Time-traveling at the Riordan Mansion

Paying a Call on the Riordans

Seeing the Riordan House is like spying on 1904. And when you take the tour with someone like Larry Busby, you have the perfect time-travel host.

Designed by Charles Whittlesey, the huge (13,000 square feet) American Craftsman-style house is now a littleknown jewel in the state park system; Busby is a guide who wants to change that, one person at a time.

Standing outside the log-sided sprawl of mansion, Busby explains the architecture: blueprints basically folded in half and mirrored with the two wings of the house connected by a central room. “Folks,” Busby says, in a genial, rustic voice, “just think if we could be mice watching when all this was being lived in.” He sets the stage in the visitors center. Lumber barons Timothy and Michael Riordan would have been pleased to know when they commissioned the architect of the magnificent El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon to build their mansion that Blanche, lived in the other side of the house until 1986, and it isn't tour-restored yet.) Above the back door of the mansion, a wide plank makes a snow gutter. Tipsily tilted over the door, it sends snowmelt running into the garden by your feet.

Busby explains first whom we are about to visit. The Riordan brothers came west to help older brother Matt, who sold them a lumber company and went on to other ventures. The new partners met and married sisters, and the four built this grand house, spending $90,000, which would translate to about three-quarters of a million today. Planked in ponderosa from the “first cut,” rough sides of trees, the house used what would have been burned as useless then and now costs more than smooth inner boards.Through the back door, into 1904. You are ushered into the Rendezvous Room. Clearly the Riordans knew that society leaders were one part blood, one part breeding, and the rest style. The large center room connecting the two family wings could have been called the ballroom, the den, or the playroom. But how much more intriguing to put the “rendezvous” image to it.

A pool/billiard table weighing as much as a large pickup truck sits at one end. Wondrous windows flank a huge stone fireplace.

These windows with photographic images pressed between sheets of glass are not one of a kind; the Smithsonian Institution has another set. They were made with the mammoth prints of Jack Hillers' photographs of Arizona scenes. Hillers was John Wesley Powell's photographer on his second traverse of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon; in fact, Hillers saved the one-armed explorer after a bad upset in one of the roaring rapids. (See Arizona Highways, April '81) The photographic plates of the river, Canyon de Chelly, and various Anasazi ruins are square feet of silvered scenery. In a world of satellite telephones and voiceactivated car doors, we have lost the technology (or maybe the alchemy) that Hillers used to create the images.

Unknowingly he also pressed between the panes a fungus that has flourished in its protected environment. But the its six-car garage would be the latter-day visitors center to their home as a state park. The skeptical architect, who knew the rugged beamed garage was for those newfangled cars, didn't want his work rendered outdated in a few years when automobiles went out of style: he put rein rings in the walls so the horses could be brought back.

Turn-of-the-century Luxury Awaits Visitors to a Small State Park in Flagstaff

That kind of eccentric detail crops up over and over in the brothers' house. (You will tour Tim's side and hear more about him since Mike's daughter,

Paying a Call on the Riordans

photographs still startle and impress, crept over as they are with the black and white blur of organisms living in the ruined rock houses and canyon walls.

One day Tim Riordan, who loved company and loved to be the center of a listening audience, had workers from his vast lumber mills build a huge pair of what he called "Paul Bunyan's baby shoes" to entertain his children. When company came that night, and someone asked about the two-foot-long footwear, Tim began a loquacious tradition of telling Bunyan stories to guests. The shoes still waitfor a spotlight and a story by the fireplace. Going upstairs on the way to the bedrooms, you pass a small chapel, insert-ed midfloor. The Riordans and their pio-neer cousins, the Babbitts, were Flagstaff's leading families and both Catholic. The chapel, with its prie-dieu and religious paintings, must have been a holdover until the families could get the Nativity Church with its sandstone gargoyles and soaring steeple built in Flagstaff. Servants, who normally had a hard time of it in territorial Arizona, hit the top of the help heap when they worked for the Riordans. The butler and housekeep-er, a husband-and-wife team, had a bedroom in the house itself, as Busby points out. With splayed wire hangers still in one closet and fragile egg-colored linens in another closet next door, you feel that Jeeves and Anna have just gone downstairs to attend to guests. (They descended, when called, down the back spiral staircase, lest the family have to mix with them on the front stairs.) The guest room is closest to the servants' quarters. It has a fireplace to make sure such visiting dignitaries as Teddy Roosevelt felt lavishly welcomed — and reminded that this was no rube's cabin they'd stepped into. Furniture handmade in an elaborately carved Norwegian style includes a deacon's bench one visiting connoisseur called "the ugliest I've seen."

Busby, who explains all this, looks wistful.

"It's not just the room and what you see," he says. "What can't we see? Who hung his jacket on that hook? Major Powell? President Roosevelt? Who held his hands before the fire crackling here?"

Since the Riordans owned the mill, which was really a small town similar to Phelps Dodge copper towns later in Arizona history, they entertained political and business magnates. (Their Mill Town is why Flagstaff's main thoroughfare is called "Milton.") The guests could stroll into the upper hall, which boasts an air circulator of massive proportions. The size of a rowboat, waist-high, its slatted top brought warm air to the second floor all winter. Then skylights above it were opened in the summertime to waft cool breezes through the lower rooms. Tim was proud of the circulation system and only vexed when his two daughters turned the slats of the invention into a handy lingerie dryer after basin washing.

Mary was the older daughter: a belle and socialite in a town that didn't give her much competition. Her wedding, captured in a photograph displayed in her room, included 15 bridesmaids and guests galore. The long staff in her hand in the photograph lies on the bed.

Would I like Mary if I met her? I wonder, looking at her elaborately beaded dresses, the picture of the lake her father named for her after he dammed the reservoir that is still Flagstaff's main water source. When she was off to Europe and finishing school, my great-grandmother was taking in boarders down in Oak Creek. Would Mary have been patronizing to Sedona Schnebly, since they were of different classes? Busby doesn't know. He does know Mary was close to her mother. Their bedrooms are adjoining. Busby says Tim took his younger daughter, Anna, on world travels; I wondered what Mary and her mother, Caroline, did instead.

Caroline was a great beauty, a regal woman even at 60 in the photograph on her bureau.

Paying a Call on the Riordans

The huge bedroom, Busby explains, is the only place a woman of stature in the lumber town would have been able to let her hair down. Dresses she wore seem impossible for human habitation until you know she was the society dream wisp of a woman: just under five feet tall, with a 22-inch waist. A corset cover on the bed indicates that was a priority to Caroline. Busby knows a lot, but he wonders with you about more. Why did Caroline's room have pine flooring in a house where all the rest of the rooms have maple? Why do her rooms connect with her oldest daughter's Ritual. A photograph shows his daughters wearing their hair coiled in buns on both sides of their heads, as Hopi girls once did when they reached puberty, signifying they were of marriageable age. When in Hopi, Tim observed the traditions. Back to Anna. Her bedroom is past the hall bath. In her mid-20s, Anna is an arresting face in a photograph. On a dressmaker's model hangs a dress she liked so well she had layers of lace and silk added as she grew taller a woman accustomed to having her preferences indulged. She looks less fragile and more interesting than her sister, Mary. Getting ready to be married, she went with her family on a Sunday outing. Tired when they came home, "Anna came up here and went to bed," Busby says. "The next morning, she awoke paralyzed from the waist down. Wednesday she died of polio."

That same week, one of Mike's sons also died of polio. What a somber house this must have been then: the leading family, robust and hearty and going wherever whimsy dictated, cut like that. Merciless, swift, completely baffling, polio snatched two children one after the other. I've seen no pictures of funerals; only happy occasions are on display. But Busby believes Anna was buried in what was made to be her wedding dress.

Sobered by the image of hushed and weeping relatives in the upper hall, it's a relief when Busby says: "I smell bread baking; let's go to the kitchen!"

The huge coal stove with its elaborate scrolls and relief work was used until 1977, Busby says.

"The family wasn't tight, but knew how to handle money. The stove is still good."

The kitchen is another showplace of ingenuity with an enclosed path to the cavernous icebox just outside the kitchen proper, so delivery men wouldn't track water and sawdust onto the cook's floor. There's a call box where Cook can look up to see which servant's being summoned.

On a small sturdy table is Caroline's recipe book with careful writing giving instructions for making gingerbread. A narrow passage between the kitchen and china closet is the servants' pantry; a small sink serves as a wet bar where long-gone bottles of sherry and absinthe probably were standard on the shelves above. Another thinking man's touch: drawers that open into both the pantry and the dining room, sliding either way so the butler is instantly able to provide whatever item is required.

Because Tim was so heartily social, the entertaining must have been a trial and point of pride to the household staff. The dining room is generously sized.

while Anna slept down the hall, past her father's room, not adjoining anyone? Was Anna jealous Mary had a lake? Mary got married at 19. Anna was 26 when she planned her wedding. But I've skipped a room like a family, the Riordan stories don't come tidily and orderly; they interrupt each other.

Tim's room shows evidence of a man who was a vigorous combination of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Handsome, even in his 70s. Over six feet. The old golf clubs and tennis racquets scattered about hint of a dashing character.

Every year for 13 years, Busby says, Tim took a caravan of curious friends and associates to the Hopi snake dances, which are the tribe's equivalent of Christmas in terms of preparation and ceremony. The three-week pilgrimage was a huge undertaking: wagons, supplies, tents, and probably sometimes rude, culturally insensitive people. But Tim was obviously the right man to meld his friends and the important The leaded-glass windows, believed to be Tiffany, are dwarfed by Tim's Arthurian concept of what a dining room should be. The table is almost oval, but pointed at the ends; a football of Douglas fir. The high-backed master's chair sits in the center of one side; Caroline sat across from him (with a buzzer by her foot to summon the help). On down the pointed table, guests could converse without needing to lean around anyone to see the entire table. Meals, for men, meant jacket and tie. The ladies put on their exquisitely detailed gowns.

"Tim was such a talker; he could go two hours without stopping," Busby says. "You couldn't interrupt the head of the household, and you couldn't leave the table; you could only hope he had some-thing to get to after dinner."

The foyer also is the music room. Caroline's custom Steinway, valued at thousands now, sits in a special cutout section between the entryway and living room so guests in both areas could listen.

For me the most magical moment of our tour is when Busby asks if anyone can play. My mother, who played in piano bars in Flagstaff decades ago, slides onto the bench without any backpedalling qualifiers about skill.

"I guess that I should play something Caroline might have," she says and touches the keys that bring out "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."

With her straight back and pale hair, she evokes the mother of the house, playing the tender melody lightly and easily. Busby listens, looking transported into another realm. Maybe as a guest of the famous family he spends so much time talking about, he can see Caroline herself; feel the brandy glass in his hand; hear the rustle of women's formal dresses around him. He hums along with the song. I can see his moustache waxed and gleaming, turn-of-the-century dinner clothes instead of the state uniform.

After the notes die away, Busby takes a moment to come back to full present. He shows us the living room which is a book-lined family room, not formal at all. In fact, in the middle is a light green porch swing, facing the fireplace. Another eccentricity, but the worn Persian carpet under the swing shows it was pushed by plenty of feet. A bay window behind it opens onto the front yard. In the summer, servants unhooked the swing and turned it around so the family could look out on the bright blue skies and pines.

Much of the furniture is priceless Stickley design, including what Caroline's granddaughters called "the jail chair." With its high slatted sides, it made a perfect place for little girls who misbehaved to think about their actions.

WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: To reach Riordan State Historic Park from Phoenix, take Interstate 17 north into Flagstaff to the junction with İnterstate 40, where the highway becomes Milton Road. Continue on to Chambers Drive, turn right, and proceed to Riordan Ranch Street, then turn left. The park entrance is on the right side of the street. Watch for directional signs that say Riordan Mansion State Park. Except for the second floor, the Riordan Mansion is handicapped-accessible. However, a slide show available in the visitors center covers all of the upstairs. The visitors center and a picnic area also are handicapped-accessible. For more information, write or call Riordan State Historic Park, 1300 Riordan Ranch St., Flagstaff, AZ 86001; telephone (602) 779-4395.

(ABOVE) A portrait of Mary Riordan hangs above the fireplace in the mansion's unusually decorated living room.

Where to stay: Flagstaff has numerous hotels, from luxury suites in national chains to quaint mom-and-pop motels on Route 66 going through town. For more information, contact the Flagstaff Visitors Center at 101 W. Santa Fe Ave., Flagstaff, AZ 86001; (602) 774-9541 or 1 (800) 842-7293.

Nearby attractions: Also in the area are Walnut Canyon and Wupatki national monuments, both with Indian ruins; and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.

The tufted velvet seats in the window beckon. You want to pick up a book and lounge there; knowing you would feel relaxed and provided for.

But instead you leave out the back door, past the servants' quarters. If you could stay until night falls, would you see Caroline come down with the family and ask Tim how he chose the stucco fireplaces and where he'll travel next? Would Anna and Mary quarrel about who should play the piano for their father after dinner? "Sister, it's my turn; you played when Major Powell came last week."

Some friends of the younger Riordans tell me that ghosts do live in the house.

They say if you rack up the billiard balls and go away for a while, the pattern will be broken when you get back, and the scent of cigar smoke will hang in the air. They say a young woman's figure can sometimes be seen in a rocking chair in the upper hall. The star-crossed Anna? They don't know. I'd love a chance to guess.