: $521,400 for owner-occupied homes in Tract 1117, whose housing runs younger than Coronado's (a median build year of 1949), and $408,100 across the much larger ZIP code 85006 (2020 to 2024 survey). Recent Coronado sales are the only number to price a bungalow on.

Coronado or F.Q. Story: similar money, different house

The two districts sit within $23,550 of each other at the median. In F.Q. Story that extra money buys about 232 more square feet and a district where Tudor and Spanish Colonial Revival houses outnumber bungalows. Coronado gives you twice the number of houses to choose from (1,014 against 492) on a single rectilinear grid, while Interstate 10 splits F.Q. Story in two. If you love bungalows, Coronado wins; if you want a Tudor, go west.

Coronado or Garfield: what $130,000 buys

For about $130,000 more at the median, Coronado buys you consistency: block after block of near-identical 50-foot lots and 1920s bungalows, where Garfield mixes duplexes and apartment buildings in with older, more altered houses. The Garfield guide breaks down where that gap comes from.

Before you offer on a Coronado bungalow

With a median build year of 1930, expect any Coronado house to have been updated over the decades; the question is how. These are the checks to make.

Inspecting a Coronado bungalow

Ask your inspector to look closely at the materials that make a Coronado bungalow: stone pillars, variegated brick, half-timbered gables and original windows. Repairing them in kind needs no HP approval; replacing them with something different does, so price the fix and the review together. The historic home inspection guide lists what to add to a standard inspection.

Adding on to a Coronado house

On a 50-foot lot with the garage at the back, additions go up or back, and both are exterior changes that go through HP review. Book the pre-application meeting before you count on the extra bedroom in your budget, and price the house as it stands.

Financing and insuring an older Coronado home

If the house needs work, a renovation loan can fold the repairs into the mortgage; the historic home financing guide compares the options. Get an insurance quote early as well, using the historic home insurance guide, because a 1930 house with original wiring or plumbing can change the answer.

Seeing inside at the Coronado Home Tour

The Coronado Neighborhood Association's 2027 Coronado Home Tour + Street Fair is on Sunday, February 28, 2027, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Walking through a few district houses shows what owners have managed inside the HP rules before you commit to one. When you're ready to look at houses for sale, Joe Janus can pull recent Coronado sales and walk the blocks with you; the wider guide to buying a historic home in Phoenix covers the steps from offer to close.

Coronado Phoenix FAQs