The door to the House of Apache Fires, situated on a cliff high above Oak Creek in Red Rock State Park, would not open as Park Manager Heidi Erickson worked the knob on a drizzly day last week.
Finally, after several tries, the wooden door popped open, granting access to the interior of the Pueblo revival house, designed by Santa Fe, N.M., architect John Gaw Meem and built between 1947 and 1950.
The red rock house commissioned by Helen and Jack Frye, president of Trans World Airlines between 1934 and 1947, is a stop along the aptly named House of Apache Fires trail inside the park.
The inside of the house is not open to the public, but visitors can view the building through a chainlink fence and imagine what it would have been like to attend a party at the house in the ’50s and ’60s, as many locals did when Helen Frye owned the house after she and Jack divorced in 1950.
“Several people a week ask me, ‘Hey, when can we go inside the house?’” Erickson said.
House of Apache Fires seems designed for outdoor living, with stairs beckoning the viewer onto the house’s flat roof, which doubles as a patio complete with an outdoor fireplace set against a panoramic view of Sedona.
But the house is a shell of its glamorous past, both figuratively and literally, because decades of wildlife and weather creeping inside have wrought havoc, and the interior was gutted three years ago as part of the slow process of rehabilitation.
It smells musty inside, and there are signs of rodents roaming the space. Jim Charest, president of the Benefactors of Red Rock State Park, said it’s far better now than it was a short time ago.
“When I first started in here, there were three inches of rodent droppings,” Charest said.
Erickson said that between 1985 and 2016, the house had no maintenance.
After Helen Frye, ownership of the house passed to a religious group, Eckankar, which made modifications to the house.
In a few rooms, vestiges of Helen Frye’s original interior styling remain, such as viga ceilings and remnants of turquoise paint.
But even in its rough state, the charm and thoughtful design of the house shines through.
“It’s a beautiful piece of … I’m going to call it artwork,” Charest said. “It blends in.”
“I’ve found so many visitors interested in this building,” Erickson added.
The Benefactors are working with Red Rock State Park on the rehabilitation. They have a goal of getting the interior to a state where it can be opened for tours in 2022.
Money, naturally, is a determining factor in the speed and level of work that can be accomplished on House of Apache Fires. The Benefactors are raising money for the renovation work. A recent achievement was replacing most of the roof, which was leaky and unsound.
“We have collected about $17,000 for the [House of Apache Fires] project. We will start cleaning up the interior this year [soda blasting, concrete work, solar power, plastering] until we use up the money. Next year we will go for grants and fundraisers as needed,” Charest said.
Funds are important, but right now, Charest and Erickson seem even more interested in finding photos of the original interior of the house so that someday the interior can be recreated to reflect what it was in the middle of the last century.
Erickson said that to date, the park has seen only six interior photos of the house, some of which are repeats of the same areas. Period photos of the exterior are much more numerous.
“If your readers have any pictures of the house,” Charest said, the State Park would very much like to see them.
Charest noted that first-hand knowledge of the House of Apache Fires is fading fast. He leads tours through the park, and Charest said over the years he would occasionally have people on the tours who had attended a party at the House of Apache Fires and could share a story.
“It’s getting to the point where many of those people are going,” he said.
