In 1934, an Arizona father began gathering rejected objects and desert Stone; 11 years later, the salvage had become an 18-room castle for his daughter

In the foothills of Phoenix’s South Mountain, an extraordinary house was built from materials most people would have thrown away. Between the 1930s and 1945, Boyce Luther Gulley gathered desert stone, rejected bricks, old railway materials, telephone poles, automobile parts and other discarded objects to build an 18-room castle for his daughter, Mary Lou. He worked largely by hand, shaping an eccentric three-level home into the desert landscape without a conventional architectural plan. What began as a private project became one of Phoenix’s most unusual landmarks.

Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!