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

STABILIZATION OF GRAN QUIVIRA (continued)

Maintenance of San Buenaventura

After the work ending in 1932, the National Park Service did no further stabilization of the ruins until 1938, when George Boundey, the custodian, did some repair work on "the walls." [40]

Joseph Toulouse became custodian of Gran Quivira in January, 1940, only two months after he completed the stabilization of Abó in October, 1939. [41] In April, Toulouse began planning on a major new stabilization when the weather improved, and took a series of "Before" photographs. [42] Stabilization began April 24. Started with the porteria, and rebuilding the wall between room 12 and the second courtyard, the "corral," and the steps up from the corral to the friary. [43] Toulouse also stabilized the west wall of the corral, and the south and west walls of room 8. [44] Work stopped in late May or early June, and Toulouse took "After" photographs in August, 1940. [45]

In October, 1940, Toulouse went over the ruins of the mission with "Doc" Smith, working out the areas of stabilization carried out by Pinkley and Smith in 1927 through 1933. This formed the basis of Toulouse's later detailed photographic analysis of the early stabilization of the ruins. [46] In December, Toulouse began planning for a continuation of WPA stabilization work on the ruins, hopefully in 1941. [47] As it happened, however, the project did not begin until early 1942.

The storm of September, 1941, demonstrated that the ruins of the church and convento of San Buenaventura were not as well stabilized as the Park Service had thought in 1932. The Park Service began a Works Progress Administration project in January, 1942, to repair the visible damage caused by the storm. Using portland cement mortar, the collapsed areas were rebuilt. Toulouse worked on rooms 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, the sacristy, and the short corridor at the top of the stairs to the second courtyard. Some repair work was done in the patio, the porteria, and the outside east wall of the convento. [48] The final major change to the structure was the removal of the museum from room 1, whose walls had partially collapsed in the storm. [49]

Toulouse carried out some other stabilization work during the repairs. He graded the floors and rebuilt some parts of the walls of rooms 12, 13, and 14 in the convento of San Buenaventura and installed drainage. Work continued through April, 1942. The 1942 stabilization of the convento was primarily emergency work to repair the obvious damage caused by the 1941 storm. The structures obviously needed a complete rehabilitation to fill voids and repoint where mortar had washed out. Large sections of wall were merely waiting for the proper stimulus from rain or frost to collapse. With the successful stabilization of the major problems in the church completed, the Park Service turned its attention to the convento, and to smaller details in the church.

The 1942 work, however, did not conduct a comprehensive program of capping, repointing, patching, or drainage, nor did it repair any part of the church itself. In November, 1948, Gordon Vivian directed a project to stabilize the church. Using cement mortar with soil pointing, repair and capping of the north wall of the nave of the church began. The inexperience of the crew, hired from locally-available labor, and bad weather allowed little progress during 1948. Vivian returned in 1951 to resume the project using Navajo labor, and successfully stabilized the entire church, interior and exterior, during March and April. Again, cement mortar and soil pointing was used for areas of major stress, such as wall capping. The remaining wall surfaces were pointed with a mortar made of caliche with a pink cast, similar to the mortar used by the masons who built the church in the 1660s. [50]

Figure 63. San Buenaventura in the 1940s. The lintle beam has been returned to the site, and is on the ground behind the flagstaff with two people sitting on it. Courtesy National Park Service.

In 1962 Roland Richert and Charles Voll conducted a thorough stabilization of the convento and did some additional work in the church. In April and May, 1962, Richert and a crew of Navajo laborers capped the baptistry and south nave walls, and pointed all the wall surfaces of the church with tinted cement. The walls were then overpointed with soil cement. During the pointing, Richert restabilized several areas pointed by Vivian's crew in 1948 and 1951. Much of the caliche mortar used by Vivian had washed out in the eleven years since the previous job. [51]

As part of the stabilization of the church, Richert replaced the surviving lintel beam. This beam, removed in ca. 1905 and recovered in 1924, was finally identified as the outermost lintel beam in the Lummis photograph of the facade of the church. The knot and crack pattern on the beam is recognizable in the Lummis photo. The National Park Service decided to return the beam to its original location, and Richert was given the job. Richert's crew poured square concrete pads at the tops of the two door jambs, lifted the beam into place, and then built up stonework around the concrete pads. The beam had been treated and sealed beforehand.

The treatment of the beam consisted of several steps. The crew first filled the upper, heavily eroded surface with two gallons of plastic wood, then treated the entire beam with a material referred to as "Wood Life," with no other identification. Finally the upper surface of the beam was "treated and stained with linseed oil." [52]

In June and July, 1962, Voll and the Navajo crew stabilized the convento, except for rooms 1 and 16 already completed by Richert. The crew repointed all the wall surfaces, reset several doorsills, rebuilt the walls of room 9, and capped several other walls in the second or southern courtyard. The crew installed dry-barrel drainage systems in rooms 12, 13, and 14. Voll also did some stabilization of the porteria, rebuilding the bases of the splayed entranceway from the plaza. All the work in the convento used tinted portland cement with no soil cement over-pointing.

San Isidro

"Doc" Smith did a little stabilization work in San Isidro in April and May, 1932. His remarks indicate that he did enough work to remove a few obvious safety hazards, but little more. Joseph Toulouse later examined the ruins of San Isidro with Smith and was able to work out the extent of the stabilizations from 1923 through 1932. [53]

Jacobo Yrissari excavated through the area of the main altar in 1932 and 1933 as part of his treasure-hunting activities. In June, 1933, heavy rains caused a collapse of the area around the mouth of the shaft in the church. The collapse threatened the north wall of the apse. Toulouse backfilled the shaft in 1940. [54]

Toulouse did more work in 1942. He stated in 1949 that "the altars in the smaller mission [San Isidro] have not been completely excavated. They were partially excavated, however, during repairs in 1942, and each was in the corner of the nave at the sanctuary end." [55] Toulouse stabilized around the entrance and along the north walls and the apse of the church.

During March and April, 1951, Vivian cleared San Isidro of rubble and stabilized the walls and exposed features. No record of the actual stabilization of the ruins is available at present.