Kendra Ruminer's Two Cents of Real Estate

If you’ve spent much time at all in Los Alamos, you know we enjoy a rather remote location. As a third generation resident, I’ve heard all manner of stories about difficulties in getting goods and services up here throughout the years. As a real estate broker, I often remind my clients that patience is a necessity when considering home renovations, supplies for DIY projects around the house, and even in shopping for home furnishings! Deciding you want a new washer and dryer on a Friday morning isn’t a simple thing! These days even shopping online can result in days or even weeks of waiting for a delivery truck to haul your new appliances up the mountain.

This is now. An age of internet services when Amazon is beginning to explore drone delivery of goods! Try to picture what it might have been like in the 1920s when AJ Connell and Ashley Pond were trying to set up a boarding school for young men. Both students and masters at that time were more accustomed to living in cities where there were stores and factories and plenty of people available to offer goods and services. From the very beginning, AJ Connell knew he needed a skilled mechanic living on site 24/7 who could keep the place running.

Enter Floyd Womelsduff, a mechanic and all around handyman hired by Connell in 1924 to work for the Ranch School. Floyd’s brother, Jim Womelsduff, served as the LARS ranch foreman for a number of years and their mother, Sallie, lived in Espanola. Sallie Womelsduff inherited land in Espanola and moved from the Fort Worth, TX area to her new digs in Espanola not too terribly long before Floyd got the mechanic job up on the plateau at the ranch school. Floyd had come to New Mexico with his mother and spent several years working on a Rio Arriba County road crew.

Floyd Womelsduff wasn’t just important to the ranch school. Tall, slender, and rather quiet, Floyd was the plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, and diesel engine operator. In those days, the diesel generators were used to charge batteries for mechanical items all over the ranch. Everything from farm machinery to washing machines. The generators had to be coaxed into working every evening to provide light in all of the buildings, and it wasn’t unusual for Floyd and his brother Jim to be called out at all hours due to mechanical emergencies. They were even called out to help a forest service crew after an unexpected early snowfall caused the crew to be trapped near the fire watchtower up on St. Peter’s Dome (we sometimes refer to this as simply “the dome”).

In the early days, Floyd lived alone in the small, original mechanic’s cabin on the south side of Ashley Pond. Since Floyd lived up at the ranch school as well as his brother Jim, Floyd requested permission to build a larger cabin so his mother could move up to the plateau with her sons. There were four Womelsduff siblings all together.

Jim and Floyd had left school quite young when their father disappeared and left their mother, Sallie, to raise four children on her own. Lucy and Frank were the youngest Womelsduff siblings, and later Jim added his own family to the Womelsduffs living at the ranch school. In fact, Richard Womelsduff became quite interested in the history of the Pajarito Plateau as well as life at the ranch school. His writings would later become part of John D Wirth and Linda Harvey Aldrich’s book about the ranch school days. Richard named his Chapter 8, It Was a Good Time and Place to be a Boy as he seems to have very much enjoyed growing up on the ranch school property.

The “cabin” built by Floyd Womelsduff for himself and his mother was a traditional northern New Mexico log cabin. It began with slabs of rock in a shallow trench to create an outline of a cabin. Long Ponderosa Pines formed the walls and shorter ones supported the floor. The logs were all hand hewn and pinkish mortar was used to fill spaces between the logs. Unlike many of later ranch school “cottages”, the chief mechanic’s house was truly a log cabin and the logs were visible on the interior walls. However, it was such a nice log cabin that AJ Connell referred to it as the Chief Mechanic’s House from the very beginning.

There were two small bedrooms on the north side of the cabin and the living room took up the south side and a small kitchen occupied the west side of the cabin. There was no central heating built into the space and the Womelsduffs relied on the fireplace and cozy Navajo rugs to keep the place warm in winter.

The Chief Mechanic’s House was completed in 1925 and was occupied by Floyd and his mother Sallie until Sallie’s death in 1942. Sallie’s death came just a few weeks after the infamous War Department letter came to the Los Alamos Ranch School and changed everything within a few short months. Sallie’s family ofter said how glad they were that Sallie never had to deal with the displaced feeling which permeated the rest of the ranch school students and staff. She remained in her cozy cabin with her family and the lively but also relaxed ranch school way of life until she passed peacefully in her own home.

As with ALL ranch school buildings, the Chief Mechanic’s House’s role on the Pajarito Plateau didn’t end in 1942 when the Manhattan Project took over. In fact, the old cabin’s history only got more interesting as the years wore on. But we’ll talk more about that in a future post. And when you’re ready to talk about your own cozy dwelling in Los Alamos, give me a call! Whether you’re buying or selling, I’d love to talk real estate in Los Alamos with you!

When Project Y came to town, every ranch school structure that could serve a purpose was put into use. The Pyramid of Los Alamos aka Spruce Cottage became the “WAC Shack”. The ladies of the “Women’s Army Corps” enjoyed their stay at Spruce Cottage. With it’s sprawling group of cozy rooms, Spruce Cottage was home to a group of young women instead of the young men who had occupied it for so long. Not that Spruce Cottage didn’t see it’s share of young men, the WAC Shack was a popular place for enlisted men to hang out in the off duty hours.

Sometime in 1943, plans were put in place to build a larger dormitory for the WAC unit stationed in Los Alamos. At the peak of their effort, there were 260 WACs here in Los Alamos. Most of the WACs were stationed at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. There were smaller units at other Manhattan Project sights, and the largest unit of 275 were at Oak Ridge, Tenn. The “new” WAC Shack is still here in Los Alamos in its original location over on 17th Street. This building is currently under consideration for restoration with Los Alamos County. You can see more about this project HERE. There’s a lovely photo gallery of this building by Minesh Bacrania which is part of the “Behind the Fence” project which you can view HERE.

With the new WAC Shack in use, Spruce Cottage was split into three separate apartments. Thanks to the sprawling floorplan of the cottage, Spruce Cottage now known as T-115, had three different street addresses!

That bathtub so appreciated by the WACs, (who would’ve only had showers in their new dormitory), actually became quite the bragging point to anyone occupying the stone portion of the old Spruce Cottage. Kenneth Bainbridge and his family often allowed their friends to have a soak in their large, private bathtub. Kenneth Bainbridge was the physicist who took charge of the running of the Trinity site test.

You might imagine that when the Army remodeled Spruce Cottage after the WACs moved out, they did so as quickly as possible. Apparently this ended in some typical housing features being forgotten. Nathan and Elinor Ramsay were given an apartment created from the old boys dormitory section of Spruce Cottage. But when the Army put the apartment in, they forgot any closets. The Ramsays hoofed it over to the former Chief Mechanic’s House and borrowed two hand decorated wardrobes, which they utilized as closets until the Army remodeled Spruce Cottage yet again after the Fuller Lodge expansion.

Post War, circa 1948, Spruce Cottage was reconfigured into two apartments, duplex style. The end result left a “stone half” and a “wooden half”. The families of Jerome Kellogg and John Manley discovered that while they occupied two separate “homes”, they had no choice but to cooperate. Both apartments shared a hot water heater and a furnace. Can you imagine what that might be like? Good Neighbor behavior would take on a whole new meaning!

Stanislaw and Francois Ulam occupied the stone half of Spruce Cottage beginning in 1949. It is said that Stanislaw Ulam was sitting in the kitchen of the stone half of Spruce Cottage when he thought of a way to make the “Super” bomb work. His wife reported coming home and finding him sitting in the kitchen having his lunch while staring out the picture window with a strange expression on his face. While Ulam did indeed make a discovery that led to the development of thermonuclear weapons, his wife recalled later that she was appalled and had hoped the “Super” bomb would never successfully work.

In the summer of 1950 & 1951, Enrico and Laura Fermi rented the wooden half of Spruce Cottage. By 1951, James and Betty Lilienthal had begun to rent the stone half. When the dispersal of housing in Los Alamos began in 1969, the Lilienthals purchased both the stone half and the wooden half and returned Spruce Cottage to a single dwelling. Many folks in Los Alamos still think of Spruce Cottage as “the Lilienthal House”. The house was purchased by Bart and Colleen Ollinger in 1996 and has been preserved and appreciated by the long time Los Alamos residents ever since.

I love the long history of some of these old buildings in Los Alamos. It’s such a great thing to see that one of the most consistent parts of life in Los Alamos through the years is the ability to change with the times. I often hear from newcomers that they wish Los Alamos could get a this or a that. I remind folks that it’s best to just sit back and see what Los Alamos has brewing. Every decade seems to bring in a new mixture of activities, businesses, opportunities, and amenities. And when YOU’RE ready to join our community on the hill, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you.

No. I’m not talking about our amazing local Mediterranean restaurant where robotic serving drones might deliver your order when it’s ready. Believe it or not, this name was originally given to a well known building here in Los Alamos. The structure has gone through a number of renovations and name changes until it does not at ALL resemble it’s original self.

In the photo above, it’s not difficult to decide which structure was referred to as “The Pyramid”! I think the most interesting aspect of this photo taken around 1922 from the northwest side of the LARS grounds, is the sheer distance between the Pyramid and the Big House! Most of our historic buildings seem clumped together to our modern minds. We just forget that they’re only close together now because they sprawled that way!

Pyramid for the Masters

The Pyramid was built sometime before 1920. Most of the early ranch and ranch school buildings have origin dates that have been estimated over the years by our local Historical Society through the process of comparing photographs and existing surveys.

The first few years of the school’s existence were lean in both the student and schoolmaster populations. Masters lived in the Big House with the boys and AJ Connell. As the number of pupils grew, the need for more space caused Connell to request the addition of a Master’s Cottage. The square shape of the building along with it’s steeply pitched roof earned it the name, “The Pyramid”.

Two masters occupied the space, each with a separate apartment. By apartment we’re talking a desk, a dresser, and a brass bed. Although it seems a waste that there were beds in each space because the house also had a little sleeping porch. (Because AJ Connell must’ve been obsessed with porch sleeping, something most of us probably get if we have no a/c in high summer up here!) However, later residents of the Pyramid apartments were probably truly glad of the private sleeping space.

Newlyweds in the Pyramid

We’ve already explored the original residents of Master Cottage #3, Fermor and Peggy Pond Church. While their cottage on the mesa was built, they moved into the Pyramid. At that time, the school’s secretary moved into the other half of the Pyramid. Fermor and Peggy would occupy the Pyramid until their home was finished in 1925. With no kitchen inside the Pyramid, Peggy and Fermor took their meals at the Big House with the rest of the students and staff. Talk about a nice start to married life! No cooking!

From Pyramid to Spruce Cottage

By 1927, the school had a good number of students and masters, plus other staff which required a bit more in the way of living space. The Pyramid had been housing unmarried teachers for several years, but now Connell decided to give the senior boys troop, Spruce Patrol, a bit more privacy and distinction. There was no way Spruce Patrol was going to fit in the current Pyramid configuration. So, the Pyramid roof was abandoned, the building got longer, and it got a two sided pitched roof and a larger sleeping porch.

Spruce Patrol’s new digs included a good sized common room and a larger sleeping porch so everyone had space. Connell wasn’t so secure in Spruce Patrol’s good behavior that he let them be over there without a RA, so to speak. One of the former master apartments remained on one side of the structure. A master occupied this space which alleviated the crunch in the Big House and kept Spruce Patrol under some kind of supervision. By 1928, some of the unmarried masters were also living in the former Director’s Cottage, (Master Cottage #1).

Couples Galore

By 1935, Master Cecil Wirth got hitched and Connell decided he wasn’t content to have Wirth move away from his digs at Spruce Cottage. Instead of moving the married couple out, Connell hired John Gaw Meem to design an addition on the West side of Spruce Cottage. Therefore, the building got even more sprawled out!

The Wirths eventually moved into bigger space (they would eventually live in Master Cottage #3 for a few years after the Churchs moved out), and Master Harry Walen and his new bride, Betty, moved in. Poor Betty Walen reminds me of an awful lot of folks who move here to Los Alamos even today. The young bride had never been West of Washington D.C. before marrying Harry and following him to a job in the middle of nowhere on a plateau at the end of the world in New Mexico! Sound familiar? Of course, Betty Walen also had a pack of high school senior boys sharing her roof!

Betty was a lovely woman and a good sport. During her time in the stone addition at Spruce Cottage, Fuller Lodge had become the center of ranch school life. She and her husband took their midday and evening meals in the Lodge, but she cooked breakfast on a little wood cookstove in her apartment. Apparently she became an early riser fairly quickly due to the Spruce Patrol habit of coming to bother Master Walen at an ungodly hour in the morning.

When Harry and Betty were expecting their first child, musical cottages happened again and Peggy and Fermor Church moved back into Spruce Cottage so the Wirths could move their expanding family into Master Cottage #3. Peggy and Fermor would live at Spruce Cottage in the stone addition until the Manhattan Project took over and the school closed down for good.

I always find it fascinating to think about how many lives the ranch school buildings have had here in Los Alamos. Connell intentionally built most of the structures so they could be easily remodeled and repurposed. Cottages were frame structures sided with logs on both the inside and the outside. This allowed the building to be added onto with minimal fuss and honestly kept these buildings in use from then until now.

Next week, I’ll dig a bit more into the Pyramid’s days as a WAC Shack and also when it suddenly sprawled so large that it occupied three addresses on three different streets! Until then, enjoy this beautiful fall weather, the colors on the trees, and go take a visit to the Historical Museum, which is still open even during the parking lot project.

And when you’re trying to buy or sell a home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I love Los Alamos housing both historic and modern and I would love to chat with you about your real estate needs!

Los Alamos Homecoming 2024 is underway and as the entire district has been dressing up and finding weird non anything-but-a-backpack things to carry their school stuff in, I thought it might be an interesting moment to look back at some of the first “public” schools in our town’s long history.

Truly, the major theme in the history of Los Alamos is education. It’s been the most consistent topic of concern in this town from the time before we WERE a town. I think one of the things I find most interesting about Los Alamos and school is that our first public school was the WPA Sandoval County Elementary School. WPA stood for Works Progress Administration. This program built almost 6000 schools during the 1930s as part of The New Deal public works program designed by Franklin D Roosevelt. The idea was to revitalize American job prospects through education, nutrition, access to academic and health testing (think basic vision and hearing tests) and also through nutritional lunch programs in schools.

Not that the kids of the Los Alamos Ranch School employees and the Pajarito Plateau weren’t educated prior to the 1930s. Several of the local families who were employed by the ranch school would take turns educating the children who lived in and around the area. But sometime between 1931 and 1935, that changed with the arrival of the Rousseau family.

AJ Connell hired business manager Fred Rousseau in 1931. Fred worked for Connell to manage the business side of LARS. But Fred’s wife, Edna Rousseau, was a schoolteacher. Connell asked Edna to take up a teaching position in the little stone schoolhouse located to the west of Ashley Pond and the Big House. Connell renovated the original Master Cottage, Master Cottage #1, for the Rousseau’s to live in, and the school building was newly built once she arrived on the scene.

The schoolhouse was located in the general vicinity of what would eventually become Central School during the Manhattan Project, (more about life at Central School in a future post!). The little stone schoolhouse was a rectangular building which had a little basement where a wood stove was managed by older schoolboys to provide heat during the winter so the poor students didn’t freeze!

The one room could be divided into two by a pleated divider, (sounds familiar to some of us!) and so there were two classrooms. Edna Rousseau was eventually joined by Amador Gonzales to teach grades 1-8. Records and reports from adults who had attended the school suggest there were around 20 students per year give or take a few.

A good number of the kiddos attending public school were Hispanic. Fermor and Peggy Church’s three boys attended as well as the youngsters of a few other Anglo families living on the plateau.

School was not only reading, writing, and mathematics. Former students remember play practice and performing A Christmas Carol for the holidays. Amador Gonzales taught the students to cut wood and build birdhouses. There were arts and crafts projects, woodburning, and music class with rattles and tambourines. During the cold weather, physical education exercise would be held indoors and some students remember playing pin the tail on the donkey when it was too cold for outdoor recess!

Interestingly enough, most young people at that time don’t recall a great economic hardship happening in 1929. Life at the ranch school was stable and in some ways, idyllic. The school was self sufficient at that time, providing for itself, living off the land and the work of the residents and employees.

Though the ranch school wasn’t bursting at the seams, they had enough students paying $2400/yr for tuition to support the families working on the plateau and sending their children to the public school. Tuition at the school for one student for one year was actually double the yearly salary of most of the employees! And yet, if you think on it, the employees and public school kiddos were fed and housed and part of a community that WAS the Los Alamos Ranch School. It’s a very familiar sort of pattern for most of us who grew up here.

Growing up Los Alamos seems to be a unique experience no matter when it happens! I consider myself blessed to have been a part of this community and I absolutely love talking Los Alamos History and Housing with anyone who is willing to have a chat! So when you’re ready to be a part of our community on the Pajarito Plateau or you’re ready to sell your current Los Alamos property and find another, give me a call! I’d love to chat with you!

I believe that I’ve been aware to some degree of the Big House as part of the Ranch School’s history. For many folks who grow up here and often take a lot of the history stuff for granted, it’s easy to believe that somehow the Big House became Fuller Lodge. However, it may surprise some or most of you to discover that the Big House actually morphed into the Post Office. With some significant changes going on in between, of course!

When the Los Alamos Ranch School was moved out to allow the Manhattan Project to move in, the Big House was acquired along with the Master Cottages, Guest Cottage, outbuildings, Ashley Pond, livestock, farm equipment, and everything else needed to run a ranch or a ranch school, although not so much a scientific facility!

Because of the lack of space in the early years of the Manhattan Project, the Big House actually saw quite a lot of historic action. It was the only building with a space to hold scientific staff meetings. Robert Serber first briefed the early project members on the basics of nuclear weapons in the reading room of the Big House. At one point in a lecture, Serber used the word “bomb”. Only a moment later, a handwritten note from John Manley suggested a substitute word. From that time on, the device became known as the “gadget”.

Eventually, the Big House became housing for unmarried staff members and guests. Sleeping quarters were the main need at the time, so the Big House was modified and the bathtubs were removed. Bathrooms and beds were numbered. Lodgers at the Big House would be given a bed and bathroom assignment. These periodic guests read like the who’s who of science at the time. Otto Frisch, Johnny von Neumman, Richard Feynman, and Klaus Fuchs were some of the important minds to enjoy a stay at the Big House.

The ranch school’s beautiful common room dominated by the central fireplace became a popular hangout after working hours. The post chaplain had an office on the first floor and a matron headed up the whole operation. The ranch school’s library became the public lending library complete with books stamped U.S.E.D (This stood for United States Engineering Detachment which is quite hilarious if you think about it!). There was a pool table, a ping pong table, couches, chairs, and games.

The Big House continued to host visitors and guests to Los Alamos until it became certain that Los Alamos was going to be a permanent place. The Big House was only a short distance from Fuller Lodge, but it wasn’t in such great shape by the post war years. According to the AEC records at that time, the Big House was being slowly destroyed by termites and was a fire trap to anyone who stayed there. The residents of Los Alamos were opposed to the demolition of the old building.But in the end, a project to construct a modern “shopping center” in Los Alamos required the use of the land where the Big House sat.

In the spring of 1948, The Big House was razed in order to make way for Central Park Square. The former site of the tennis courts and athletic fields of the Ranch School became our Post Office, Small Business Center, and now what is essentially the location of our local nightlife.

I think it’s still a bit sad that the Big House had such a large part of our history and didn’t manage to hang on long enough to become part of our current downtown historic district. But, it’s certainly true that our Post Office and Central Park Square are a huge part of what we consider Downtown Los Alamos. And that wonderful Central Avenue district is where Trick or Treat Main Street and Los Alamos Halloweekend will be happening next month!

When you’re ready to talk about real estate in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m a Los Alamos girl with a longtime interest in Los Alamos History and Housing. I’d love to talk to you about your home!

In Los Alamos, the phrase “life in the Big House” never referred to life in jail. The Big House was actually the first “school” building constructed by Ashley Pond. The idea was to create a dormitory with space for classrooms and pretty much everything else the students would need beyond the ranch outbuildings, cabins, and barns which had already existed on the Brooks’ Ranch.

At the time, Los Alamos’ “Big House” was essentially like a traditional Spanish jacal. Enormous logs were used and set up right in a vertical pattern instead of a horizontal one. The vertical logs were easier to place when you were creating a two story structure. Can you imagine how much power it would take to hoist one of those enormous Ponderosa Pines up to a second level? Back in 1916 on the Pajarito Plateau, there were easier ways to build structures and the locals knew it.

The original version of the Big House had two levels and 30 rooms, including a wide sleeping porch that accommodated all of the students and the masters too! In spite of it’s modest cost at $20,000, the Big House had a surprising amount of modern luxuries. There was a telephone line and indoor plumbing. Classrooms occupied most of the first floor, but the ground floor also boasted a common room, a kitchen, and a dining area.

In a strange twist, the second floor was entirely taken up with “private” accommodations for the boys. Each boy had his own space furnished with a place to study, relax, and personalize as he wanted. In fact, personalizing the spaces was such a focus on the “dormitories”, that awards were given out each month for the most interesting furnishings.

So, you could study, read, hang out, nap, or decorate your room. But… you were not permitted to sleep in it. In fact, if you look at the archive photo of the two boys in scout uniforms “studying” in their room, it looks very staged. Especially when you notice the bed looks incredibly uncomfortable!

The school kept growing so the Big House had to get bigger. Only two years after original construction began, AJ Connell had the Big House remodeled. The sleeping porch got some screens and became a bit more weather tight, (can you imagine how frigid it would’ve been before that addition?). And some space was added on the third floor via the addition of dormers on the sloped roof. One of the unmarried masters moved up to the third floor apartment, but he was still required to sleep on the porch.

The common room downstairs was where the evening’s entertainment was to be had. This common photo we see of the boys listening to Connell reading was taken in front of the fireplace in the common room. There was a pool table, ping-pong, a library of books, games to play, and even a record player in case you wanted to check out the latest tunes.

By 1935, Connell’s Ranch School brochure bragged that, “the Big House is thoroughly modern with steam heat, electric lights, and an ample number of showers and baths. The large living room on the first floor affords a comfortable place to study, read, or play. A massive stone chimney, with a fireplace on either side, rises in the center of the room. The younger three-quarters of the school, and two masters, live in this house. The boys’ rooms, used only for dressing and arranged for two boys each…Sleeping porches are used the entire year. They are actual sleeping porches, not just additional rooms, and give ample protection from the occasional storm…In this building are also three classrooms, a well-appointed dispensary, and the Director’s and faculty offices”.

By 1942, the Big House had sprawled into a structure fully capable of housing most of the school’s activities, students, and masters. Of course, the oldest boys occupied Spruce Cottage, which we’ll explore in another post. Some of the masters married, had family, and moved into Master Cottages. But for the most part, the Big House was the heart of the school. If you’re wondering where on earth this enormous building is today, we’ll talk about the Manhattan Project years next time!

I suppose if you take a peek at the dorm rooms pictured above, you can just about make a case that we should go back to that sort of housing arrangement for our summer students! Or, you can give me a call and talk housing in Los Alamos! I’m a hometown broker who loves to take a peek into real estate in Los Alamos. So when you’re ready to buy or sell your home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to chat with you!