100 South Mill Avenue

When I was growing up there was a mysterious house in Papago park that inspired a buzz of myths and legends, ghost stories and hints and whiffs of scandal. Pretty much all of it untrue, of course. (Don’t confuse this entry with the similar air of mystery and decadence which hangs over that other Papago treasure, the Tovrea Castle.)

That house, which I now know by its correct name, is in dire need of conservation and adaptive reuse–before it is lost entirely to the elements. Some movements are afoot to save it, and I hope to soon be able to post more about them here.

There is one interesting link to Monti’s: In 1924 the renowned architect Robert Evans performed the first so-called “historic renovation” as such in the history of Arizona. The subject of that renovation was the Hayden House/La Casa Vieja. Evans also designed the Eisendrath House.

Here is a wholesale lifting from Tempe’s site (Tempe Historic Property Survey) that describes the property. Please go there and lear more about this treasure:

“This house was built as a winter residence for Rose Eisendrath, widow of the wealthy Chicago glove manufacturer. It was designed and built by well-known Phoenix architect/contractor Robert T. Evans. Evans came to Arizona in 1923 from Chicago where he had founded the Evans Manufacturing Co., and worked as an executive engineer for International Harvester. In Arizona, he formed Evans Construction Co. In 1925, he built a home which later became the famed Jokake Inn. After selling the Jokake in 1944, he built and managed the Paradise Inn, which was sold in 1950. After Mrs. Eisendrath’s death in 1936, the house passed through several owners and continued to be used as a retreat for the wealthy.

This building represents an outstanding example of the Pueblo Revival style. The house is the largest remaining and best-preserved Pueblo Revival style house in the Tempe area. The house is unique for its construction of adobe brick, rarely used in a two-story building. The irregular massing of the house is complemented by the imposing sandstone buttes in the desert at the eastern edge of Papago Park. “

More photos here.

I just love this story. This is a repost from, I think, my 4th newsletter:

Monti’s Letter #4: Scandal! Infamy! Big Bushy Whiskers!

Herein: another rambling rag from Monti’s La Casa Vieja, the Valley’s oldest continuously occupied building.

Greetings! In these times of corporate skulduggery by the likes of Martha Stewart and Kenneth Lay it is easy to forget that Arizona history boasts of a swindler who was orders of magnitude greater than these latter-day pikers. The clue in my subject line will have alerted any old Arizona hands who are reading this to the identity of this individual–none other than James Addison Reavis, the Baron of Arizona.

Today’s pallid white collar criminals manipulate figures on financial statements or share insider tips, but Reavis brazenly presented bogus grants to the US government claiming ownership of a chunk of Arizona and New Mexico that was larger than a number of Eastern seaboard states. Then he shook down every ranch, mine and railroad in reach for royalties in return for their allowing them to remain on “his” land.
Now, my tenure as a student at Tempe High School was pretty much a waste of tax dollars, but one moment that has stayed with me as a fond memory was the screening in class of the 1950 “B” movie “Baron of Arizona” starring Vincent Price. After years of fruitless searching I was finally able to lay hands on a copy and…it is still as corny as ever.

The movie tagline, as quoted from the Internet Movie Database, says it all: WOMEN fought for his kisses! MEN clamored for his life!

Yet for all of the cliches and stiff dialog, the film did burn the story of the Baron and his fake Peralta Grant indelibly into my brain.
Speaking of corny, here is a poem that appeared on my father’s menu in Chandler sometime between 1946 and 1956. It is not credited to any particular author (and you will understand why), but if any of you have seen it before and know who the author was, please tell me.
”Arizona”
She puts her arms around you
And hold [sic] you in her spell;
She nods and beckons to you
from the state in which you dwell;
You try to shake her shackles
And vow you won’t return.
But somehow you can’t resist it,
Her lure you cannot spurn;
So you pick up Bag and baggage
Ere The Snows of winter fall,
And hie to Arizona–
for it gets them, one and all.
So, did this sound better 50 years ago?

[Back to the story...]

It is important to keep in mind the lengths Reavis went to in furtherance of his scheme. He spent years learning calligraphy so he could forge the necessary land grant documents, which he personally planted in Mexico and Spain. He raised, educated and married an orphan girl from Mexico and passed her off as the heiress to the Peralta grant. And he almost got away with it all.
The movie tracks the story fairly well in a condensed form, though Hollywood being what it is, the screenwriter decided that it would be even more dramatic to have Reavis claim the entire State of Arizona, as though stealing a swath of land 235 miles long by 75 miles wide were not impressive enough. They also threw in a stereotyped sultry gypsy girl as a love interest for Reavis, apparently to wake viewers up after the less than action-packed calligraphy-forging scenes.
The story of Reavis is better told in a number of places, and you can find more information at the following web sites:

http://www.brazilbrazil.com/maricopa.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20011103034835/http://pw1.netcom.com/~mikalm/reavis.htm

http://jeff.scott.tripod.com/baron.html (See what I meant by “big bushy whiskers”.)

Also see Marshall Trimble’s book “In The Old West”

A 1960s article by Charles Dixon gives the following account of Charles T. Hayden’s encounter with the Baron, here at what is today Monti’s La Casa Vieja:
The upright Hayden is said to have held his hands behind his back and refused to “shake hands with such as you” when J. Addison Reavis came to call.
Reavis, at the time, was known as the Baron of Arizona and claimed ownership of much of the state under terms of an ancient Spanish land grant he possessed. Hayden, recognizing him for the phony he was later proved to be, ordered Reavis from the premises.