For the next stop on the tour, one must only cross the street from the location of Hayden’s Flour Mill to find La Casa Vieja. La Casa Vieja, Spanish for “The Old House” is also known as Hayden House. This building was the original site of Charles T. Hayden’s homestead and where he opened the store that he operated on his property. La Casa Vieja is considered the oldest building in Tempe, founded by Hayden in 1871. The adobe-constructed home stands as one of the oldest in Tempe and represents classic Sonoran-hacienda style architecture in the southwest. Charles Hayden’s son, Carl Trumbull Hayden, who served as a near lifetime United States Senator for Arizona from 1927 until 1969, was born here in 1877. 

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The Hayden family moved out of the home in 1889, but it would continue to be used as a boarding house owned by the Hayden family until 1924. Sallie Hayden, wife of Charles T. and noted Arizona suffragist, held rallies at La Casa Vieja for the Tempe Suffragettes before her death in 1907. From its creation, the home underwent many additions to its structure including an upper story.  Charles Hayden’s daughters, Sallie and Mary, operated a tea house and restaurant starting in 1924 after hiring prominent Phoenix architect Robert T. Evans to restore the building to its original adobe composition, including removing the second story.

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La Casa Vieja was purchased by Leonard Monti 1954 and converted into a steakhouse. Monti’s Italian-inspired steakhouse was a popular Tempe locale, said to have steaks known “Valley-wide.” In 2014, Monti’s at La Casa Vieja finally shut its doors, ending the run of the Valley’s longest of Tempe’s longest active businesses. After purchase by development company Hensel Phelps, and in agreement with the city of Tempe, Hensel Phelps restored La Casa Vieja to its 1924 state, replacing much of the adobe brick and removing any additions besides the main building. This deal was centered around preservation of the historic building with permittance for Hensel Phelps to develop commercially on other portions of the site. Following the restoration’s completion, the development company sold La Casa Vieja to the city of Tempe for $10 and it has become a headquarters for Downtown Tempe authority.