Rio Nuevo eyes historic house from Tucson's lost barrio

The barrio surrounding it was bulldozed more than 50 years ago to make way for the Tucson Convention Center. Now the historic Sosa-Carrillo House is on the cusp of being purchased by the current driving force behind “urban renewal” downtown.

Rio Nuevo is offering to buy the 19th-century adobe house from the Arizona Historical Society, which has owned the property since 1971 but has struggled for years to fund necessary repairs to the structure.

Rio Nuevo board chairman Fletcher McCusker said the tax-supported urban improvement district has reached a “verbal agreement” to take over the property for a little over $1 million.

McCusker said he and his fellow board members have already signed off on the deal, but the sale won’t happen until — and unless — the historical society’s state board of directors approves it.

Their next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 27.

McCusker said Rio Nuevo intends to “rehabilitate” and preserve the building, not tear it down or turn it into a business.

“Our intent is to renovate it. It is not our intent to commercialize it,” he said.

Arizona Historical Society executive director David Breeckner confirmed Rio Nuevo’s purchase offer, but he declined to discuss specifics until the state board reviews the deal.

He did say that the talks have been ongoing since late 2021 and have “served to highlight maintenance and outreach needs for the property, and are inspiring a fresh look to ensure that the Sosa-Carrillo House remains a publicly accessible site for history and culture into the next century ahead.”

According to the society’s own estimates, almost $1.3 million in renovations are needed to “restore the home back to its 1800s glory,” Breeckner said.

AHS doesn’t have that kind of money available, but Rio Nuevo does, McCusker said. “We think it’s a win-win for everyone.”

Much of the cost involves the building’s original adobe, which has been damaged over the years by moisture trapped behind cement-based plaster that was applied to the bricks during the last major renovation in the early 1970s.

Cracks and water stains can be seen on the walls of the house, both inside and out.

“It’s not going to fall over,” McCusker said, but “I believe the adobe is at great risk.”

Similar issues have prompted extensive restoration at San Xavier Mission.

The cement-based coating will need to be carefully stripped away and replaced with traditional lime-washed plaster mixed with cactus juice, which allows the walls to breathe and release moisture. The work is expected to take up to two years to complete.

Fixer-upper

McCusker said Rio Nuevo is committed to maintaining the property as a cultural and educational site, and there would be deed restrictions to that effect, just in case.

He said the building’s two current tenants, the Borderlands Theater and the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum, would be offered five-year leases to continue as stewards of the building and its mission.

Michael Lopez is vice president of Los Descendientes del Presidio de Tucson, the nonprofit heritage organization that operates the museum at Sosa-Carrillo. He said Rio Nuevo has also offered to slash their rent to $1 per month, down from the $400 they currently pay to the historical society.

The house was closed to the public and being used by AHS for storage before Borderlands and Los Descendientes moved in and the museum opened there in 2019, Lopez said.

In addition to the adobe repairs, he said the building is overdue for a new roof and air-conditioning system, upgraded electrical wiring, and renovations to its 50-year-old bathrooms and kitchen, which would allow it to better accommodate special events.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The historic house at 151 S. Granada Ave. already plays host to a range of gatherings, including weddings, funerals and quinceañeras. Last month, Pueblo High School’s mariachi band held a fundraising concert in the walled courtyard, near the home’s famous fig tree that dates back to the eighteenth century and still produces fruit.

“Once we get (the house) restored, it will be a much better venue for the kinds of events we want to hold and the exhibits we want to have,” Lopez said.

McCusker thinks the proposed acquisition could also lead to a stronger connection between the Sosa-Carrillo House and the Tucson Convention Center campus that surrounds it.

“Since we’ll own everything, we think it can be better integrated,” he said.

The house was built in 1880 by prominent local businessman Leopoldo Carrillo on land previously owned by the pioneering family of José María Sosa, an ensign who served in the Spanish presidios of Tucson and Tubac 100 years earlier.

The traditional Sonoran row house included a stone foundation, high ceilings and a central hallway known as a zaguan. Its front door opened onto Main Street, then a dirt road through what was still a dusty, frontier outpost.

Over the decades, the house was added onto and divided into apartments as it was passed down through generations of Carrillo relatives.

The last family member to own the property and live there, Leticia Carrillo Jacobs de Fuentes, was evicted in 1968, after the city took the house by eminent domain.

For a short time, the dilapidated structure stood by itself, as some 250 other homes and businesses in Tucson’s oldest Mexican-American barrio were razed all around it to make way for the convention center. The project displaced more than 700 residents, many of them people of color from low-income households.

Unlikely savior

The decision to spare the Sosa-Carrillo House from the bulldozers was steeped in its own brand of ethnic erasure.

At the time the building was saved, it was commonly known as the Frémont House for its tenuous connection to John C. Frémont, the explorer, military commander and politician who served as Arizona’s fifth territorial governor from 1878 to 1881. His daughter briefly occupied the house in June of 1881, but there’s no evidence that he ever set foot there or had any other connection to the place.

Even so, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1971, as the “John Charles Frémont, Casa del Gobernador, House.”

At the historical society’s request, that register listing was changed in 1993 to the Sosa-Carrillo-Frémont House.

These days, the Frémont name is being phased out altogether, though it can still be found on several signs and documents, including the National Register.

McCusker first announced Rio Nuevo’s possible purchase last month, during a dedication ceremony for the newly renamed Alva Bustamante Torres Plaza at the TCC, just behind the Sosa-Carrillo House.

Torres, now 90, is a Tucson native, preservationist and newspaper columnist, who fought against the destruction of downtown homes and businesses in the name of urban renewal during the 1960s and 1970s.

The irony of the situation isn’t lost on McCusker. He said he knows how it looks to have one of the last remaining pieces of the lost barrio bought up by what many people now consider Tucson’s “chief gentrifier.”

But the Arizona Historical Society has “zero dollars to invest in the property,” McCusker said. Without Rio’s Nuevo’s help, the Sosa-Carrillo House will “continue to languish.”

Ultimately, Lopez said, he and his fellow Los Descendientes just want to see the old house and its complicated story preserved, regardless of who is footing the bill.

“Some of our members were skeptical at first,” he said. “I think we’ve moved past that.”

Photos: The Sosa-Carrillo House and urban redevelopment in Tucson