SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

STABILIZATION OF QUARAI

First Stabilization, 1934 to 1935

On June 1, 1934, the Museum of New Mexico and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began the stabilization of Quarai as part of the excavation of the ruins. Edgar L. Hewett directed the stabilization, with graduate student Donovan Senter as field director of the archeology and Sam F. Hudelson as the field supervisor for the labor. A month later, on July 8, Paul Hudelson became the field supervisor. Frank Woodall served as foreman throughout the stabilization, heading a crew averaging twenty men. The men worked six hours a day, five days a week. [10]

The CCC began excavating along the north, west, and south outside wall surfaces of the church, where the facing stone had been removed. After they relocated the remaining solid structure below the grade of the fallen rubble, they began repairing the facing. By the end of July the veneer on the entire west and probably the north face had been repaired to a height of ten feet. Restoration of the window through the west wall of the nave began in the last week of July, and the lintel beams were replaced in early August.

Before any major excavation on the interior of the church, the workmen built a massive buttress against the east wall of the east transept. A major crack had developed in the north wall of the east transept, and the east transept wall threatened collapse. On July 9 the workmen began the excavation of a pit in the area selected for the buttress at the northeast corner of the transept. They found the crosswall dividing the sacristy into two smaller rooms, and at ten feet below the surface of the rubble mound they reached the flagstone floor. Using this as a foundation, they constructed a buttress 7 1/2 feet wide east to west, 10 feet long north to south, and 15 feet high. The upper 5 feet sloped steeply down away from the wall to encourage drainage. The crew completed the buttress on July 17, 1934. [11]

On July 18 the workmen began clearing out the western half of the sacristy in order to stabilize the doorway into the east transept. A few days later the CCC inserted new lintel beams over the transept doorway and rebuilt the section of wall that had fallen out above it.

Preparation for stabilizing the remains of the east nave wall began on July 20. However, the surviving stub of wall had weathered severely and the excavators had to dig into the rubble, searching for solid masonry. They soon found that the east wall had fallen into the church, and realized that the entire church had to be emptied of rubble before the surviving lower portion of the east wall could be uncovered and stabilized.

On July 23 the workmen began clearing the loose rock along the facade, looking for the edges of the main entrance. They needed the doorway open and stabilized in order to have an opening at the floor level of the church through which to haul the rubble filling the nave. As the crew cleared away the rubble, they found the rooms of the baptistry at the southwest corner of the church. Hudelson immediately decided to rebuild the western room of the baptistry and make it into an office and tool storage area. It could later be used as a visitor center for Quarai.

By July 31 the baptistry room had been built up and roofed, and the facade and main entrance of the church stabilized. The baptistry walls had been raised to a height of about 10 feet, and a roof built supported by 8 round vigas running north to south across the room. Hudelson put windows in the south and west walls of the church, and built a doorframe into the east doorway. On the interior, the south half of the room received a flagstone floor, while in the north half the carpenters built a floor of pine boards. The masons built a fireplace in the southeast corner of the room with a round chimney penetrating the roof.

The masons rebuilt the entrance doorway of the church. They reconstructed the sides of the door, building up the walls from the surviving stubs about 2 feet high. At 9 feet they place new lintel beams on the walls, but this was an estimated door height because no recognizable beam sockets survived. The masons added about one foot of stonework above the lintels, curving this masonry up at the sides to help support the overhanging broken edges of the front wall to either side. At the same time, they repaired the lower ten feet of the veneer on the east face of the southeast tower. This repair covered the scars where the choir loft stairwell room and bell tower had attached to the tower, and made a false opening through the wall from the southeast corner of the tower to the southwest corner of the convento.

At the end of July the workcrew began the removal of rubble from within the church. [12] By August 15 they had cleared the southern 40 feet of the nave to the flagstone floor. They were removing the last of the huge mass of rubble left by the fallen east wall of the nave. Once past this, the work of removing the debris speeded up considerably, because the fill dropped to a thickness of only about 6 feet with a much lower percentage of rock in the volume.

During the first half of August stabilization on the church walls continued slowly. The east wall face was cleaned off as it was uncovered, but the mound of rubble outside the wall prevented the beginning of stabilization of the wall top until most of the church was emptied and crewmen could be shifted to remove it. On the west wall, the workmen set the lintel of the window in place and built up the wall above it to within a few feet of the height of the surviving wall to either side, leaving a lower section of wall over the window.

Archeologist Donovan Senter left Quarai in the last week of August. Replacing him as field director of the excavations was Albert Ely, also a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. From mid-August, 1934, to May, 1935, the progress of the stabilization work cannot be given specific dates. However, Ely's photographs and excavation report allow a general narrative.

On the church, the lower half of the walls had been repaired. The crew rebuilt the veneer where necessary on the east side of the building, capped the east wall with concrete at a height of eight feet, and then rebuilt it with a concrete core to a height of twelve feet. They added a little more of the wall over the new lintel of the main entrance to fill the last overhang. The floor of the church was cleaned so that the flagstones, the surviving fragments of the stairway, and the side altars were all visible. The 5-foot-wide hole through the back wall of the apse had been filled, and at the same time the crew filled the beam sockets in the apse wall and at the mouth of the apse.

In the convento, the crew did very little stabilization as they emptied the rooms. On the west side, they inserted new lintels into the small window-like opening through the south wall of room 24, and rebuilt the veneer of the upper two feet of its west wall. In the patio, they rebuilt a portion of the north wall at the northeast corner. The badly deteriorated north and south walls of the convento were capped and built up to a level top four feet above ground level at the midpoints of the walls. At the southeast corner of the convento, the south wall reached a height of eight feet as a result of this capping, because of the sloping ground level down the hill to the east.

Figure 60. The nave of the church of Quarai in the fall of 1937. The photograph was taken after the completion of the first excavation and stabilization of the building. All of the surviving flagstones of the church floor remain undisturbed. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 87730.

The rest of the convento was left as it was found, with no rebuilding, remortaring, or capping. When Ely left in late April or early May, rooms 11, 19, 20, and the northern 20 feet of the east hallway remained unexcavated in the main area of the convento, and the kiva in the patio had not been found. The eastern and southeastern groups of ruins remained buried.

In May, the CCC crew found the kiva in the middle of the patio, and began removing the fill. This work may have been under the direction of Reginald Fisher, who mapped the church and convento during this month.

Ele Baker arrived at Quarai in August, 1935, and directed the excavations through the end of March, 1936. No photographs from Baker's excavations are available, but a series made in the fall of 1937 show the stabilization changes made during the eight months he worked in the mission.

Baker took up where Albert Ely and Reginald Fisher had left off. He directed the excavation of the last foot of fill from the kiva, uncovering the features on the floor and the ventilator shaft. He then turned the crew to the finishing of the main convento, emptying rooms 11, 19, 20, and the north end of the eastern corridor.

Baker and the crew excavated all the terrace steps and rooms of the east courtyard, "rooms" 28-40 and 69. In the process they found a circular kiva, room 31, over which the Franciscans had built one of the retaining walls for the first terrace. Baker excavated the west half of the kiva to its floor level, and then built a wall across the center of the structure to hold the fill of the east half of the room in place, while supporting the remains of the Franciscan terrace wall above. He began the excavation of the east half of the kiva, but stopped at a depth of about 3 feet. At this level he built a square drain hole through the dividing wall so that the eastern half of the kiva could drain rain and snowmelt into the west half.

Baker traced the south wall of the east courtyard and the east wall of the campo santo. In the process he found the group of rooms south of the east courtyard, and began excavating them. He cleared rooms 41-42, 44-51, 56, 58-59, and 68. In the small courtyard west of these rooms, designated room 43, he emptied all but the northwest quarter. Like his predecessors, Baker did little stabilization of the church or convento. In fact, no reconstruction or stabilization can be attributed to him.

Other Changes in 1934 to 1937

Several major changes to the ruins and the surrounding area occurred during the first series of excavations, but cannot be attributed to any one person. One of these changes was the construction of a second modern dwelling in the ruins. This may have been built by Baker or by a crew under the direction of someone else between early 1935 and the fall of 1937. [13] The workmen converted rooms 17 and 18 to a residence for the caretaker assigned to Quarai. [14] They raised the walls to a height of about 8 feet, cut a hole through the east wall of the convento, and installed doors and windows. The workmen set vigas running east to west across the walls, and constructed a roof on the rooms. In the northern room (17), they built a fireplace into the southeast corner.

During the same period work was done west and north of the mission complex. Between the summer of 1934 and fall, 1937, Mound J was excavated, revealing the Spanish structure on top of the pueblo foundations. Meanwhile, workmen built the main entrance road from the north, with the earliest construction taking place during the work by Senter and Ely, 1934-35. The road required a raised causeway about 3 feet high and 20 feet wide extending from the north gate to the northwest corner of the mission, to carry cars over the lower areas north of the church where bogs formed every time it rained. The road was improved several times between 1935 and 1940.

By the fall of 1937 the entire mission had been excavated to its original floor levels, and rubble cleared from around the walls. Some stabilization of the walls of the church had been carried out. However, most of the wall surfaces of the church and convento had not been repointed, nor had any walls been capped except the north and south exterior walls of the convento, the top of room 24, and rooms 3, 17, and 18, capped in the process of converting them to residences. The freshly exposed convento walls quickly began to deteriorate, and the high walls of the church continued the slow decay that had characterized them for almost three centuries. By 1939 it became obvious that the ruins needed a full job of stabilization to remain standing.