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

CONSTRUCTION METHODS

The crews built the mission church and convento using simple equipment. In most cases, the use of these tools could be taught quickly, and the results of their use could be consistent and dependable.

Tools

The most important tools used during wall construction were the plumb bob and the stretched string. These permitted straight, square corners and flat wall surfaces that could not be obtained in any other simple way. The stretched string served as a guide for the construction crew, insuring that the above-grade walls began with straight lines and faces. The plumb bob, held above the corner locations, kept the edge of intersection straight.

Almost as important as the plumb bob and string was the nivel de albañil, or mason's level. The simplest version of the level was an A-shaped frame with a small plumb bob hanging from the crotch of the A. On the crossbar was a mark indicating vertical. When the frame was held so that the plumb cord ran across the vertical mark, the crossbar was precisely horizontal. Sights on the crossbar allowed a skilled workman to determine, for example, when wall tops were level. The use of the level also allowed the friar to accurately set up such exacting details as the slope of the roof beams to insure the proper drainage of the roof. [39]

Masonry

The work crews laid up the stone walls using a rubble core and veneer construction. They kept the veneered surfaces as flat as possible to reduce the work necessary to make the final plastered surface smooth. Larger and more irregular stones went into the wall interiors. These cores were also carefully laid in order to prevent voids or large masses of adobe mortar that could wash out later. Great care usually went into the construction and the flat surfaces, sharp edges, and long, straight vertical lines to be seen at Concepción de Quarai and Abó demonstrate this precision. Sometimes the friar was not so skillful, as at San Buenaventura. Here irregularities in plan, vertical edges that are not vertical and straight walls that are not straight indicate that young Fray Diego de Santandér and his successors were not accomplished builders, did not effectively use a levelling device and may not have used plumb bobs or stretched strings in the construction.

Scaffolding

Once the walls passed the height of about four feet, the construction crew built scaffolding along the wall faces. The scaffolds gave the workers a place to stand as they built the walls higher and to stockpile small heaps of building stone and tubs of clay mortar waiting to be used. The scaffolding was made of vertical poles set into the ground with horizontal poles lashed to them by rope or rawhide thongs. Planks were laid from horizontal pole to horizontal pole, to form walkways and platforms. The scaffolding was braced by horizontal poles set into the face of the masonry at intervals. These poles were called "put-logs," and the holes into which they were placed, "put-holes." Although no clearly identified examples of put-holes have been identified in the walls of the Salinas missions, this was such a common construction method for walls higher than perhaps four feet that it can be assumed to have been used. [40] Eventually the scaffolding would have reached the height of the finished walls and towers, about 45 feet at the churches of Concepción de Quarai or San Gregorio II at Abó. [41]

Lifting Systems

The crews working on the ground raised construction materials, water, and tools to the platforms in buckets or tubs by rope and pulley. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these containers were frequently made of wood, but could also be of basketry, fabric or leather. Larger and heavier materials, such as roofing vigas, were lifted by block and tackle, probably using shear legs. This was a simple lifting device made by two spars fastened together at the top, from which a pulley system was hung. The angle of tilt of the spars was controlled by guy ropes pulled by ground crews. [42] The shear legs were used much as a crane would be today. A seventy-foot pair of shear legs with its ends resting on the ground could have easily lifted roof vigas into place from inside the nave of a church. [43]

It is frequently forgotten that such equipment was known to virtually every Spaniard in the New World, since all had arrived there on board ships with innumerable pulleys, winches, and other lifting devices in constant use. Somewhat smaller, tripod-like lifting systems called cabrias were in common use both on shipboard and on land by artillery engineers, for example, to lift massive cannon into position. [44] The average European resident of New Spain, therefore, knew some basics of the construction and use of lifting gear. Friars responsible for building probably knew a good deal more.

Shear legs or some similar system of lifting had to have been used in the construction of the Salinas missions, contrary to the statements of George Kubler. [45] The surviving sockets and casts of roofing vigas and corbels in the churches and sacristies of Abó and Quarai, a surviving beam at San Buenaventura, and drawings and photographs of other San Buenaventura beams demonstrate beyond doubt that they were square and most had intricate decorative carving and painting. [46] The beams were finished before being put into place on the walls, as was shown by the cast of the end of a beam in a surviving socket over the sacristy at Abó. The cast preserved the imprint of decorative carving on a portion of the beam inside the socket. [47] If finished beams had been rolled to a wall top and then dragged into position, as depicted by Kubler, they would have been extensively damaged on the finished surfaces and edges. Instead, they had to be lifted clear of the walls and lowered into position.

Rate of Construction

Using a period of six years as the standard for the construction of a mission, it is possible to estimate the typical rate of construction by the work crews. [48] Allowing about three months for site layout and foundation trenching, and nine months for roof construction, plastering, woodwork, painting and other finishing, the masons spent five years of the total laying stone. A church and convento typically contain about 92,000 cubic feet of masonry. The masons were able to lay about 18,400 cubic feet of stone per year during the five-year period dominated by masonry work. Such a rate could easily be managed by a masonry crew of about forty people, including eight masons on the scaffolds, eight tenders who supplied them with raw stone and mortar, and twenty-four collection and preparation workers, working twenty days a month, nine months a year. [49] The remainder of the time would be lost to below-freezing weather, when good mortar work was impossible, or to other high-priority work such as the harvest of the fields and the daily affairs of the Indians. Religious holidays must have affected the work schedule, too, but when and how much is unknown.

The friar and his Indian crews spent about six years constructing the church and convento, from the planning of the buildings through the final dedication of the completed structures. The entire process of construction--with its prior planning, careful measurement, and concern for detail--would have served as an excellent opportunity for the friar to teach lessons about authority, the "superiority" of Spanish culture, and what was to be gained by becoming Hispanicized and Christianized. Construction was, in all probability, an integral part of the acculturization process conducted by the mission.