Between North 6th and North 7th Streets, at 632 East Adams Street in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, you are looking at the F. S. Baird Machine Shop. This one-bay building was built in 1928 by Kathryn Baird, who opened a machine shop here with her son Arthur in 1929. Arthur left the business in 1931, and George W. Wilson operated a machine shop in the building until 1933, followed by various other owners through 1941.
Between 1947 and 1964 a variety of industrial shops occupied the space. The city of Phoenix purchased the vacant building in 1978 to add it to Heritage Square, the cluster of historic buildings anchored by the nearby Rosson House. Today the structure is the site of a pizza restaurant and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Architecturally, take in the pitched truss roof with stepped parapet eaves, the segmented-arch double-hung wood windows and the centrally placed double-hung entrance. Steps from the Rosson House, this one-bay shop carries Phoenix's layered commercial history, from family machine shop to industrial tenants to preservation, into the present day of Heritage Square.