Judy Pearson | Contributing Writer THE CASTLE Tovrea Castle is a jewel in the desert A 2ND ACT { survivors giving back } She has kept watch over the city of Phoenix for nearly 90 years, although most of the thousands who pass her every day have no idea who or what she is. A church … the state capital … a wedding cake? We know her as the Tovrea Castle. And her rich story is now enjoying a second act. The castle was the brainchild of Italian immigrant Alessio Carraro. He arrived at Ellis Island at the age of 23 and beat a path to San Francisco in 1905, the year before the city’s horrific earthquake. He married, fathered two sons and built a successful metalworking business. And then, in 1928 (just 16 years after Arizona’s statehood), his search for success brought him to the boomtown of Phoenix. The Westward Ho Hotel on Central Avenue was just rising from the desert, while 18 miles away, William Wrigley Jr. was building his mansion in the shadow of Camelback Mountain. Still, Carraro wasn’t terribly impressed, until he traveled three miles south of the city limit to Van Buren Street, then a dirt road. That’s when he spied three knolls, with a house perched on one of them. He saw a taste of the American dream. Mr. Warner and his wife, owners of the property, answered Carraro’s knock. Seeing the dust on his jacket and hat, they took him to their well for a drink. It was the coolest, purest, most refreshing water Carraro had ever tasted. And it sealed the deal. Carraro offered to buy the knolls, the house and the surrounding land, eventually totaling 277 acres. Fortunes were being made on every corner in Phoenix. Carraro’s would be called Carraro Heights. He started by building an elegant hotel, framed in wood and covered with stucco, much like the buildings in his native Italy. His 15-year-old son, Olivo — Leo for short — had arrived from San Francisco to help him. Their only blueprint was Carraro’s imagination. Twenty men worked nonstop for 20 months on the three-story, octagon-shaped castle, finishing just before Christmas in 1930. She stood proudly on the tallest knoll and boasted eight bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. Spread below her were more than 500 species of cactus, procured throughout Arizona and Mexico. White rock retaining walls and path borders gleamed in 44 FRONTDOORS MEDIA | FEBRUARY 2019

Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights has intrigued people in the Valley of the Sun for more than 90 years. It was built by Alessio Carraro ( far right ) and his son Leo ( right ). the Arizona sun. Leo and a friend had spent four months hauling the rock up from the river bottom in a Model A pickup, and whitewashed it to create a stark contrast against the soil. But the hotel was only the first step in Carraro’s vision. With its beautiful setting and attention-grabbing elevation on the knoll, potential homebuyers would flock to Carraro Heights. The cupola atop the third floor offered a 360-degree view of the property. From there, buyers could pick out their lot and Carraro would build them a house. That is, if there had been any buyers. The stock market had crashed midway through construction, and the dark clouds of the Depression obscured everything, including the Valley of the Sun. Leo and Alessio lived in the hotel for six months before selling it to cattle baron Ed Tovrea for $21,000. Despite the castle bearing his name, Tovrea’s time in the house was short-lived too. He died the next year, but his widow remarried and remained there until her death in 1970. Family disagreements and the harsh desert sun took their toll on the beautiful castle. But her beguiling beauty — and the 157 25-watt bulbs outlining her figure at night — still drew the attention of many. Then, in 1989, Phoenix voters approved a bond for historic preservation. In 1992, the city bought the castle from the Tovrea family for $1.7 million. With the hope of enabling public tours, painstaking renovations began to bring the castle back to her former beauty. In 2010, national financial struggles again struck the castle. But a small group of volunteers had fallen in love not only with the structure, but with her history as well. They organized the Tovrea Castle Society in 2011, with a mission “to provide a unique experience for visitors to Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights; preserving, maintaining and restoring its historic structures, gardens and grounds ….” Later that year, the society signed an agreement to operate the castle for the city. They handle fundraising, volunteer recruitment and training, and public tours. They registered the castle as one of the official Phoenix Points of Pride, as an Arizona Centennial Legacy Project, and on the National Register of Historic Places. FEBRUARY 2019 | FRONTDOORS MEDIA 45