Williams Historic Business District, Arizona

What is Williams Historic Business District?

The district is a compact group of buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s. None stands taller than two stories, and most have a single floor. Much of it is plain vernacular architecture, but a few buildings show clear styles. The Fray Marcos Hotel has Renaissance Revival touches. The Pollock Building and the Cabinet Saloon are built of native dacite stone in the Romanesque Revival manner, and the Tetzlaff Building is a yellow brick take on Victorian Romanesque.

The district's edges run roughly from 4th Street on the west to 1st Street on the east.

History of Williams Historic Business District

Williams sits on the Santa Fe railway, which today carries Amtrak's Southwest Chief, and on U.S. Highway 66. Both routes connected here with rail and road service to the Grand Canyon, and tourism became the town's principal industry. Before that, the district played its part in the successive waves of frontier life, from ranching to railroads to lumbering. The stretch of Route 66 through town was added to the National Register on May 19, 1989.

Visiting Williams Historic Business District: tips

Everything here is walkable. Parking is available, restrooms are on site, the district is listed as wheelchair accessible and it is marked as good for kids. A hotel and restaurants are about a tenth of a mile away. Allow one to two hours to stroll and look at the buildings.

The Poozeum is about a tenth of a mile off, Urban Route 66 about 0.2 miles and the residential historic district about 0.3 miles, so all of historic Williams fits into one easy walk.