Mayor Levi Manning's 1907 Prairie-Style Estate Where Candlelit Apparitions Walk the Halls
450 W Paseo Redondo, Tucson, AZ 85745
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The exterior and grounds are viewable from the street. The building operates as El Rio Health Center administrative offices and is not open for public tours. Drive-by or walk-by visit only.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Sidewalk access on Paseo Redondo; grounds viewable from street level
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1907 · El Presidio National Register Historic District · Henry Trost Architecture · Tucson Mayoral History · Earliest Private Swimming Pool in Tucson
Levi Howell Manning — born 1864 in North Carolina, arrived in Tucson in the 1880s — had made himself one of the city's most prominent civic figures by the time he hired architect Henry Trost to design a home on ten acres in what was then an open pastoral setting near the Santa Cruz River. Manning served as Tucson's mayor in 1905 on an anti-gambling platform. The house, constructed between 1907 and 1908, reflected his status: 37,000 square feet, designed by Trost in a fusion of Spanish Colonial, Territorial, Italian Renaissance, and Prairie styles that drew on the architect's broad Southwest portfolio.
Trost's ambitions for the Manning House were unusual enough that contemporaries described it as unlike anything else in Tucson. The building included stables and what may have been the first private swimming pool in the city. Manning died in 1935 at the age of 71. His son Howell Manning Sr. inherited the property and eventually relocated to Canoa Ranch in 1949, when the Manning family connection to the house ended.
The building's subsequent ownership history spanned the Elks Club (through 1979), the City of Tucson (1979-1984), a Canadian developer, and the Concannon family, who purchased it in 1997 for $2.2 million and put $3 million into renovations to operate it as an events venue. That use ended in 2012. El Rio Community Health Center acquired the property in 2013 and completed a renovation before moving in its administrative offices in 2016. The house sits within the El Presidio National Register Historic District.
It is now an active administrative building for El Rio, a federally qualified health center. The building is not open for public tours, but the distinctive Trost-designed exterior is visible from the street.
Sources
The Manning House's haunting reputation accumulated across its various ownership phases. The most detailed public accounts emerged during the Concannon family's events-venue era, documented in a 2012 Tucson Weekly piece. Owner Colleen Concannon and her staff described several specific incidents.
An employee working at the bar encountered a hazy figure that appeared to be drinking whiskey. The employee quit. A separate guest, washing her face in a restroom, looked up to find a child's face in the mirror — described in the account as looking like one of the Manning children. A third recurring account describes a man carrying a lit candlestick pacing the hallways. The Pima County Library's published ghost compendium identifies this figure as potentially Levi Manning himself — or a member of his family — noting that all reported encounters characterized the presence as friendly.
Renovation workers during El Rio's 2013-2016 work also reported a friendly, indistinct presence that they described as a watchful figure rather than a threatening one. No formal paranormal investigation of the building has been publicly documented.
The building is now an active administrative facility and is not open to the public, which limits new witness accounts. The historical claims, however, come from named and identifiable sources — Concannon, a former employee, at least one guest — with a specific journalistic context (the Tucson Weekly, 2012), giving them more weight than generic ghost-tour lore.
Notable Entities
The Manning House at 450 W. Paseo Redondo can be viewed from the street. The 1907 building — designed by Henry Trost in a fusion of Spanish Colonial, Territorial, Italian Renaissance, and Prairie styles — sits on several acres within the El Presidio National Register Historic District. The building is now El Rio Health Center's administrative headquarters and is not open to the public.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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