What it is
Tovrea Castle is the building everyone in Scottsdale has seen and almost nobody has been inside. It stands on a granite knoll above the Loop 202 and Van Buren Street, west of Papago Park, four tiers of pale stucco stepping back to a crenellated top like a wedding cake left in the sun, and it is in the window of every flight that lands at Sky Harbor from the east. Alessio Carraro, an Italian immigrant businessman who arrived from San Francisco, built it between December 1929 and January 1931 as the hotel at the center of a resort subdivision he called Carraro Heights, with a cactus garden laid out around it on the hill. The Depression arrived as he finished, the Tovrea stockyards next door were expanding and making the air unsuitable for a resort, and in 1931 he sold the whole thing to Edward Ambrose Tovrea, the cattle baron of the stockyards, and his wife Della. The Tovreas made it a house.
For decades after Della’s death it sat empty and fenced, decaying in view of a million commuters, until the City of Phoenix bought the 44 acres, listed the castle on the National Register in 1996 and spent years restoring the building and, from 2006, the Carraro Cactus Garden, replanting 352 saguaros and relocating more than two thousand cacti. The work finished on February 14, 2012, with a new visitor center, and the nonprofit Tovrea Carraro Society began guided tours that March. Demand crashed the ticket site, and the society has sold tickets by lottery ever since.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because you have been looking at it for years and it is sixteen minutes away. Our airport note mentions it as the landmark on the drive in; this is how you get inside. It is also the last intact piece of the cattle-and-stockyards Phoenix that gave the Valley one of its five Cs, told by docents who know it.
The practical version
Tours only, Fridays to Sundays in two morning slots from September through May, twilight tours in June, nothing in July and August. Tickets by lottery, with the spring season’s entries open October 1 to 15 and the fall’s closing in June; up to four tickets, 72 hours to pay. The tour is a tram through the garden, then the outbuildings, main floor and basement on foot. Sixteen minutes from Old Town; the visitor center is on Van Buren.
When to go
Whenever the lottery lets you, which is the honest answer. Within that, the 8:30 tour in the cool months (October through March) has the cactus garden in low light and cool air, and the 7:30 slot in April, May and September is the same idea an hour earlier. June’s twilight tours are the one chance to see the castle lit at dusk, when its LED outline comes on and the view west takes in the downtown skyline; they sell out fastest.
The lottery calendar is the thing to put in your phone: entries for the spring season open October 1 and close October 15, and the fall season’s entries close in mid-June. Pick three different weekends to improve your odds. If you lose, check the site in September and January, when last-minute tickets for regular tours appear from time to time at a slightly higher price. Group tours on Thursdays and special events on Wednesdays are separate and also sell out.
The tour
- The visitor center. A short exhibit on Carraro, the Tovreas and the stockyards, then the tram.
- The Carraro Cactus Garden. The tram winds up through the saguaros, barrels and agaves, with the docent naming them; the garden is the tour’s substance, and the restoration is as good as the Botanical Garden’s.
- The outbuildings and the terraces. The views: Camelback and the buttes to the north, downtown to the west, the airport below.
- The castle. The main floor and the basement, with the Tovreas’ furnishings and Carraro’s details, the Art Deco touches and the parapets. Small; forty minutes.
Nearby
The castle sits between Papago Park and the S’edav Va’aki Museum on Washington Street, and a morning tour followed by the Hohokam platform mound and lunch near the airport is a tidy half day of the oldest and strangest Phoenix. The zoo and the Botanical Garden are five minutes east.
The story
Carraro came to Phoenix from San Francisco at the end of the 1920s with money and a plan: a resort hotel on a granite hill east of the city, surrounded by a subdivision of homes and a desert garden, which he would call Carraro Heights. He bought the hill and the land around it, laid out a cactus garden on the slopes, and built the hotel with a small crew, in granite, pine and stucco, in the tiered form that gave it its nickname. It was finished in January 1931. By then the stock market had crashed, and the land next door had been bought by E.A. Tovrea, whose stockyards and packing plant were among the largest in the Southwest and whose cattle pens were now the view from the hotel’s terraces. Nobody was going to book a desert resort downwind of a feedlot. Carraro sold to the Tovreas within the year.
Della Tovrea lived in the castle for decades after her husband’s death, and the stories the docents tell about her last years there are the best part of the tour. After her death the property passed through heirs and sat behind a fence while the freeway was built past it and Phoenix grew around it. The city bought the castle and surrounding land in stages and listed it on the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 1996; restoration of the building followed, and in 2006 the city turned to the gardens, planting 352 saguaros and relocating more than two thousand cacti to recreate Carraro’s design. The restoration and a visitor center were finished on February 14, 2012, and the Tovrea Carraro Society opened the doors on March 10. Tickets sold out within minutes, and the lottery was born.
The Scottsdale connection
The Tovrea stockyards were where the Valley’s cattle, including the herds off the ranches that became North Scottsdale, went to market; the five Cs of the state’s old economy put cattle alongside copper, cotton, citrus and climate, and this hill is where two of them met. For a Scottsdale visitor the castle is also simply the landmark of arrival: our Sky Harbor lexicon entry notes it as the first thing you recognize on the drive north, and getting inside it closes a loop.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south into Papago Park, where it becomes Galvin Parkway, past the zoo to Van Buren Street, then west about a mile; the visitor center is on the left at 5025 East Van Buren, with the castle on the hill behind it. About sixteen minutes from Old Town. From the Camelback corridor take 52nd Street south to Van Buren. The 202’s Van Buren exit is a minute away if you are coming from the airport, which is how most people first see the castle anyway.