1908 Mormon Church on the National Register, Closed Restaurant
809 W Main St, Mesa, AZ 85201
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Restaurant closed; exterior viewing from public sidewalk only.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restored historic church building viewable from West Main Street sidewalk
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1908 · Original 1908 LDS Church · First Campus of Mesa Community College (1963) · National Register of Historic Places · Mesa Main Street Historic Corridor
The Landmark Restaurant building at 809 W Main Street in Mesa was originally constructed in 1908 as a Mormon church, part of Mesa's early-twentieth-century LDS community center. In 1954 the building was sold to Producers Insurance Company. In 1963 it became the first campus of Mesa Community College, the early home of what is now the largest college in the Maricopa County Community College District.
In 1973 the building was converted to a restaurant. The Landmark Restaurant opened in 1981 and operated for decades as a Mesa dining landmark. The U.S. Department of the Interior has placed the property on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Landmark Restaurant is currently closed. A historic marker on the property identifies the building's role as the first campus of Mesa Community College, and the Mesa-Goodlife regional history site documents the building's restaurant phase.
Sources
Regional Mesa ghost-tour writing on the Landmark Restaurant collected accounts during the building's long restaurant phase. Reports included ghostly voices, pots and pans moving in the kitchen on their own, faucets turning on and off in the women's restroom — attributed to a named figure called Bea — and staff hearing their names called from the front station.
The original wood carving of a woman in the women's restroom was reported to turn faucets on and off in earlier retellings; a 2008 management update noted that the carving had been removed and that the faucets were now motion-activated. Other 2008-era staff updates noted that cold-feeling steps near a downstairs HVAC vent were attributable to building systems, and that bursting bulbs in the lower-level lighting were attributable to old wiring.
A more persistent figure in the retellings is a shadowy young-girl figure in the basement reported to leave footprints and handprints in the dust. These accounts circulate in regional Phoenix-metro ghost-tour writing rather than in named-investigator publications. With the restaurant closed, the haunted reputation now exists in Mesa local memory and regional ghost-tour writing.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the 1908 former Mormon church on West Main Street in Mesa. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is identified by historic marker for its prior use as the first campus of Mesa Community College.
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