You can see a lot of history from a car stopped at the light at River Road and Campbell Avenue. To the northeast, the bell tower of St. Philip's in the Hills rises over mortar-washed walls. Across Campbell, a cluster of arcades and courtyards holds a coffeehouse, a pizza oven and a wine bar. A short drive east on River Road, a restaurant named for the architect Josias Joesler is getting ready to open. All three look like they came from one designer. They didn't.
The intersection is the original gateway to the Catalina Foothills, and Joesler's name is now on more of it than his drawings are. The church is his. The plaza most people mean when they say "St. Philip's Plaza" was designed decades after he died, by the architect the Murphey family picked to replace him. One of his original buildings is still standing, but not where it was built, because Pima County moved it.
The restaurant taking his name
Joesler Kitchen is set to open in late November at 1825 E. River Road, Suite 119, inside Joesler Village. Tucson Foodie reported the plans on October 21. It comes from Jeff Katz and Paolo DeFilippis, the owners of Choice Greens, Graze Premium Burgers and Truland Burgers & Greens. They used to run a Choice Greens in this same space and closed it to build the new concept. The redesign took six or seven months of a project that ran about a year. FORS architecture + interiors did the design and Hidden Hollow Construction did the build.
Here is what's been announced so far:
- Size: about 3,500 square feet and roughly 110 seats across the dining room, bar and patio, with bar seating inside and out.
- Dogs: the patio is pet-friendly.
- Prices: entrées expected at $22 to $35, and appetizers, hand-helds and salads at $8 to $20. Vegetarian and gluten-free options will run through the menu.
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
- Kitchen: Kimberly Backman is the executive chef.
Katz described it to Tucson Foodie as "a modern American eatery with elevated but approachable food" and called it "a welcoming neighborhood gathering place." The name connects the restaurant to Joesler Village and honors the architect. The interior you'll sit in this winter is a 2026 design by FORS. To see Joesler's own work, head west to the corner.
The man behind the name
The Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation's biography says Joesler was born in Zurich in 1895 and grew up in Arosa, Switzerland. He studied architecture in Bern, engineering in Heidelberg, and history and drawing at the Sorbonne. He reached Los Angeles by way of Cuba and Mexico City. There, the architect George Washington Smith introduced him to John W. Murphey, who brought him to Tucson in 1927. John Murphey built, Helen Murphey designed, and Joesler drew. Together they produced more than 400 Tucson buildings before Joesler died on February 12, 1956.
The National Register nomination for the Joesler-Murphey work lists the features you can learn to spot: mortar-washed adobe, beamed ceilings, ceramic tile, corner fireplaces, wrought iron, clay-tile or flat roofs with brick parapets, canales, arches, breezeways and patios. He mixed Spanish Colonial, Territorial, Sonoran and Mission references freely. For Catalina Foothills, the Murpheys planned multi-acre haciendas, a town center, shops and a church. Joesler was the supervising architect.
One name, two plazas
The confusion at River and Campbell begins here. The National Register nomination credits Joesler with St. Philip's Plaza at the entrance to the development. It describes five buildings around a central park: a church, a restaurant, offices and a studio. That is the 1930s village the Murpheys built as the front door to their foothills.
The St. Philip's Plaza at 4280 N. Campbell Avenue, with Union Public House, Reforma Modern Mexican, Proof Artisanal Pizza, Arizona Wine Collective, Pure Love Juice Bar and the two Ren locations, has a different author. According to the Arizona Daily Star, the Murpheys chose the Mexican architect Juan Worner Baz in 1959 to succeed Joesler. His last Tucson project was St. Philip's Plaza, designed in 1984.
That explains why the shopping plaza looks so much at home next to the church. Worner Baz worked for the same patrons, on the same land, and kept the same Spanish vocabulary while adding modern lines. Preservation consultant Jennifer Levstik told the Star that "his designs are clean and modern, but he does all of these interesting touches." The Star also credits him with the Murpheys' own foothills home and the Catalina Foothills Condominiums of 1963. Corner windows are one of his signatures.
He also designed the tall sculpture at River Road and Via Entrada. The Star says it started as a fountain that reportedly splashed passing drivers and now stands dry. Lots of drivers pass it every day. Few know it comes from the same family commission as the church.
The office the County moved
In a 2019 letter about a proposed annexation near the church, Pima County called the River and Campbell crossroads "the 1930s village core." It said the area, despite road widening and newer development, "retains much of the original vision designed and developed by John Murphey and Josias Joesler." The County's letter lists the historic properties at that core:
| Property | Year listed by the County |
|---|---|
| St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church | 1936 |
| St. Philip's Plaza and Park | 1936 |
| Murphey-Keith Office Building and Catalina Foothills Estate Sales Office | 1937 |
| Joesler Studio | 1937 |
| El Merendero Tea Room and Gift Shop | 1937 |
| Hutton Webster Studio and Residence | 1939 |
So the plaza has two dates on record. The County lists St. Philip's Plaza and Park as 1936, and the Star says the plaza was designed in 1984. Neither one says which buildings or open spaces each date applies to, so which parts of today's plaza go back to the 1930s is still an open question.
The same letter explains why the corner doesn't match old photos. River Road and Campbell used to meet in a split T. When the County rebuilt it as today's four-way intersection, it paid to move the historic Joesler office building, then used by the Murphey Trust, to a new site to the north so River Road could be straightened. So one of the original buildings at the gateway is authentic, but not where it was built. The road you sit on at that light is the reason it moved.
The church is the clearest Joesler on the corner
St. Philip's in the Hills, at 4440 N. Campbell Avenue, was designed by Joesler in 1936 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, according to Visit Tucson. The parish calls it a prominent Joesler work. In October 2025 it announced a $150,000 grant from the National Fund for Sacred Places for essential repairs to the sanctuary's main façade. The church hasn't published a construction schedule, so scaffolding on that façade would be the first public sign the work has started.
The church says its choral liturgies welcome the wider Tucson community, which makes them the easiest way to spend an hour inside the building. These dates remain on the calendar after this post goes up:
- Christ the King, Sunday, November 22, at 10 a.m.
- Lessons and Carols, Sunday, December 20, at 4:30 p.m.
- Christmas Eve, Thursday, December 24, with a 3 p.m. service that includes the children's pageant.
The church's music page has the current program.
Up the road, a Joesler with an asterisk
Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort, at 5501 N. Hacienda del Sol Road, is often counted as a Joesler site. The resort tells a more careful story. Its own history says Joesler's first work there was the 1932 clubhouse for the girls' school that once used the property. That building is now Casa Feliz. He helped rebuild after a 1938 fire, but the resort says plainly that he was not the school's original architect. The Grill, the resort's main restaurant, opened in 1997. The resort's events page lists a Thanksgiving buffet on November 26 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; call ahead about reservations.
Seeing the corner on foot
The weekend market at St. Philip's Plaza is on its cool-season schedule, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. through April. A morning there puts you a short walk from the church, which is the best place on the corner to compare the 1930s work with the 1984 work. Look at the church's parapets, arches and wrought iron, then at the plaza's arcades. You're looking at two architects working for the same patrons, about fifty years apart. Once Joesler Kitchen opens in late November, its patio adds one more stop on River Road. That building carries his name, and its interior is a 2026 design.
Marta Harvey grew up in Tucson and spent years in construction and design before going into real estate, and Joesler's foothills houses are part of that background. If you own one of these homes, or one by Worner Baz, and want to know how its original details and later changes affect its value, Marta Harvey can walk the property with you and give you a careful valuation. Get My Valuation.
