What the Heck is Tovrea Castle?

Recently, I spent a lovely weekend in the Phoenix metro area with friends to celebrate my very auspicious birth. I know, some of you are wondering if it is even possible to spend a lovely weekend in the Phoenix metro area (and others are doubting the auspiciousness of my birth), but there are certainly a number of things that make Phoenix entertaining: professional sports, free dinners with mom, roller-coaster like freeway interchanges and posh clubs (note the plural that sets it apart from Tucson) to name a few.

Although as a second-generation Phoenician I feel that the city has always harbored a habit of bulldozing anything unique or interesting, there are a couple of funky spots that have somehow managed to avoid the dozer's blade. Among my favorites is the weird building that you can see on a small hill to the west of the Loop 202 Freeway between Washington and Van Buren - Tovrea Castle.

(click link for credits)

Now, when I was but a wee desert rat with dirty feet and cactus thorns in my fingers, seeing Tovrea Castle usually meant I was on my way to the zoo, and (as is the case with many dirty-footed, thorny fingered imps) I LOVED the zoo. So the good connotations started there. You see, when I was but a wee desert rat with a sunburned face and grit in my ears (as opposed to the old, wizened desert rat I am today with a sunburned face and grit in my ears) Tovrea Castle (and what is known now as the Carraro Cactus Garden) was still pretty well in the middle of nowhere. True, somewhere was encroaching fast, and on all sides, but there was still a lot of open desert that way, and I'm not even sure those pesky transportation planners had even begun to dream they'd need a freeway out in the middle of it all (unless they foresaw hordes more kids making an exodus for that zoo). In addition to the mystique of a really cool building on top of a saguaro-studded hill near the zoo, there was the whole mystery of why anyone would build something so utterly cool (or so I thought) in the middle of nowhere. I was still being indoctrinated (read brainwashed) as a suburbanite at the time, so I couldn't imagine why you'd want to be out there in the middle of the desert with nothing near by but the zoo (and that boring old botanical garden - why would anyone want to go there?). Why, you'd have to ride your bike forever to get to Thrify for your ice cream. Whoever built the castle must've been a little crazy - perhaps even like a mad scientist or crazed former civil war general missing an eye. It was right up there with finding out who was buried in Hunt's Tomb (hint, his name is Hunt)!

Well, as mentioned earlier, I'm old and leathery now from all the sun, and the city has completely engulfed the magical Tovrea Castle - but unlike many other chunks of desert in the valley, the roughly 46 acres of property around the castle has remained free of Circle-K's and taco shops and the wedding-cake-shaped house on the hill is still a major Phoenix landmark (they call it a point-of-pride). Though the remaining property is only a tiny portion of the original spread that accompanied the house, what is preserved paints a picture of early development in Phoenix and the kinds of people it took to make it out in the arid nowhere (or a picture of the kinds of crazy you had to be to live that far from a Thrifty Drug in 1930's Phoenix).

So, repeating too much of the history which is already readily available through the City of Phoenix website... This slightly crazy Italian-turned-San-Francisco business man Carraro moves out to Phoenix and purchases roughly 277 acres of creosote flat near the base of the Papago Buttes. His vision was for a sparkling desert resort, thick with cactus gardens and lush desert vegetation. Beginning in 1928, he designed and built an Italianate mansion which was to be the centerpiece of the resort, with a tiered design and crenelated walls. He put a Russian immigrant, Moktachev, to do his gardening (because no one could plant saguaros like a Russian, evidently). In true Arizona style, however, surrounding land uses negatively impacted his dream. Cattle and sheep farms, meat packing plants and unruly neighbors drove Carraro to sell the property to another wealthy family, the Tovreas. No mad scientists or civil war generals - just some disappointed developers. It may not be equal to the overactive imagination of a certain ten-year-old, but that's Phoenix.

Carraro Cactus Gardens during Restoration

The Tovreas (or more accurately, one crazy old lady) lived in the property until the death of the family's reclusive matriarch in 1969. Then the property was vacant until the City of Phoenix purchased the house and the immediate few acres in the early 1990's. (My dad always said that my grandfather owned briefly during that 20 years. I sorta figured he was full of it, but it made for a cool story to tell on the school bus ride to the zoo). Then the race was on to buy the rest of the land before the developers put mega-lo-marts on it. Bit by bit the city acquired all the taxpayers would permit them to until it had the current 43 acres. (Note in the aerial photo how sensitive surrounding development was to the historic context...a freeway, apartment complexes and several distribution warehouses. Hooray for zoning.)

The City of Phoenix originally bought it hoping to turn it into a park where we could all play among the cacti and learn about our not too colorful history, but there were several problems. First, the reason that the land had been little more than creosote flat when Carraro got there was because it couldn't naturally support the denser, upland Sonoran vegetation he was looking for (such as mesquites, blue palo verdes, and most importantly saguaros). Although we (yes, me too) love planting these species in the lowlands, they usually occur on mountain slopes where they get a little more precipitation than in the flat valleys - and Phoenix is a very flat valley. Have you seen many true valley saguaros? They usually look awful. Even though the castle is on a small hill, there were no arborescent cacti present prior to development - which means that the conditions aren't right for saguaros naturally. So, once the gardens were abandoned and additional water was no longer available, the plants began to decline. No one wants to picnic among dying saguaros and tree snags (with the possible exception of the Addams Family, and I'm pretty sure they live in Southern California), and some of the plants were even dangerous (sorry, Mrs. Smith, a saguaro fell on little Timmy during our field trip to Tovera Castle. We sent him to the nurse.) . Then there was the wood frame and stucco house - which I have heard from rumors was never well built in the first place (hooray for building codes). Of course the rumors also said that the house was haunted, but that would only increase its appeal for many visitors...

Saguaros in their happy place (near Picacho Peak)

A saguaro in a less happy place (click link for credits)

So, the tireless folks over at City of Phoenix have restored the gardens, tending to the sick saguaros like patients in a sanitarium, and are in the midst of restoring the building for tours. The current schedule calls for the building itself to be open for tours in 2009 - only forty years after the last inhabitant quit the premises. No doubt I'll line up with the rest of the saps and pay my dollars to see what the inside of that fascinating structure really looks like. It'll be money well spent after a lifetime of curiosity - and who knows, afterwards, I might even go to the zoo.