Welcoming the La Farge House to Historic Santa Fe Foundation's Register

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The La Farge House Register Nomination

Based on the nomination researched and written by UNM graduate student Hayden McAffee and Dr. Audra Bellmore. Summarized by Giulia Caporuscio. 

At the February 22, 2024 HSFF Board of Directors meeting, the La Farge House nomination was approved for HSFF’s Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation. The house was constructed in 1867 along the Santa Fe Trail and was situated on this route that later shared some of the same path of Route 66 from 1926-1937. The La Farge House is significant to the history of Santa Fe on multiple levels. It is an historic home originally from the Territorial period displaying many of the characteristic details and embellishments of that time. Important figures of Santa Fe’s early art and archeological community, including the pioneering archeologist Jesse Nusbaum owned and resided in the home. The home’s namesake, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oliver La Farge and his wife Consuelo moved into the house in  1947 and purchased it in 1953. Their son writer and historian Pen La Farge currently resides in the home. While multiple changes and additions to the home occurred, primarily during the first half of the 20th century, the property retains its architectural and landscape integrity, its view to the street, and its placement in the surrounding neighborhood.   

The 2,500 square-foot main house is a one-story adobe structure. It reflects Territorial style, with red brick coping encircling the entire structure. The windows and doors stand out for their blue trim, though they do not have the typical pedimented lintels of Territorial and Revival styles. The front façade has a white L-shaped wood portal with slender columns looking over an open garden protected from the street by a low adobe wall. The original part of the house was a large sala and attached room creating an L-plan. This was built circa 1867. In 1927, during the Nusbaums’ ownership, it was remodeled, raising the ceiling and opening the sala from three rooms into one large room. During the 1920s-1930s, the two portals, kitchen, storeroom, bedroom, bathroom, and connecting passageways were added. After the La Farges bought the property, they added another wing with two more bedrooms and another bathroom. Lastly Oliver’s office and studio was added to the front of the house, protruding forward. This addition created the current façade. 

GOOGLE MAPS. SEPTEMBER 2022. OLD SANTA FE TRAIL, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO STREET VIEW MAP. RETRIEVED MARCH 2024.

The property is located on the Old Santa Fe Trail, named for the trade route dating back to 1821 that remained an important conduit between Santa Fe and Missouri until the arrival of the railroad in 1880. The earliest record for the property is a hand-written deed on November 9, 1855. The original house was built in 1867, consisting of an L-shaped four room adobe house. In 1897 Juan Olivas purchased the property from Juanita Garcia de Hill and Adolphus P. Hill. Mary Aileen Nusbaum and Jesse Logan Nusbaum purchased the property from Juan Olivas in 1926. Lucy H Sturges and Cyrus B. More bought the property from the Nusbaums in 1939. In 1953 Oliver La Farge and wife Consuelo bought the property, though they had been renting it since 1947. The property was later passed down to their son Pen La Farge.

 Jesse Nusbaum and his wife Mary Aileen Nusbaum purchased the house in 1926 and owned it until 1939. During that time Nusbaum worked as an archeologist, as Superintendent of Mesa Verde and as the Director of the Laboratory of Anthropology. Mary Aileen was an artist. After his tenure at the Laboratory from 1930-1936, Nusbaum continued to work as a senior archeologist with the National Park Service at the neighboring NPS Southwest Regional Office until his retirement in 1957 and was a resident of Santa Fe until his death in 1975.

The namesake for the house, Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge, was born in New York City in 1901. Writer and anthropologist, he is known for his work with Indigenous groups. He came from a family of architects, artists, senators, ambassadors, and naval officers. He received an undergraduate and masters degree from Harvard University. As an undergraduate student he went on two undergraduate expeditions to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, his first interaction with Indigenous groups of the Southwest.

After graduating, he took a position at Tulane University in the Department of Middle American Research, where he participated in multiple expeditions to Central America. In 1929 he graduated with a masters, published his book Laughing Boy, which received the Pulitzer Prize, and married Wanden E. Mathews. They had two kids Oliver “Pete” Albee and Anya Povy. In 1930 he accepted a position as the head of the Eastern Association of Indian Affairs, which later became the American Association for Indian Affairs, AAIA. In 1936, La Farge moved back to Santa Fe alone, and they divorced in 1937. In 1939, he married Consuelo Otille de Pendaries y Baca, in 1940 they moved to Santa Fe and stayed.  They moved into this house in 1947 as renters, and bought it in 1953, and raised their son, John Pendaries La Farge, here. 

During World War II Oliver La Farge assumed the title Lieutenant Colonel while serving as the official historian of the Air Transport Command, afterwards he returned as president. During his several expeditions to Indigenous communities of the Southwest, he made close relationships with Indigenous groups. He became a known and trusted figure in the communities. He leveraged his authority and became a pivotal figure in many campaigns and demonstrations including the fight for the return of Taos Pueblo’s Blue Lake.

 This nomination was written by 2023’s Mac Watson Fellow Hayden McAffee. Hayden graduated from the University of New Mexico in August 2023 with a master's degree in historic preservation and regionalism. He received his bachelor's degree in interior design and architecture with a minor in architectural history and theory from Oklahoma State University in 2020. Originally from Texas, Hayden has had a lifelong fascination with the history and culture of the American Southwest. This project allowed him to dive into the archives to research an individual who played such an influential role in the region's cultural landscape, Oliver La Farge. He began by interviewing Pen La Farge, Oliver La Farge's son, who still lives in the home. His research even took him to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, which stewards a large part of the Oliver La Farge archives. His favorite find is a small watercolor painted by La Farge on an expedition in Mexico. Hayden now resides in Burlington, Vermont, and is enjoying connecting the dots between La Farge's East Coast roots and his life in Santa Fe. Hayden was mentored by Audra Bellmore, PhD. Bellmore is an associate professor at UNM as well as the John Gaw Meem Curator overseeing the John Gaw Meem Archives of Southwestern Architecture. 

2023 Faith & John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Internship Report by Giulia Caporuscio

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Front Wall Saga  

  The summer started with a week of getting to know the lay of the land at El Zaguán as the Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s (HSFF) 2023 Faith and John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Intern. Any spare time I had I spent familiarizing myself with the Foundation’s preservation easements. The second week HSFF Preservation Projects and Programs Manager Jacob Sisneros and I went straight to work plastering El Zaguán’s front wall. Don Sena, from Cornerstones Community Partnerships, collaborated with us, supplying the materials, and teaching us the tricks of working with adobe. The mixture was equal parts sand and clay, with a slightly gray hue. The wall was not in terrible condition but had a few holes in places. The previous mixture had been too sandy, and a colony of ants took up residence in the top. With Don, Jacob, and I working on the wall we finished in three days, with half a day spent mixing and hauling more sand and clay. A bonus was going with Don to San Miguel Chapel where he gave me a full tour of the work and renovations there and pointed out some archeological finds. This visit included laying electrical cables in adobe walls, hard troweling, applying lime plaster, and dry packing around windows and doors.   

  The rain on June 25, took down the cap of the wall. On July 26, we replastered the cap with the leftover mix we had from the second week. This time we tried adding Elmer's glue to the mix, to see if the polymer would help against monsoons. This trick is used at Las Golondrinas for all the final plaster. The addition of Elmer's glue changed the consistency of the mud mix, creating a non-Newtonian liquid, making it easier to trowel onto the wall but harder to hold and place the mud. It also made the mixture drier. I noticed that the wall needed to be soaked before the mixture was applied, then I would throw the mud on, wet that, then trowel it smooth. Then for good measure wet the new patch before troweling again. The final cap came out smooth and more scratch proof than with the previous mix. It did not hold up against the rain of August 8th. Parts of the new cap remained, but the wall was still wet two days after the big rain. The moisture in the wall meant that more of the plaster peeled off during the next day. In one spot the adobes were exposed, the same spot that had a huge hole at the beginning of the summer. (It appears that the tree next to the wall directs water into that spot). It is discouraging the damage done to the wall, but it is a reminder that this is just mud, it is a material that came from the earth and will return to it, it is still in sync with the climate and reacts to the weather. It is a material that does what is needed but requires more maintenance, however, does not exploit or harm the environment when it fails. The process of remudding the wall is in tune with the cultural practice of New Mexico and mirrors the reality of generations of people in the greater Southwest.   

Las Golondrinas Adventures  

    My main project at Las Golondrinas was the rebuilding of an horno. The original horno was over twenty years old and the adobe walls had become too thin to hold heat and properly roast the green chilis it was most often used for. The first job was to demolish and haul away the dirt from the old horno. After this I discovered that the floor of the horno was originally a cement circle, with a packed earth floor beneath.  The next process was clearing out and leveling the ground to lay bricks to create an even, easy to clean floor for the horno. Then came the process of laying the adobes. The adobes were trapezoidal blocks specially ordered from Adobe Man in Santa Fe.   

  I played around with the layout of the adobes to determine the best size and structural pattern. Since the layout was circular, I soon realized that I needed to fill the mortar in between neighboring adobes with adobe shards so that there were not huge gaps of mortar that would change shape as the horno dried. This process was slow. Every level had to dry completely before building the next round to prevent settling. That and the summer temperatures required a water break every fifteen minutes. When I was four courses in, I plastered the interior before I would no longer be able to fit my arm inside. Then I finished the arch with a keystone. I added a port at the back and closed off the horno in two more courses. The rest of my time on the horno was spent evening things out and creating a dome on top, rather than a flat top. I plastered the exterior with the Elmer’s glue mixture, then we lit the inaugural fire inside.   

  The rest of my time at Las Golondrinas consisted of plastering and wall repairs. These projects included a pair of buttresses, the wall along the ram enclosure, the comal, and a small wall next to the sheep enclosure. There was some relief in this work since most was shaded. Really hot days required the workday to start at five in the morning to avoid the sun. The heat could also be seen in the plastering. Many places had some minor cracks in the plaster since the new work would dry too quickly. Las Golondrinas was a quiet place to work and plaster, especially when I would get there hours before the visitors or other workers. I made friends with a goat in the ram enclosure, saw hawks, ospreys, vultures, hummingbirds, hundreds of lizards, toads, frogs, and scorpions.  I answered many questions from tourists, most often about what was in the mixture.   

Student Workshop  

    One of my favorite events from the summer was the student workshop with the Santa Fe Children’s Museum Youth Conservation Corps. Five high school students participated in the workshop. I enjoyed showing them how to mix mud for the adobes and lay them into the forms, while trying to answer their questions on how to identify a true adobe building around Santa Fe.  

Wood Working   

An unexpected skill from this summer was learning some basic woodworking skills from Jacob. I had used some power tools before, but I gained more confidence with them, learned more safety precautions for them, and ultimately how to respect the tools. The first project was building a frame for the arches built at the youth workshop. This included working with an electric jigsaw and cordless drills. Our biggest project was building a crate to protect an artifact. This taught me how to use a circular saw to cut all the wood pieces to size. The last project I briefly worked on was refurbishing a table. This taught me about belt sanders and orbital sanders.  

Preservation Knowledge  

The skills I can add to my resume following my internship at HSFF include conditions assessment, site maintenance, fundraising and party planning, preservation easements, and familiarity with nonprofits.  As I said going into this, I wanted more practical experience in historic preservation, and I am so grateful for what I have gained this summer. I saw my skills in plastering, creating mud mixes, and estimating how much material is needed increase greatly.  I have seen so many beautiful examples of historic preservation from the J.B. Jackson House to Los Pinos Guest Ranch, Oppenheimer’s house, and behind the scenes at El Zaguan, Las Golondrinas, San Miguel Chapel, and a few easement properties.  

I am most grateful for the people I have met this summer and the insights I have received from them. Pete, Melanie, Hanna, and Jacob at HSFF, Sean and Cesar from Las Golondrinas, and Don Sena from Conerstones Community Partnerships. As well as the HSFF Board of Directors and Property Committee Members.