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

THE SECOND CHURCH AND CONVENTO (continued)

First Steps in the Renovation

Acevedo probably began with the alterations to the convento and the construction of the foundations for the additions to the church. This allowed him to continue services in the first church until it was necessary for the work crews to begin dismantling the walls and roof. After the demolition began, services were transferred either to a room in the convento or to a temporary altar set up under a ramada outdoors near the church.

Within the convento, three sides of the patio were torn down. First the demolition crews removed the roofing from the ambulatorio along the north, west, and south sides. Then they dismantled the stone balustrades, pillars, and pilasters along these sides of the patio. The front or south wall of the convento was also removed, as well as the south wall of room 10. The patio "kiva," unroofed a few years before, was filled about this time, but only to within 6 feet of ground surface. It appears to have been left open at this depth for the rest of the life of San Gregorio.

Figure 5. The sanctuary area and altars of the church at Hawikuh, burned out in 1672. The altars of Abó and Quarai probably looked very much like this. At the left edge of the stairs up to the main altar can be seen the large post that supported the bannister for the stairs. The predella platform under the main altar is visible, as are the platforms for the side altars.

The surveyors laid out new foundations along the north and south sides of the ambulatorio, and another trench across the west side of the patio, reducing the area of the patio by about one-quarter. Along the north side of the patio they built the new wall on the foundations of the old patio wall while on the south the new wall was built slightly north of the old wall. On the west side they built the new patio wall on the new foundation, about six feet east of the old patio wall foundation.

Along the front of the convento, the construction crews laid out a new foundation just north of the old, and at a slight angle to it. This new wall kept the width of the ambulatorio the same as it had been, while moving the wall north far enough so that the new exterior stairs to the choir loft fit properly between the ambulatorio and the choir loft door. [24] In the space originally occupied by the west ambulatorio hall, adjoining the church, crews constructed the sacristy storeroom and the new choir loft stairwell, reusing the old patio wall foundations for part of the construction. They built a doorway opening from the storeroom into the ambulatorio, and a second through the south wall of the room into the new choir stairway. Crews also built a large doorway from the ambulatorio into the stairwell. [25]

The construction crews built a two-story room onto the southwest corner of the first ambulatorio, using the foundations of the east wall of the west corridor. Acevedo designed this room to be part of the new portería at ground level and the preparation room for the choir (the antecoro) on the second story. The staircase was probably of wood, and contained about seventeen steps, each with a tread and riser of nine inches. It led to the top of the new south wall of the convento and out onto the roof of the portería, now the floor of the second story antecoro room at the same level as the choir loft inside the church.

When work within the church permitted it, the construction crews would cut a doorway from the new antecoro through the east wall of the church into the choir loft. Meanwhile, they built a doorway in the east wall of the stairwell to the roof of the convento.

After the construction crews completed the new walls in the convento, the ambulatorio was reroofed. Building the sacristy storeroom roof would have been difficult, because beam sockets had to be cut into the facing stones of the nave wall. Once the roof was completed, however, the storeroom could have doubled as the sacristy for the first church while the new sacristy was under construction.

At the northwest corner of the convento, demolition crews removed the old sacristy walls and some walls of the adjacent rooms and constructed the foundations for the new sacristy across them. The roofing of this room could not be completed, however, until the walls of the sanctuary being added to the church had been raised to the height of thirteen feet.

Finally, work on the church itself could begin. The first step in the renovation was the construction of two buttresses, each five feet square, against the outer face of the west wall of the church. Acevedo designed the buttresses to prevent the collapse of the west wall of the church during the period when it would be standing unsupported by cross walls or roof beams. Using the standard scaffolding, the crews built each buttress at full thickness to a height of nineteen feet. At this point the masons stepped the outer or west faces of the two buttresses in about two feet, making a new cross-section five feet north to south and three feet deep. They then continued construction on the reduced buttresses, raising them another four feet to a height of twenty-three feet. At this height work on the buttresses stopped. The flat surfaces of the top and first step were probably designed to act as scaffolding support during the later stages of the construction, when the roofing and parapets of the first church would be removed and those of the second church constructed.

As part of the construction of the buttresses, the crews built the walls of the new baptistry on the exterior of the southwest front corner. In order to make a smooth joint between the baptistry walls and the southwest facade tower of the church, they had to remove the facing stone from the corner itself to a height of about fifteen feet, and then to rebuild the facing with the baptistry walls tied in. At a height of four feet above the original ground surface, the masons inserted a window frame in the south wall and built a splay into the facing stone of the corner tower.

As they built the baptistry, the construction crews added the necessary features the room required. Against the north wall they built a square stone altar, three feet wide, 1 3/4 feet deep, and 1 3/4 feet high. Above the altar, in the stonework of the north wall of the baptistry and the buttress making up part of the north side of the room, the masons inserted boards in stonework to form a small niche for religious statuary. At about this time, they cut a hole through the west nave wall, inserted a lintel about seven feet above floor level, and began the process of refacing the edges to make a doorway from the nave into the baptistry. When work on the baptistry doorway was finished, the construction crews cut sockets into the west wall of the church, set the vigas for the baptistry roof into these holes, and then finished the roof and parapets of the baptistry.

Once the construction crews had completed the buttresses and baptistry, the major task of demolition of the roof and sections of the walls of the first church began. The first step was the removal of the roof. Crews broke up and shovelled off the clay plaster and fiber matting in chunks, uncovering the latillas above the roofing vigas. At the same time, the demolition crew carefully dismantled the parapet above the beams and corbels, with the intention of reusing the stone. The construction crew then built scaffolding on the interior of the church, braced the corbels in place, set up a shear legs, and began the labor of lifting the vigas and lowering them to the ground. If the job were done carefully, many of the latillas, vigas, and corbels could be reused in the new roof, assuming that they remained unrotted. As the work crews removed the vigas and corbels, the masons continued to remove stone from the tops of the walls. After the lowest corbels were lifted off, the masons carefully leveled the wall tops in preparation for the addition of bearing beams. These beams would be set horizontally into the wall to help support the new roof structure.

Once the work crews had removed the roof, the dismantling of the walls at the north end of the church could begin. Working from the scaffolding, the masons pried the stones apart, loaded them into baskets or tubs, and lowered them to the ground for stockpiling. The walls of the apse and the shoulders of the church, between the apse and the side walls of the nave, were all taken down in this way. They were removed to a level slightly below the floor of the first church so that when a new floor was laid within the new sanctuary the old wall stubs would be covered. On the east side of the church, the stone of the northeast corner was also removed. On the west side, the work crews dismantled the northern fifteen feet of the nave wall.

At this point, the masons began a series of alterations inside the nave of the first church. They removed the facing stone from the inner corners of the two facade towers, which projected into the interior of the church, and began the process of refacing the area so that the inner corners of the nave were square. On the east side of the nave, the masons cut a second hole through the wall at a height of about twelve feet, inserted another lintel at about nineteen feet, and began refacing the edges of the opening to make a doorway from the choir loft to the stairwell just completed outside the east wall of the church.

At the same height, the masons cut an opening for a new, larger east nave window. It was located twenty-six feet north of the choir loft main viga, and was four feet wide and nine feet high on the interior. It was splayed toward the exterior, making its outside width 6 1/2 feet. The old nave windows on the east and west walls were filled at this time.

At ground level on the east side of the nave, the crews began the task of closing the old sacristy doorway into the ambulatorio from the church. They removed the jambs, sill and lintel, and then the facing stone of the opening. They filled the hole with rubble and covered it with a smooth, seamless facing of stone, leaving only a small break in the facing above the foundation on the ambulatorio side of the wall. [26] This careful rebuilding of the nave wall was apparently done so as to minimize the chance of the wall cracking there under the greater weight of the new, higher stonework and roof.

When these alterations were completed, the first church was ready to receive its additions. At this point the church was roofless, with the side walls of the nave flat along the tops and ready for the installation of beams along their edges to support the corbels and vigas. These beams were to act as bearing beams, spreading the force of the weight of the corbels, vigas, and roofing along the wall tops. This scheme of weight distribution may have been prompted by a concern that the walls, originally designed for a lower, lighter roof, were a little too thin for the new, heavier roof, even with the new buttresses against the outside of the west wall.

The north end of the church had been removed down to floor level, and the foundations of the new walls completed outside the old apse to the north. At the south end of the church, the facade remained virtually unchanged, but the inside corners of the facade towers had been removed from floor level to the tops of the towers. The choir loft was left in place, but the flooring was removed so that the inside corners of the facade towers could be removed. Changes were made in the choir loft flooring vigas so that the old stairway opening through the floor could be filled. On the west side, the buttresses supporting the walls and the upper scaffolding remained in place. The baptistry was complete, and the doorway from the church into the baptistry had been finished. On the east side, the convento room added against the outside of the nave was complete, while the new sacristy was finished to its roof line but awaited its roofing. The choir loft stairwell was finished, as were the two doors, one opening onto the roof of the convento and the other into the choir loft. The doorway that had originally opened from the old sanctuary into the ambulatorio had been filled.

The masons began the construction of the side chapels, sanctuary and apse walls about 1647. [27] By 1649 the tops of the new additions were even with the tops of the existing nave walls. At this point the crews on shear legs lifted large bearing beams, about 40 feet long, 9 1/2 inches high, and 12 inches wide, to the tops of the nave walls. [28] The masons set these along the inner edge of the walls, then built up the tops of the walls around the beams until they were flush with upper surface of the beams. More beams were lifted and set along the inner and outer edges of the three-foot-wide walls, the outside edge of the fifteen-foot thickened section of the west nave wall, and along the face of the south wall of the east side-chapel. The masons built up the stonework between the beams until it was again flush with the tops of the beams. [29] The masons built the west wall bearing plate so that it was about a foot lower than the east wall. This ensured that the roof would slope down to the west so that rain and snow melt would drain properly. [30]

With the bearing beams in place, the shear-legs crew began raising the corbels. The masons set them in place in pairs along the wall tops, bracing them with supports against the scaffolding. They probably began the corbelling at the north end of the nave, because delays here would slow down and complicate the job of constructing the higher walls of the side chapels, sanctuary, and apse. The lowest corbels rested on the bearing beams and on the upper surfaces of the stonework between the beams.

Acevedo's plan called for a massive roof structure (see the section drawing of the church in figure 7). The corbels and vigas were set in pairs, each pair consisting of two shorter lower corbels, two longer upper corbels, and two vigas, set side-by-side on the wall tops so that the pairs consisted of six units, two wide and three high. The pairs were set at intervals, center to center, of nine feet. The corbels and vigas were squared timbers, their surfaces decorated with carving and probably painting. Each timber was twelve inches square. The lower corbels averaged six feet in length, of which about 2 1/2 feet were inside the walls. The upper corbels averaged 9 1/2 feet in length with the same average inset, and the vigas were about thirty feet long. [31] As the corbels and vigas were set in place, the masons built up the stonework between them to lock them in position.

After the shear-legs crew lifted the vigas into place, the carpenter crews began laying the ceiling above them. The ceiling was formed of boards laid at right angles to the vigas. Each board was about 3.5 inches thick and eleven inches wide. These planks were probably saw cut from squared timbers, using a two-handed saw. The planks, each nine feet long, extended from viga to viga. The carpenter crews laid them edge to edge and end to end. Above the planks the roofing crew laid juniper and pinon boughs, and on this poured a layer of adobe about eight inches thick. At the southeast corner of the church, they also set the ceiling beams for the roof of the choir loft stairwell. [32]

Above the top of the roof the masons constructed a parapet. At intervals of about ten feet, the masons set canales into the parapet for drainage of the roof. The carpenters carved each canal from a single piece of wood. Each canal was 3.5 feet long, 7.5 inches wide, and 6.5 inches high, with a U-shaped trough cut into the upper side. [33]

The parapet extended above the roof about four feet. The parapet was crenelated with each notch about four feet wide at the top and about three feet wide at the bottom, and a step of about six inches in each side about halfway up the notch. [34] The width of each crenel varied from place to place on the wall top, but averaged perhaps four feet across. The crenelations gave the church an intricate Moorish appearance, unlike the typical straight-edged lines of Spanish buildings in New Mexico. The crenels are set at approximately the intervals of the vigas. In addition to their decorative function, they may have been intended to act as additional mass on the outer ends of the vigas to reduce deflection over the center of the nave.