Muheim Block

Joseph Maria Muheim Sr. (1867–1951), a Swiss émigré and brewer, built this two-story commercial block in 1905 to house the Bisbee Stock Exchange, two stores, a saloon, the Edelweiss Café, offices, and accommodations. The offices of Western Union were located here until 1910, as was the studio of local architect Frederick C. Hurst. In the 1920s, the Arizona Hotel occupied the building. After a long period of vacancy in the postwar era, it was restored to its original mixed-commercial use circa 1980 and is considered a landmark at the entrance of Brewery Gulch.

Displaying influences of the Italianate style, the flat-roofed building forms a rectangular footprint save for the chamfered southwestern corner that holds the entrance just off Brewery Avenue, the main spine through Brewery Gulch. The steel frame structure clad in red brick sits atop a full basement. The entrance is reached by a flight of concrete steps and is demarcated by an archway patterned with alternating stones and bricks and flanked by engaged columns. Above the entrance is a cast-iron bay with paired one-over-one sash windows; a cast-iron, semicircular , decorative parapet caps the entire entrance bay. Further surface ornamentation includes belt courses, an elaborate corbeled cornice, arched windows with striated stone surrounds, an oriel window with a balustrade, and decorative fanlights. The interior features a patterned zinc ceiling on the main floor and original decorative gas-light fixtures. The original New York Stock Exchange board, erected by the Duey and Overlock brokerage firm circa 1914, is preserved in the first-floor restaurant space, renovated in the early 1980s.