Photos courtesy City of Phoenix Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights is surrounded by a garden with more than 5,000 cactuses.

Quirky landmark Tovrea Castle is getting ready to open its doors – and its secrets – to the public after years of major renovations.

Alessio Carraro had a dream. He had a dream that one day, on the brown hills outside Phoenix, there would rise up a resort, shaped like a castle, surrounded by a cactus garden. It was an unusual dream, but not so different from the castles in the air that brought many pioneers and risk-takers to fledgling Phoenix.

Unfortunately for him, his dream never came true. Fortunately for us, what did unfold is the fascinating history being restored and interpreted at Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights. Currently, visitors can learn about that story on bimonthly tours of the cactus garden. Come fall of 2010 (if the city of Phoenix’s dream comes true), the castle itself will open its doors.

Most Phoenicians are as familiar with the sight of Tovrea Castle – the wedding cake-shaped landmark skirted by Loop 202 – as they are unfamiliar with its past. 

“The story of the castle parallels the story of the city of Phoenix itself: the story of development and dreaming and people reinventing themselves,” says Roger Lidman, director of Pueblo Grande Museum and administrator for Tovrea Castle.

It began in 1928, when Italian immigrant-cum-San Francisco sheet metal businessman Alessio Carraro bought a swath of desert topped with a shack owned by German immigrant-cum-Confederate Army Civil War veteran Ferdinand Warner.

Over the next few years, Carraro, his son Leo and 18 workers constructed the three-tiered resort, reminiscent of architecture in his Italian homeland. The inside was decorated with ornate flourishes that were likely the handiwork of the same Italian artisans responsible for the Orpheum Theatre, says Phoenix Historic Preservation officer Barbara Stocklin. Carraro also hired Russian immigrant-cum-gardener M. “Mokta” Moktachev, who landscaped the cactus garden with thousands of plants from around the world.

But no sooner was the castle built than it was plagued with problems: dwindling funds, the Great Depression, rumors that it was really a casino constructed for Al Capone, and Mrs. Carraro’s refusal to live in a “snake-infested wasteland.”

Fireplace at Tovrea Castle restored to its original state

Then E.A. Tovrea, owner of a neighboring slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant, bought property next to the castle and started constructing sheep and cattle pens.

Knowing that manure-scented breezes tend to turn off resort-goers, Carraro gave up his dream and sold the property in 1931 to an unknown buyer, who turned out to be none other than crafty cattleman E.A. Tovrea. (Carraro divorced his wife, moved to Yarnell, Arizona, built a rocky grotto home and died in 1964.)

Tovrea died in 1932, and his wife, Della, took over “El Castillo Tovrea,” furnishing it with an aviary, reflecting pools and two patios. Afraid of living alone, Della also assembled a menagerie of English mastiff guard dogs and 136 peacocks.

In 1936, Della married Prescott Courier publisher William P. Stuart, and the couple divided their time between Prescott and the castle. Stuart died in 1960, leaving Della once again alone and terrified. She began sleeping in the kitchen and had the basement vault’s door removed following a premonition that intruders would break in and lock her inside, Stocklin says.

Unfortunately, Della’s dream, or nightmare rather, did partially come true. In 1968, burglars invaded, tied the 80-year-old woman to a chair, beat her and stole $20,000 to $50,000 worth of valuables and cash. A bullet hole still pierces the kitchen ceiling.

Della never recovered from her injuries and died the following year. The castle and its cactus garden deteriorated.

Enter the city of Phoenix, which had its own dream for the landmark: to restore the castle and fill it with historical exhibits; replant the cactus garden and conduct tours; build a visitors center; and create space that could be used for events, meetings and workshops. In 1993, the city purchased the castle, began buying up the surrounding land (it now totals 44 acres) and undergoing the long process of restoration.

The castle didn’t meet residential building codes. The roof had to be replaced. The tunnels in the basement were structurally failing, which compromised the patio above. Lead and asbestos had to be removed. Air conditioning, fire sprinklers and new plumbing had to be installed – not easy considering the castle is built on solid granite. The ceilings had substantial water damage and many of the patterns painted on them had crumbled to the floor. Shattered antique windows and lights had to be replicated. The outside wall was broken up into sections, photographed, repaired and rebuilt. Some 2,000 cactuses were replaced, and mature saguaros and Joshua trees had to be craned in.

Workers replant the gardens at Tovrea Castle.

To date, the city has spent about $18 million in renovations and land purchases, Stocklin says.

Seeing it today, you wouldn’t guess how much work went into restoring this Phoenix Point of Pride, which is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“A lot of what we did, you can’t see. But that’s the point,” Stocklin says. “We don’t want people to be able to tell.” The effort, she says, was painstaking. “Because it’s such a crafty place, we tried to save everything that was his original [work].”

That attention to detail in preservation is especially important in a city that gets accused of having no history, Stocklin says. “This is a quintessential story of someone coming to the Southwest to make their life better. Saving a place like this makes sure that one really special place with a special story gets preserved.”