The Fish Pond, Mokta's Game, the Cage for Alessio's pets

Maybe by now everybody knows that the game court was designed by Mokta for a game that was a cross between golf and pool.  Also, from the one interview with Leo that I've been able to get to so far, our east side "water feature" was definitely a fish pond, since Leo talks about the arrangement that his father made to cool the water for the fish.

Another interesting bit of news, at least news to me, is that there was a "hexagonal"cage beside where the rose bed would have been that was meant to house two pets:  a squirrel that Alessio brought with him from San Francisco, and a jackrabbit from the site.  The cage was about six feet tall and had an upper and lower compartment, one for each animal.  This is according to information in the application for the National Register of Historic Places, but must have come from an interview with Leo, since it's hard to imagine anybody else having that bit of information.  The cage I've seen beside the rose garden site isn't hexagonal, so I'm wondering where this fancier one went.

More villainy from The Villainess

In reading some information from oral histories done by Phoenix in the 1990s, Dura Tovrea, the niece who's in the Visitor Center video, says that after the robbery, Ima would not let her see or speak to Della.  Dura says that she wished they'd just pushed in the door to get to see her aunt but, sadly, they didn't.

Another person interviewed tries to give Ima the benefit of the doubt, saying that her Christian Science views may have prevented her from getting help for Della until it was too late.  I'm assuming those beliefs aren't what kept Ima from letting folks like Dura visit Della during her dying weeks.

Castle #63 on Phx Magazine's March Issue Bucket List

In Case of Accident, Fill Out an Incident Report

Saturday, February 23, 2013 - 8:30 am Tour

We had a  wonderful tour this morning with a group of Red Hat Society ladies. Unfortunately, right after Station  2 of our tour, while we were loading up, one of the gals lost her footing getting on the back of the electric cart.

Lila fell flat on her butt and proceeded to fall backward lying face up on the ground.  Luckily her beautiful red hat cushioned her head in the fall and she missed the big boulder by just an inch or so.  Lu, Melody and I sprang into action, checking her vitals and extremities - no blood, swelling or complaints. She was embarrased, but seemed fine and got on the cart, this time without incident.

We watched Lila throughout the tour and made sure she had a helping hand at every step...I think we drove her crazy with our attention.  By the end of the tour, Lila was complaining of a "sore seat," but was otherwise okay.

We filled out an Incident Report, provided by Gary and had Lila fill in her own information.  We (Lu, Melody and I) signed the form and turned it in.

Important to note:  no matter what the outcome, an incident like this is important to report and record. 

So glad nothing major happened, although I think Lila may be sore in the morning!

Tamera

Why did Alessio Carraro level that huge north mound?

Short answer:  He needed the granite.

In building his hotel in the shape of a castle and preparing for his resort housing development, Carraro needed lots of granite:  for the crushed granite that he used to pave the roads and walkways throughout the property, to make the blocks used in construction of the castle itself and some of the features on the grounds, and to get the stones used to build those long north and south walls.  So all that granite used on the site had to come from somewhere.  In addition, the Gart report refers to an interview with Leo Carraro where Leo says that his father had tried to set up a side business selling crushed granite, for which Alessio would have needed even more granite.  However, again according to the interview, that business didn't get very far--maybe because with the Depression, construction wasn't the boom industry that it had been when the Carraros first came to the valley.

Why Della Was Able to Continue Living in the Castle after EA Died?

The quick answer is--because she owned it.

Della purchased the castle from Alessio Carraro—the purchase documents were in the name of Della Tovrea and her name only.  However, Arizona was a community property state, so although the castle was purchased in Della’s name, EA would have owned half.

      After EA died, during probate of his will, Phil Tovrea, representing he Tovrea Packing Company, was given an option to purchase the castle if Della ever decided to sell.  Apparently, this was a way for Della to be able to gain ownership of EA’s half of the property without having to purchase it from the estate.

     

      When Della died, her heirs were her sister Ima, and the three daughters of the sister that had predeceased Della.  The Tovrea heirs decided to exercise the option, and Della’s heirs challenged the option in court, since it allowed the Tovreas to purchase the castle for less than its appraised value.  In the first round, the Court found the option invalid, but the Tovreas appealed to the Arizona Court of Appeals, which overturned the initial ruling and declared the option valid.  As a result, the Tovreas paid $260,228.22 to Della’s estate to regain ownership of the castle, about half its the appraised valued at the time.

The Villain(ess) of The Castle Story

Since I started training as a docent back in September, I’ve been reading whatever I could find about the Carraros, the Tovreas, the Warners and in particular, Della Gillespie Tovrea Stuart.  To do this I’ve been through almost all the 18 boxes of the "Stuart Family Papers" at ASU, done some research at the AZ State Archives, and at the City of Phoenix’s Historic Preservation Office, and I need to spend more time at all of them to continue filling in the details of the story that we docents tell to our visitors each week.

The source that has turned out to be most reliable is “Della Tovrea Stuart, 1888-1969,” a paper written by Karen Erickson for a history course at ASU in 1973.  I’ve been able to find some of the written documentation that Erickson cites, including the probate documents for E.A. Tovrea and Della Tovrea Stuart, and have so far found no errors.  The longest document is Jason Gart’s “El Castillo,” which was a report commissioned by the City of Phoenix.  It also contains much interesting information, but is not always completely accurate.

In this post, I’ll talk about what I learned from Erickson’s paper, and from reading the probate documents, that has convinced me that the Castle’s story does have a villain, but it isn’t the Tovreas, as the video that we show in the Visitors Center implies, but rather Della’s sister, Ima Rutherford.

Ima lived in Texas, in a house owned by Della, and after Ima’s divorce, she was completely supported by Della, who paid all her bills, and sent her a $250 monthly allowance for whatever else Ima wanted to buy.   We know all this because Della claimed Ima as a dependent for income tax purposes, and the IRS questioned that deduction, so there’s a letter in the documents at ASU in which all this supporting information is detailed.  In the letters between the sisters, Ima also mentions receiving a fur from Della, among other gifts.  And Ima wasn’t the only recipient of Della’s largesse—the letters at ASU contain many letters thanking Della for her generosity, often from her relatives, but also from other friends, and even from one of the elderly Tovreas—I think maybe one of EA’s sisters-in-law—who says that Della is the only one who remembers her, and without Della’s help, she’d be destitute.

But back to Ima. Ima often visited Della, and would stay with her, even when Della’s second husband was still alive.  After he died, she would stay with Della for months at a time, and she came to the castle for a visit the day after the robbery.  As a result, she was Della’s caretaker during Della's decline those last two months in the castle.  According to the Erickson paper, the caretaker, Mrs. Lansberry, was so concerned (suspicious?) about what was going on that she kept a red notebook where she wrote down what happened at the castle every day during those two months.  (What I wouldn’t give to have a look at that notebook.)  Anyhow, turns out that during that two month period, whatever caretaking Ima was doing of her sister, she was also taking care of herself.  She had all of Ima’s cash accounts at the bank changed into her name and appropriated some Della's jewelry that the robbers didn't get.  When Della died, she left half her estate to her sister Ima, and half to the three daughters of another sister who had predeceased her.  Neither the bank that administered the estate nor Della’s nieces believed that the transfer of those accounts—around $170,000 cash—was legitimate, and the bank and the other heirs filed a suit against Ima to get that money back for the estate.  The case was finally settled when Ima agreed that the cash would count toward her half of the estate, and that she would pay 6% interest on that amount back to the estate until the estate was settled.

So, just from reading the documents, seems to me that yes, there is “power, manipulation” and greed in the story of the people associated with the castle, just as the video states, and that it is the most distressing kind of manipulation: the manipulation of an ill person during the final months of her life, when she was entirely dependent on the person doing the manipulating.

 

Thanks to Roger Lidman for the answer to this

A: The interpretive trail was added during the renovation (see below - interpretive trail in yellow). Some roadways were built by Carraro, and others added during the Tovrea era. Some have developed casually as maintenance roads. The most frequently driven roads have been topped with decomposed granite for dust control. 

A: Not much is known about the concrete foundation that supports the pyramid. In fact it was only uncovered in the last year by volunteers, including Phil Tovrea, who were working on the north platform. The specific use for the metal pipe is unknown - and further research will need to be done.  

Tovrea Meat Company Billboard

 

I belong to a Facebook page called Vintage Phoenix, it features picture of Phoenix from the 40 - 90 and include many postcards and place that no longer exist. This picture of Phoenix for the 19 40 is probably taken from the top of the Old Adams hotel. If you look at the building across the street and directly above the word Arizona you will see a sign for Tovrea Meat Company!

I have 2 questions from today's tour that we docents were unable to answer.

1.   Are the roadways within the site all original or were some added during the renovation??

2.  There is a pipe sticking up in each east corner of the platform that supports the pyramid monument.  These protrude up maybe 6 inches and appear to go down into the concrete platform to an undetermined depth.  What are these for??   A couple of the guests speculated that there could be an underground tomb or burial vault and that these are some sort of ventilation or exhaust pipes.  Any ideas?? 

Did Della really say that one of the robbers was "cute"...?

Hi, folks:

Today I finally saw the "long" version of the police report on the robbery at the Castle, and I still don't see anything about Della saying that one of the robbers was "cute."  If anybody finds the source of that comment, please let me know.

pjh

Many of the docents have requested for a way to communicate with other docents in order to be able to share experiences on tours, information they have heard from guests on tours and even information and document they have found while researching the Tovrea Castle and the families that were involved. Today, I am setting up a closed blog, open only to docents at the Tovrea Castle. This will be your blog and we will set it up so that everyone will be able to post on it. In the top right hand corner is a button that says new post, by using this you will be able to add post on information you have learned on the families, about the castle, the gardens or on Phoenix as it relates to the story. You may also post thing that you run into giving tours, challenges as well as thing that go well. I will post one or two historical posts per week. This will be a great way for us to learn more about the story, the castle, the grounds and being a docent. I look forward to reading your comment and post in the future