Historic Barrio Libre

Located on Avenida Del Convento in the Barrio Historico district, this 1900s Transformed Sonoran row house’s original adobe is a measure of time, light, and shadow. Built somewhere between 1901 and 1909 by Manuel Ahloy, a Chinese cook. Additions, and uses transformed over the years, including being home to a small café called El Durango run by the Trejo family sometime after 1942¹.

The scope of the project was to honor the spaces constructed out of adobe, reinforcing, and modifying the later additions and adding a new masonry space, shaping a courtyard for an outdoor connection to what was once a neighborhood at the edge of the floodplain of the Santa Cruz River.

1. Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, and Manuel Ahloy. Ahloy House, 492-494 South Convent Avenue, Tucson, Pima County, AZ. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/az0068/>.