Sedona AZ (May 6, 2013) – When Miss Dorothy Philips, secretary to the president of a Texas oil company, decided to build her Sedona retirement home on Color Cove Road in the early 1950s, she was ahead of her time. She hired the Phoenix architecture firm Weaver & Drover and wrote letters instructing them on the design, materials and siting she desired on her six acre parcel. She would be living a quiet life in Sedona, Arizona, at a time when there were only about 500 residents and a few subdivisions.

Philips appreciated Sedona’s beauty, and its temperate months when outdoor living is a delight. She wrote the architecture firm and said that she liked the way they blurred the boundary between structure and nature in an earlier house design. She expressed this modern concept as “inside going out, outside coming in.” This and other advanced, environmentally sensitive design ideas and features wedded to desert-inspired aesthetics make the Philips house an important example of mid-century modern architecture.

The Sedona Historic Preservation Commission enthusiastically voted to add the Philips house, completed in 1955, to the city’s historic register in August 2012, making it the City of Sedona’s 24th landmark.

Now, in celebration of National Preservation Month, the Commission and the home’s present owners, Dellann and Peter Heisinger, invite the public to a May 16 Open House at 2:00 in the afternoon. The Heisingers have maintained Dorothy Philips’ 400 Color Cove Road house in impeccable condition, and wanting to preserve it for the enjoyment of future generations, they nominated the house for historic designation.

Visitors will be treated to an expansive, low-slung ranch house with distinctly modern architectural details. The Heisingers will display the architects’ blueprints which they have consulted from time to time in caring for the property or just for fun. The handsome setting, now three acres, is a mixture of native plants and harmonious landscaping that keeps vistas open to nearby red rock buttes.

“The pink cliffs in this region are very handsome,” Philips had informed her architects.

In 1952, Philips wrote Weaver & Drover that she needed a house “as nearly fire-proof as possible as there is no fire protection in that area.” Accordingly, the architects used concrete blocks faced with dun-colored brick that resembles adobe. Fortunately for preservationists, the house has undergone few changes since it was built for about $83,000. Large windows frame red rock views and, for indoor-outdoor living, a roofed breezeway connects the house and a one-bedroom apartment, where Philips’ widowed sister, Mabel, lived until her death.

The Historic Preservation Commissioners based its decision to landmark the Philips house after visits to the property, discussions with the Heisingers, and extensive research conducted by former City of Sedona staff member Kathy Levin.

Another special and valuable source was Lee Philips, the widow of Dorothy’s nephew, Olin. He inherited the house from his aunt after she died in 1972 and the couple lived there during most of the 1970s.

Lee Philips described Dorothy as a very private person with a brilliant mind who held her own in a man’s world at the Texas oil company. It was only after Philips’ death that the family learned she was a major donor to the then-new Sedona Library on Jordan Road. A member of the library’s board of trustees, she anonymously donated the stonework that is prominent on all four facades of the building and was praised as being one of the library’s “most devoted and generous friends.”

Dorothy Philips is buried in the Sedona Community Cemetery alongside her sister, Mabel.

For more information about the open house or the city’s historic preservation program, contact Donna Puckett at 928-203-5065.

Ann Jarmusch, writer of this SedonaEye.com article, is a member of the Sedona Historic Preservation Commission.

For the best Sedona Arizona News and Views? Subscribe to www.SedonaEye.com today.