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Dramatically sited on the bayshore side of the drive, the “castle” was built for Turkish Armenian hotel owner V. M. Donigan. The composition is dominated by a three-story, red-tiled roof turret that serves as an entrance and connector to its two flanking wings. Donigan built the house at the former location of the Alta Vista Hotel, the centerpiece of Ropes's Port Aransas Cliffs development. Designed in 1891 the resort hotel was inaugurated but never opened due to foreclosure by Ropes's creditors. Intermittently used for other functions, it burned in 1927, forever closing the Ropes chapter in Corpus Christi's history.