The Brinley Avenue Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, recognizing a compact stretch of downtown Yuma that grew rapidly between 1900 and 1925. The district runs along Madison Avenue (formerly Brinley Avenue) from 1st to 3rd Streets, and along Second Street from Main Street to 1st Avenue — a few blocks that connected Yuma's commercial center along Main Street to its government core on 2nd Avenue.

The blocks filled in quickly during those years. Yuma was growing, the Reclamation Act of 1902 had launched the irrigation projects that would transform the region, and downtown was the place where territorial ambitions took physical form.

The people who built this district were as varied as the territory itself. John Ghiotto, an immigrant from Genoa, Italy, worked at the Gandolfo store before eventually operating four grocery stores of his own; his brick house at 90 Second Street was built in 1915. Jose Maria Venegas constructed a sheltered arcade-style commercial building in 1924 and ran it as a storehouse and dry goods store while his family also operated the Yuma Steam Laundry.

The Neahr-Iaeger-Martinez House at 106 Madison Avenue is the district's oldest structure, built around 1860. Three families of consequence passed through it: David Neahr, who built the Yuma Territorial Prison; Louis Iaeger, a Colorado River ferryman whose name appears throughout the region's history; and Gabriel Martinez, for whom Martinez Lake is named. One adobe house, three different chapters in the making of Yuma.

The Napoleon House at 96 Second Street — built in 1901 in the Anglicized Sonoran style, using adobe construction that reflects the region's Mexican architectural heritage — represents what the district's designers called significant middle-class housing of the period. It is one of the few adobe residences remaining in downtown Yuma from the turn of the century.

The Dorrington Block at 45 Second Street, built in 1908 in Neo-Classical Revival style, occupied the site of J.W. Dorrington's original office, print shop, and home — a commercial arcade that still defines the block. Nearby, the Mary Neahr Pancrazi House at 116 Madison Avenue was built in 1899 by David Neahr for his daughter upon her marriage to a Colorado River ferryman, a gift of a honeymoon cottage that has survived more than 125 years.

The Popular Drug Store, as it was known from 1891 to 1914, probably dispensed the usual frontier remedies: patent medicines, tinctures, various preparations of uncertain efficacy. It served the people of early Yuma through the territorial years and into statehood.

Then it became the Yi-Lee Chinese Laundry, serving Yuma's Chinese community through the 1920s. Then, from 1940 to 1957, it was the Golden Wedding Bell Marriage Chapel — a wedding venue in the borderlands, convenient presumably for couples who didn't want to wait for a church. Each transition reflects a shift in Yuma's population and economy, a building that kept adapting because that's what buildings in working cities do.