Aztec Ruins Administrative History

PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM
(continued)

Administration Building and Third Museum

According to blueprints drawn in November 1933, the vacated five-room Morris house, including the west room the American Museum had intended as an exhibition hall, was to be remodeled into monument offices and a museum under a Public Works Administration project. A lobby of approximately 980 square feet would be built to connect this structure with the comfort station complex to the east erected two years earlier (see Figure 7.13). A 1,305-square-foot museum would be placed on the west side of the old house. A new porch would extend across the front of the lobby, a door from the museum opening on the original porch at the west. [97] As had always been the case at Aztec Ruins, it was the museum which would cause most controversy.

Figure 7.13. Lobby being erected between Morris house and comfort stations, 1934.

The first phase in the process of getting a satisfactory museum for the monument was an inspection by Carl P. Russell, field naturalist with the Landscape and Education Office in San Francisco. What he saw was the display as it had been arranged by Custodian Boundey of almost 1,500 objects within the seven ruin rooms. [98] Faris did some reorganizing and installed a few glass cases to protect special artifacts. [99] Russell deplored the poor lighting, lack of visual explanatory materials, the necessity for the services of a guide, and rainwater that ran into the east entry to soak floors. He wanted to see a more controlled, up-to-date facility. He further recommended cataloging the undocumented assortment of accrued specimens, especially the American Museum collection, prior to curatorial work. [100]

Although Morris agreed with Russell's appraisal, adding that theft, breakage, and dust were other drawbacks, Custodian Faris remained enthusiastic about the museum within the ruin. [101] He argued that its atmosphere appealed to the viewing public more than what he called a "glass coffin" standard museum. It was an argument he lost.

Proceeding on Russell's report, plans were prepared for the administration and museum building according to the preliminary blueprints of November 1933. [102] A sum of $9,000 was allotted for its construction. On the following July 5, 1934, invitations for bids were sent to six construction firms: one in Aztec, three in Durango, one in Boulder, and one in Los Angeles. No bids were returned. None of the contacted companies felt it could do the job for the sum allocated. The main problem was that the museum as designed was too elaborate for the permissible budget. The museum was eliminated from the final plan. When he returned a bid of $8,400, Harry Gedney, of Durango, was awarded the contract for construction of the remaining building. [103] The foundation and fill for the museum were included. These were dropped, and the amount of the Gedney contract was reduced by $408. [104]

William Gebhardt, assistant architect in the Branch of Plans and Design, Western Division, was in residence at Aztec for four months during the winter of 1934-35 to oversee the erection of a condensed version of the administration building (see Figure 10.1). The Morris living room with its small corner fireplace and front bedroom were converted into a custodian's office. The kitchen was to house a clerk. Even though there was no such position on the Aztec Ruins roster, the large room on the west end of the building was assigned to the naturalist. This part of the combined units of the building still was covered with twelfth-century ceiling elements. The stone masonry of the same age was under plaster. The new spacious lobby (23 by 35 feet) had walls of exposed, carefully laid, stone masonry over a hearting of locally made adobe bricks. A ceiling of large and small peeled beams mirrored the regional style. Doors front and rear permitted a flow of tourists directly through the building.

On the exterior, crenelations were removed from the roof line, and both the new and old sections of the building were plastered to simulate adobe. The stairs to the cellar were aligned so that they paralleled the rear wall of the building. A beamed porch put on this same facade was removed 30 years later because the wood rotted. The added front porch duplicated that on the house in having cedar posts reversed so that spreading roots engaged the roof. A modified Puebloan edifice emerged from all these changes. [105]

Privately, Morris was disgusted that, after all the years of anticipating a formal museum to show to the world the Anasazi material goods he recovered with so much effort and cost, it was abandoned as being something superfluous. "While there was a Public Works allotment for the construction of a formal museum at the Aztec Ruins, what impressed me as an extremely stupid procedure on the part of the Branch of Plans and Designs in sending out specifications for the structure which could not possibly be met with the amount of money available, the museum will not be built at the present time." [106]

Faris was not discouraged; from the beginning, he had opposed the plan for this particular kind of museum. When it was obvious that there was no support for keeping the museum in the ruin, he turned to advocating the use of the Great Kiva for that purpose. He knew that it would make a very favorable, long-lasting impression on visitors. Ansel F. Hall, Field Division of Education, seconded the notion. [107] This was not an entirely original idea. Staff members at the American Museum once had suggested a new museum building along the same plans. "It is hoped that in the near future it will be possible to construct a small building for museum purposes," the report stated. "The building possibly to duplicate the general plan of the structure known as the Great Kiva, one of the large ceremonial chambers excavated. If such a museum building should be provided for by outside support, the American Museum will undoubtedly contribute the plot and building still held in its name." [108]

Use of the reconstructed Great Kiva as a museum was a suggestion Faris submitted with a detailed outline. [109] He proposed to have Chacoan artifacts at floor level around one side of the chamber, Mesa Verdian around the other, thus clearly differentiating the two occupations. The altar room would contain a special exhibit on burials. The other surface rooms would house lesser artifacts or serve as study areas. Technical problems of heating, lighting, flooring, ventilation, security of specimens, and the possibility of detracting from the religious nature of the structure ultimately ruled out his interesting plan.

In January 1935, $3,100 was set aside for museum furniture, nine display cases of different types, and preparation and installation of exhibits. [110] A year later, $1,950 was added to the museum fund. [111] Just where that museum was to be and how it was to be arranged was not decided. That did not mean that Faris, for once, was without ideas. Both he and Park Ranger Robert Hart sent suggested detailed layouts to Pinkley. [112] Their plans were based on experience with the flow of visitor traffic through the site. In their proposals, the new lobby was a staging area, a place where some orientation to the area's physical environment and the prehistoric cultural story was explained. The guided tour then would proceed to the Great Kiva, out across the courtyard, and through the sequence of rooms with ceilings. Despite the fact that moisture was a worsening problem, both men were reluctant to leave these rooms bare. Faris wanted a series of drawings placed there to explain Anasazi cultural evolution from Basketmaker III through Pueblo V and suggested installing some life-sized models of persons at various daily chores. A later project was designed to put one experimental mannequin grouping in place. Apparently, this was not done. [113]

The Faris-Hart tour would continue to the rear T-shaped door on the west end of the administration building to enter the museum room (approximately 12 by 24 feet). There, Faris suggested various aspects of Anasazi life at Aztec Ruins be exemplified. Two windows on the west exposure and a door on the south would be sealed to provide sufficient wall space. The Faris plan for exhibits in this room reflects the tendency of older museums to overload cases with specimens. In Faris's plan, a second smaller room created out of half of the custodian's office would contain further materials, especially a Chaco burial to, as Faris said, "send the visitors off with a thrill. One might think off hand that anything but a burial would be the thing to send him off with a good taste in his mouth, but they like them and we have some mighty dandy examples." [114] The exit from this room would be to the front of the building, after the visitor registered.

Because a door between the west room and his office did not exist, Faris asked Ansel Hall, who was in charge of museum plans for Aztec Ruins, to have one cut. [115] Faris's mistake in not working through proper channels caused problems. To do this small remodeling entailed using money not meant for that purpose. An immediate rebuke from Pinkley canceled the request. [116] Faris left Aztec to become custodian at Canyon de Chelly National Monument without seeing his Aztec museum become a reality.

The Field Division of Education at the Western Museum Laboratory in Berkeley prepared interpretive displays for the museum and supplied cases after a plan drawn by Louis Shellbach. [117] One of these featured tree-ring dating, which just five years earlier had given Aztec Ruins a secure time slot in regional prehistory. Sid Stallings, Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, plotted a demonstration beam section. [118] Another display was of the small, well-worn hand tools used by Morris, accompanied by his photograph and that of the Anasazi great house he helped expose and preserve. [119] A floor plan showed other cases devoted to Southwestern archeological chronology, stratigraphy, and resources. In the center of the lobby was to be a floor case containing a Mesa Verde burial with accompanying goods. [120]

Although their final placement was not determined, shipments of museum exhibits and equipment were received through the spring of 1935. Faris conceded that visitors seemed to like these displays. [121] In August, a dinner for former Director Horace Albright and 90 local businessmen dedicated the structure. [122]