Bandelier Historic Structure Report: CCC Buildings

BUILDING COMPONENTS (continued)

Floors

Many of the buildings were constructed with flagstone floors, as "dictated by the necessity of keeping construction costs within the $1,500 statutory limitations." The irregularities in the floor stones, up to 3/4 inch in some cases, were made uniformly smooth by grinding down the 3- to 6-inch stones with a 6-inch portable grinder. [22] The flagstone floors were laid over a 4-inch-thick concrete slab on a cement leveling bed or, in some instances, on well-wetted, puddled and tamped earth fill. [23] Original floor finishes included Bruce Floor Finish — a penetrating oil — and high-gloss varnish. Floors in heavy traffic areas, originally finished with a high-gloss varnish, were later coated with a dull, nonslippery hard traffic wax finish, for more consistent looks and safety reasons. [24]

Other floors (some closets, hallways, and maintenance and service rooms) were brushed finished concrete, sometimes painted. Concrete floors in lodge bathrooms were covered with medium brown linoleum tiles. [25] A few floors, in residences B-18 and B-32 and in the original administrative office (part of B-2) were constructed of wood. These tongue-and-groove wood floors received a varnish coat, but it is not known if this was the original finish. [26]

Windows and Doors

Specifications called for door and window frames to be made of grade 0 or better Douglas fir and ponderosa pine. Window sashes were made of white, sugar, or ponderosa pine. Casements usually had six lights (secondary facades had four) and 20-gauge galvanized iron metal drips on lower edges. Casements were 1-3/8 inches thick and usually paired, but sometimes set flanking both sides of a fixed sash that had an equal number of lights. The exterior sill was stone, several inches thick and splayed to shed water. The interior sill was usually flat and finished Keene's cement with a bull-nosed edge. Lintels were usually three timbers of varying dimensions — one exterior 4" x 4" and two 6" x 8"s, for instance — set in stone masonry. Thirty-pound felt separated the timbers from the stone masonry. The exterior lintel was usually adzed on its exposed surface. Screens were built for some of the windows. These were built of appropriately sized kiln-dried lumber, assembled with mortise-and-tenon joints, glued, and pegged. Screen cloth was 16-mesh, 32-gauge bronze cloth held with wood strips. [27] Screen frames were hung from hangers at the top of the wood frame. [28] Some multilight fixed-sash and hinged-sash windows were also placed in the buildings. Curtain rods, where they existed, were birch or other hardwood dowels set on 4-inch square-end screw hooks embedded in the wood lintels. [29]

Doors were of two basic types. The first usually had three layers of V-jointed tongue-and-groove wood, held together by three horizontal hardwood spines. The second type was a mortise-and-tenon wood door with inset panels. Either type of door could have glazing. The former sometimes had a single light, which could be covered with band-sawn grillwork. Paired multilight French doors with side-light panels were built in the main entrance to the museum and visitor center. [30]

Fireplaces

Fireplaces were designed as a main source of space heating for most of the buildings. These corner fireplaces (figure 29), now called kiva fireplaces, were built of tuff and firebrick. In areas where no natural corner occurred, a narrow buttress wall — a paredcito — was built to form the required corner. Walls and floors of the fireboxes were lined with firebrick laid in a fire-clay mortar with 1/8-inch flush joints, with every third brick in each course bonded into the stonework. Arched openings, constructed over wood centering, were parabolic or fiat arched in shape and were also constructed of firebrick with alternating headers and stretchers to bond into the adjacent masonry. The entire length of the chimney was lined with a fire-clay flue, which protruded 4 inches above the exterior stonework at the top. The hearths were concrete, usually several inches high. The concrete was composed of one part cement colored with mineral colors, two parts fine aggregate, and four parts coarse aggregate, and laid monolithic. [31] Many of the fireplaces had "Heatilator"-type registers, which heated the air as it passed through the fireplace and let it out in the same or an adjacent room.

Figure 29. Custom-made furnishings in the lodge lobby surrounded the warming corner or "kiva" fireplace. The chandelier and the painting scheme echoed the development's Spanish colonial design theme. (Photo: Bandelier)

Although the fireplaces were the principal heating source for the buildings, the cabin units also contained other heating sources. Interior common walls, such as the wall between B-27A and B-27B, held flues and flue cleanouts for wood stoves to heat areas too far removed from the main fireplaces.

Wood Finishes

Conflicting information turned up on finishes and colors for woodwork. Exterior exposed wood was treated with two coats of asphalt stain and bleaching oil. [32] In 1941, exterior paint for the lodge units for doors, sashes, and frames specified a sand beige, oyster gray, or an in-between color "to approximate weathered wood." The primer was aluminum house paint, and the main color was put on in two coats having either a white lead or lead and zinc base. [33]

Oral tradition holds that the original colors for the exterior woodwork were very bright, and some documentation may support this belief. A discussion on colors turned up in some 1939 correspondence. Project Superintendent Hub Chase was complaining to Boss Pinkley that Lyle Bennett, architect of most of the buildings, had created a problem by choosing paints of German origin. When the materials arrived to be mixed in the field, the crew had to go to Santa Fe to get the instructions translated, and even then, "green" could be translated as "pea green," "blue green," or "lime green." Chase also saw procurement of materials from Germany as a problem because of the "strained relations" at the time. Pinkley recommended acquiring American materials and approximating the colors. The final agreement with Lyle Bennett was to reduce the intensity of the colors but maintain their general values. The tone of the letters seems to indicate that these colors were for the exterior woodwork, but they do not specify. An inspection of recently completed exterior painting in 1939 noted that the work was satisfactory, "although the warmer colors could be reduced in intensity to advantage." [34] This statement, too, supports the theory about bright colors.

The first finish used on exposed interior wood (sashes, doors, and frames) was a spar varnish primer over stain. By 1941, the recommended finish had changed to two coats of white shellac in a 2-1/2-pound cut. To obtain the 2-1/2 cut, they started with the standard 4-pound cut of white or bleached shellac and diluted each gallon with 3-1/2 pints of alcohol. The second coat was rubbed dull with fine steel wool and covered with one coat of paste wax. The paste wax was hand rubbed, and then the gloss was removed by wiping with a damp cloth. [35] Some of the interior woodwork, particularly carved details, was painted. Most large plaster wall surfaces were white, with painted details such as wainscots.