Kendra Ruminer's Two Cents of Real Estate

Take A Peek At Los Alamos, New Mexico

Tag: Living in Los Alamos (Page 9 of 14)

Musical Houses in Los Alamos

August 24, 2022 /

If you’re looking at the title of this post and thinking of pleasant sounding chamber music on your home stereo system, think again. When I say Musical Houses in Los Alamos, it’s more comparable to the children’s party game involving chairs and fast paced music.

How many times have you moved from one home to another in your lifetime? Once? Twice? Twenty times? More? According to relocation expert Joshua Green, Americans move an average of once every 5 years. Green also points out that statistics suggest most people move within their own county or town.

Truthfully, Americans have always been rather mobile. Isn’t that why the United States became a thing in the 1600s? Perhaps we should all just be glad we’re no longer having to move via three masted sailing vessels or covered wagons. Considering how “easy” it is to move these days, it’s not a surprise that so many folks decide they want a change of scenery.

What if I told you that residents of Los Alamos in the 1950s were almost certain to move to a “new” house every spring? Why spring? Because every year on February 2, the Housing Policy Board recalculated the number of “points” accrued by each employee. More points meant a “better” house. Some residents called this process “musical houses”. If you’ve ever lived on a military installation, you’re probably familiar with the idea. But if you’ve ever wondered why Los Alamos has such a difficult time with housing and how it worked “back in the day”, then let me back up and explain a few things.

In an earlier post about how “rent” used to be calculated in Los Alamos, I spoke about what one early resident called the “curious experiment in socialism”. During wartime, rents were based on salary and not on the type of quarters you might be occupying. Interestingly enough, there wasn’t nearly as much drama associated with that situation as with what happened beginning in 1947 when the “point system” went into effect.

How many points would your family have?

The Housing Policy Board was created to meet and oversee the distribution of what was then, and will likely always be, very limited housing resources. The board was made up of members from three entities: the Laboratory (LASL), Zia Company, and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Each of these three entities had employees requiring housing. Each entity was eventually given an “allotment” of houses. Prior to the completion of Groups 11-15, it was a bit less organized. Each employee had points, but any houses coming available during the year were also allotted based on what entity needed to hire what employee. By the time construction had been completed on Group 15, each entity had a set number of dwellings to work with. This literally meant that they could only employ as many people as they could house. Stop for a moment and consider the implications of that. It’s a very different concept from the one we’re used to today.

At that time, if you weren’t directly employed by those three entities, you did not live in “town”. In a previous post, we talked about the Zia Company. LASL itself was science staff and some administrative or technical workers. The AEC was a bit more complex. They sponsored living quarters for school, church and hospital staff, people who staffed businesses in town (remember they were all managed by the Zia Company back then), and anyone else who might not fall into a typical category.

A 2 bedroom Denver Steel would have cost you $35/month to rent in 1955. You would’ve had to have been a married couple with at least one child to have enough points for one of these!

Residents applied for their housing points when they were hired to their jobs. Points were given for two things: 1 point per dollar of salary earned and 2 points per month of tenure that you had. The number of points was established when you were hired and recalculated each February 2. The rest of your housing desires were determined by which “list” you were on. Those lists were where you could make requests because of family size or any medical needs such as handicap needs or a desire for first floor housing. A resident could be on any list they qualified for. Newer housing, a particular area you wanted to live in, anything you might desire. Each time a new house came available on one of those lists, the employee with the highest number of points on that list got first dibs. If they didn’t want to move, the second highest number of points got a chance and so on down the line.

If there were dual income households, could you combine your points?

Not really. You just got more spots on the lists. Like buying more raffle tickets. If one spouse worked for LASL and another worked for Zia, they each had a point value. Zia and LASL both had their own housing lists because each entity had their own housing allotment. So if you were waiting for a two bedroom unit, you’d get the opportunity to be on both the Zia and LASL list for the house you wanted. But you couldn’t combine your points to try and bump your spot higher on the list.

The point system was meant to make things as “fair” as possible. But the reality was that it created some rather bizarre situations. Such as what would happen when someone retired. Housing Policy Board records suggest that retirees were encouraged to move out of Los Alamos “soon”. Let’s just say that there were no returning employees on “visiting scientist” status back then. Either you were in, or you were out.

You didn’t retire and stay in Los Alamos in the 1950s. Someone else needed your housing!

And if one spouse retired and the other stayed on, your family might have to move into a different unit. If one partner worked for LASL and the other for Zia and your family was living in a Zia allotment housing unit, you wouldn’t be able to stay there once the Zia employee retired. You’d have to move into a LASL allotted housing unit. Unless, of course, you could get the employers to do a “swap”. Occasionally this would happen. But there were several notorious cases where it did not. The most notorious case on record was a widow with five children. Her husband, a Zia Company employee, was killed in a work related accident. She was employed by the Los Alamos County Commission. She made a request to her employer that she and her children be allowed to remain in their “premium” house in Western Area. Her request was denied after the Housing Policy Board determined it would be unfair to make even one exception to the rules. It sounds rather heartless, but that was literally how they kept the balance back in the day.

Most residents rather enjoyed the regular moves. More than a few residents were hired around the same time, married in the same general year, and subsequently had their kids around the same time as well. There are documented situations where families moved apartment buildings or neighborhoods together four to six times. Regular “musical houses” kept things fresh even if you didn’t get exactly what you wanted right then. After all, you’d earn more “points” and hope for a better allotted unit the following year. You made new friends, kept old ones, and all lived in the same town anyway. It isn’t unlike most communities today. Just because you move out of the “neighborhood” doesn’t mean you lose the friends you made there. It’s just an opportunity to meet new people to add to your group!

In the 1950s, playing musical houses kept Los Alamos feeling like one big neighborhood. But there are lots of reasons why life in Los Alamos is unique. And when you’re ready to be part of our small town unique, give me a call! I’d love to chat real estate with you.

The Craze of Sunken Living Rooms

August 16, 2022 /

When modern American consumers think about a home, their minds often drift to housing developments like Mirador in White Rock. These enormous subdivisions dominate cities throughout the United States. As you descend in an airplane in a city like Dallas, TX, you might see a patchwork of homes that all share roughly the same dimensions, a limited variety of exterior designs or colors, and perhaps even identical backyards with kidney shaped swimming pools or brilliant green lawns.

In cities like Albuquerque, newer areas like Rio Rancho have seen a similar pattern of growth. These properties might have buff colored rock in the yard and desert flavored landscaping, but the basic neighborhood outlines are the same. The homes are nearly identical. Builders generally have three or four models to choose from and from there, you get some fairly limited options when it comes to exterior and interior features. Even if you splurge on “custom features”, you’re probably not going to be able to tell that your home has custom anything without a close inspection.

Here in Los Alamos, we don’t have acres upon acres of homes in the typical “cookie cutter” design you might see elsewhere. There are neighborhoods like Broadview, Loma Linda, Hawk’s Landing, Quemazon, and now Mirador that might seem at first glance to be quite similar to the subdivided neighborhoods found in other areas. Then of course, there’s Western Area. Or perhaps you might consider the “Group” housing scattered across town to be subdivisions of a sort. But one of the best things about Los Alamos is that our neighborhoods have very distinct histories.

Long time residents might see “Group” housing as average looking homes while those who didn’t grow up with this style of home might think them odd. One of the things that has always made housing in Los Alamos unique is that even in homes that probably looked rather identical when built, years and years of creativity, ingenuity, and rehabbing or renovating has turned “same” into decidedly “not same”! Having had a peek at a lot of homes in Los Alamos, I can assure you that the results are pretty darned awesome.

Regardless of what you think of tract housing and modern subdivisions, there’s no doubt that Los Alamos has most certainly not followed housing trends seen in other regions. In fact, throughout Los Alamos’s housing history , great pains have been taken at every step to avoid the tract housing flavor. Hence my title reference to Sunken Living Rooms. If you were part of the Los Alamos community in the late 1940s, you would have been dying to get a Sunken Living Room. It was a rather unusual feature after all.

Sunken living rooms were popular in the 60’s & 70’s and are actually making a comeback!

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, housing was the constant social topic in Los Alamos. Norris Bradbury was very concerned about living situations for his workers at the Laboratory and there was no doubt that things were tight. The laboratory’s technical facilities were in the process of moving from the Ashley Pond site to their current(ish) location on the South Mesa. When that happened, residents were thrilled at the announcement of a housing expansion. W.C. Kruger & Associates of Santa Fe started planning in late 1947 and by 1949 the units were going up. The projected population was 13,000. Kruger was informed that there were to be 628 new units built at the rate of 80 units per month. Even by modern standards that is a ridiculous pace! But even at that rate, I don’t suppose I need to tell you that any possible housing surplus wasn’t going to last long.

It might have been nice for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to come up with a clever name for this new neighborhood. But that really wouldn’t have been in line with Los Alamos tradition. So, in keeping with the last housing development of “Western Area”, “North Community” was born.

Group 11 was considered the most ambitious housing project in Los Alamos housing history!

The first “group” to be planned and built was Group 11. We’ve talked about how the groupings came to be called that in a post quite some time back. But for those of you who don’t know or don’t recall, Groups were established because of when a group of housing was built. All of Group 11 were planned and built in the same general timeframe. The fact that they were built in three areas of town just made it more confusing later on. The question of why there is no Group 1 thru 10 has been pondered by more than one person. Craig Martin suggests in his field guide to Los Alamos Housing that this is because there were ten different housing “groups” in Los Alamos prior to the first officially named Group 11. Let’s be honest. Shall we go ahead and be thankful that not all of 1-10 survived to now? I cannot imagine taking potential buyers into a Wingfoot or a Hanford House!

Group 11 was built in three areas. First on Pueblo Mesa in the vicinity of Orange and Nickel Streets. Second around 40th-48th Streets around Urban Park (then known as Slotin Field). Lastly across School Canyon on 35th through 38th Streets and Villa.

A few interesting facts about Group 11

  • Buildings were cocked at odd angles to the street to prevent the “feel” of prefabricated housing. The AEC actually told the contractor that if the homes were going to be prefab, they shouldn’t “look” like it.
  • While Los Alamos residents were clamoring for single family homes, only 142 single family homes were built in Group 11 because “Congress dictated that a low ratio of single-to multiple family units be maintained (Martin, 2015)”.
  • Previous issues with building Western Area caused the AEC to specify that roofs in Group 11 housing be pitched at one half inch to the foot. They also required the bathtubs to be anchored to the walls. It’s kind of funny to imagine what incidents lay behind these requirements.
  • On May 31, 1949 families who had lived in Los Alamos since 1945 could apply for the new houses. Open sign up for housing requests opened up on April 1, 1949.
  • Group 11 included five housing styles. Each unit had solid oak flooring, which still exists in most remaining homes today and is a huge bonus for modern homebuyers! Units had lots of windows, but the kitchens had metal cabinets that tended to invite condensation. Many residents described the cabinetry as “frosty” and “stewy”.
  • There were 13 two bedroom duplexes – 26 units – that had “Sunken Living Rooms”. These quickly became the most sought after homes in Los Alamos thanks to this “unique” feature!

What is a “sunken living room”? When entering the front door of these Group 11 duplexes, you had to take three steps down into the living room from the small entryway. The kitchen was also below grade level. The 2 bedrooms and single bath located in the front of the unit were at ground level. Bathrooms included a shower and a tub, which at that time was something of a luxury. For whatever reason, the “sunken living room” homes became the most sought after housing option in Los Alamos. Perhaps just having something different is enough to make a resident feel proud to call a house a home. This is something I find is still true today.

The Group 11 Sunken Living Room Duplex

In total there were 351 buildings in Group 11. This created 584 units of housing. The original project was to include 628 units, but budget issues caused a cutback in the number of buildings. That’s something to keep in mind when you’re considering the purchase of a home whether it is new or existing. The cost of building a home has always been an unpredictable thing. And when you’re trying to build a neighborhood, it’s even more difficult to manage.

Whether you like the “sameness” of modern era subdivision housing or you long for a custom home, think back to the post war explosion of homebuilding. This was the age of Lustrons and other innovative prefab home solutions. Everyone wanted a house and they wanted it fast! In fact, it’s not unlike the factors driving the current home market here in the United States right now. Sometimes the little things, like a “sunken living room” make a house you might not have considered before become the home of your dreams! And if you’re ready to buy or sell your dream home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to talk real estate with you.

The “Company” Town of Los Alamos

August 7, 2022 /

There are a lot of little ironies about life in Los Alamos. One of my personal favorites is that the anniversary of Los Alamos becoming a “real town” happens to be on April 1. Last year, in 2021, we celebrated a 75 yr anniversary. On April 1, 1946 the powers that be decided Los Alamos would become a permanent research facility. The almost outrageous plan to house a “few dozen scientists” at the old ranch school on the Pajarito Plateau had come full circle. But the reality of operating a permanent townsite was much different from the tasks associated with operating a scientific laboratory. Nowadays our minds immediately turn to our county sponsored services. But creating that sort of administrative infrastructure takes time. Keep in mind that there weren’t even private homeowners here in Los Alamos in 1946. So in order to keep things running smoothly, general contractor C.D. McKee, whom you might remember from my post on McKeeville and other early housing solutions in Los Alamos, incorporated The Zia Company.

According to Zia Company records, by July 1, 1950, Los Alamos had approximately 2,800 houses and apartments on four mesas. It had 1,225 dormitory rooms, and 160 trailer spaces in its Trailer Park. At that time, any temporary housing was scheduled for eventual removal and plans for new housing had reached the vicinity of North Community. Any housing plans beyond North Community centered on replacement of wartime era prefabricated structures.

All of the current housing in Los Alamos. Any future building plans. Maintenance and management of existing structures. Public services. The Zia Company was responsible for it all.

An Excerpt from “The Tenant’s Handbook” Courtesy of the Los Alamos Historical Society Archives:

Responsibilities of AEC
Under the particular circumstances existing at Los Alamos, the Atomic Energy Commission has a responsibility to provide adequate housing for employees and their families.
Adequate housing means a sufficient number of trailer spaces, dormitory rooms, apartments and houses for our single employees and for our married employees and their families. It means also a variety of choice within each type of housing to try to match the desires and the income of individuals. It means essential home equipment and surroundings suited to a comfortable standard of living.

It might sound simple to say that The Zia Company oversaw operations in Los Alamos from 1946 until the early 1960s. The Zia Company further oversaw a good deal of laboratory operations until mid 1986 when the contract was taken over by Johnson Controls World Services. But nowadays, most modern residents of Los Alamos have no clue just how much The Zia Company actually did back when our tiny town was still shrouded in a great deal of mystery and necessary secrecy.

An Excerpt From The Zia Company’s Organization Chart:

Within the Divisions and Departments are listed:

  • Fiscal Division: Accounting Sub-Division, IBM Service Section, Cost Section, Property Accounting Section, General Accounts Section, Rental and Collections, Invoice Audit, Disbursement & Reimbursement, Timekeeping, Payroll, Budget
  • Special Departments: Radio Station KRSN, Lodging and Eating, Los Alamos Hospital, Veterinary Hospital, Mesa Library, Youth Activities, Schools
  • Personnel Division: Files, Records & Reports; Job Evaluation; Employment; Employee Relations; Training
  • Safety Division: Investigation, Restricted Areas, Heavy Equipment, Const. and Maint., Trans. Shops
  • Warehouse Division: Warehousing Section, Property and Records, Typewriter Shop, Fuel Section, Procurement
  • Engineering Division: Inspection, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Architectural, Field Engineering, Records
  • Maintenance Division: Work Order & Property Section, Building Maintenance Sub-Div., Public Works Sub-Div., Tech. Maintenance Sub-Div., Utilities Sub-Div.
  • Transportation Division: Dispatching, Bus and Taxi Oper., Heavy Equipment, Stationary Equipment, Parts Department, Motor Vehicle Maint., Machine Shop

Okay, first off, can I draw your attention to a few things just to give you a laugh? Under the first bullet point of “Fiscal Division” we have an entire section devoted to IBM Service. For those of you who grew up with a LANL employee for a parent, those decommissioned and auctioned IBMs were the beginning of our home computing experience!

And under “Warehouse Division” we have a typewriter shop. Until word processors became mainstream, typewriters were a hot item at The Zia Company public auctions. More than a few mechanically inclined guys with a desire to bring in extra cash would pick them up, refurbish them, and sell them around town for a quick profit.

Ashley Pond circa 1957 – Do you recognize anything?

Beyond these amusing anecdotal bits about life in Los Alamos, pause for a moment and take in just how important The Zia Company was to life in Los Alamos. In the early days they ran KRSN (the radio station used to occupy a small building on North Mesa), the hospital, veterinary clinic, restaurants, library, schools, youth activities, bus and taxi services, all utilities, housing, maintenance, roads, and the list just goes on and on. Essentially everything that is now considered the responsibility of our Los Alamos County public services, plus so very many private institutions such as the hospital, animal clinics, and mental health and social services such as those offered by Los Alamos Family Council, were all handled by The Zia Company. They even ran a newspaper. The very first edition of The Zia News is dated August 26, 1949. Employees of The Zia Company got the latest edition every other week with their paycheck.

The Zia Company wasn’t a typical landlord either. At that time, residents of Los Alamos had been living in furnished dwellings. Most people were not encouraged to bring much of anything with them to Los Alamos. This meant that a service contract might include not only your toilet and your kitchen appliances, but repairs or replacement of your basic household furniture as well. Can you imagine the number of employees and the corresponding number of hours it took to keep our town running?

While most of the actual furniture was long ago donated to the Historical Society or has been worn out from use, certain household items marked with The Zia Company’s familiar logo still exist in and around Los Alamos. If your home was once on the Zia roster of available housing, you may find their stamp on the back of a bathroom mirror or on non exposed portions of your cabinetry. If you ever go to replace any of these items, please don’t take those Zia marked items to the transfer station before you give the Historical Society a call. They love Zia era memorabilia!

It’s so difficult for the modern mind to grasp the way it was back when Los Alamos had just been designated “a company town” by the Atomic Energy Commission. Now we think of multiple subcontractors at the Laboratory. Many residents are employed by the school district or the hospital. Some employees work at the county offices doing administrative work or even hard physical labor with the Parks & Rec department. But when Los Alamos was new. You either worked for the laboratory or you worked for The Zia Company. There was nobody else. The work was still too hush, hush to expand the pool of contractors.

Gradually, Los Alamos has been becoming its own independent town. It’s taken quite a lot of time. And there are still things to be done. When I get frustrated with how long something seems to be taking, I remind myself that The Zia Company left some big shoes to fill. And thankfully, most of us own our own furniture these days. We get to choose what veterinarian we want to use. We go to hospitals in Santa Fe and Albuquerque for specialty services instead of waiting what might seem like forever for someone to be brought up the hill. And yes. We’re still missing a few varied goods and services. But all in all, Los Alamos is an incredible place to live with an even more incredible history. And when you’re ready to join our community, give me a call! I’d love to chat real estate in Los Alamos!

Welcome Home to Hanfordville!

July 31, 2022 /

If your current living situation isn’t what you wish it was, it’s so easy to feel as though you’re the only one searching for your dream home. This isn’t true of course. But our emotions don’t usually follow logical patterns of thought. Obviously you’re not the only one looking for your dream house because if you were, it wouldn’t be a big deal to find it. And if you’ve been putting in offers on potential homes and haven’t had your offer chosen, there’s a good chance you’re not alone. There are probably a dozen other potential home buyers who were disappointed that day too. What if there were 214 potentially disappointed home buyers? What if you were one of 215 families on a waiting list for housing here in Los Alamos? In 1946 that’s exactly how long the waiting list at the Los Alamos housing office was!

We wait in line for lots of things in life. Why not a house?

1946 was the year he MED (Manhattan Engineer District) contracted to build the Western Area neighborhood. It was supposed to be the ultimate answer to the housing crisis in Los Alamos. Except that the potential occupants had more than a few gripes about construction that they wanted addressed. By the time a task force from Washington DC was called out, the whole thing took a lot longer than anyone anticipated. You can read about more about that here. In the meantime, the MED started to get a bit anxious about that waiting list for housing. Losing the Laboratory workforce due to housing issues might impact the work. And as anyone who has been around Los Alamos knows, nothing gets LANL moving more than the possibility of inconvenience to the work!

Early housing wasn’t always pretty and didn’t necessarily include indoor plumbing.

There were several stopgap housing solutions. I’ve been blogging about these temporary neighborhoods for the last few weeks now. You can go back and read about “Morganville“, “McKeeville“, and the “Denver Metals” by following these links. There’s another stopgap housing neighborhood I touched on briefly, but these little beauties deserve a little more explaining. “Hanfordville”, as the Army newspaper the Daily Bulletin dubbed it, was made up of 107 prefab “homes” that arrived in Los Alamos after being moved from Hanford, Washington.

Welcome home to Hanfordville!

The blocky one and two bedroom units had been assembled in 1943 to house construction crews working at the MED’s plutonium facility. The workers were no longer needed as the Hanford Reactors were completed. The construction camp at Hanford was deconstructed in 1946-47. You might say that the MED needed to do something with the little camp houses so they figured they might as well bring them to Los Alamos. Another common name for the Hanford Houses back in 1946 were the Pasco Houses. Pasco was another town in Washington State where constructions crews for the reactor site were housed. If you haven’t ever looked into the link between Hanford, Washington and Los Alamos, you should. Did you know they have their own Manhattan Project Museum?

With diesel fuel currently rising to nearly six dollars a gallon, it would be difficult to decide whether fuel costs or the price of construction materials would determine the practicality of such a solution these days. But back in 1946 the MED decided it wasn’t such a big deal to commission 214 tractor trailers with flatbeds to bring 107 prefab houses nearly 1300 miles to be reassembled. Each Hanford house had to be broken into two parts for transport. It must’ve been a crazy sight!

Over the years Los Alamos has seen some amazing things go up and down the narrow twisting road up from the canyon floor to the top of the mesa. Remember though, when early contractors were tasked with building the Laboratory facilities back in the early forties, their first chore was to somehow build a road to haul all of their construction crews and supplies up the hill.

Before that, in the days of the Ranch School, there were several other options for supply roads. Historical sites in Bayo Canyon and out on Kwage Mesa show evidence of wagon trails from early homesteaders on the Pajarito Plateau. Seen in this light, the MED must have been fairly desperate for quick housing solutions to consider this an acceptable stopgap solution.

Regardless of the cost, the MED moved 107 Hanford houses to Los Alamos in 1946. A good number of the homes were assembled in the vicinity of Kiva and Iris Streets. Today this is in the general vicinity of the Iris Street Condos. The others were placed along 10th Street, Canyon and Rim Roads. “Hanfordville” was right next to “McKeeville”, which was next to “Morganville”. A likely question when you made a new acquaintance in Los Alamos in those days was “Where do you live?”. Your answer would probably be met with either envy or commiseration. After all, housing woes in Los Alamos are what made us all equal back then and even now.

Whether your Hanford House had a one bedroom or a two bedroom floorplan, you were guaranteed the same basics. You got a combination living room and kitchen. There was even a swing curtain you could put between the two in order to keep “cooking odors” out of the living room. The bathroom had a shower, a sink, and a toilet. And your bedroom or bedroom(s) were tucked into the end of the unit with barely enough space for a double bed and a dresser.

Residents were strangely positive about a few amenities we would almost certainly take for granted these days. An oil stove in the family room heated the entire living space and each unit had a three burner electric stove and a “modern” electric refrigerator. Considering the rationing of electricity in Los Alamos during the war years, that electric stove was living large in those days. Remember that prior to this, electric hot plates had to be purchased on the black market. Such different times!

The Hanford Homes weren’t super popular. In fact the quote was “they’re considered solid shelter”, which is rather frightening if you think about it. Perhaps keeping people’s expectations low means they are more satisfied with less. Another quote from an interview between writer Craig Martin and former Hanford resident Hal Kerr was that “the only problem was that when a driving rain came from the west, the place leaked like a sieve.”. Perhaps not a huge deal in all seasons, but considering the terrific monsoon rains we’ve been getting in the last few weeks, a dry roof over your head can become really important at times.

The Hanford Homes were never meant to be permanent. Thankfully we’re not seeing them on the current MLS and you’re not likely to be shopping for modern appliances that might possibly be compatible with your Hanford. They’re a part of our past and perhaps a good reminder that no matter how crazy we think the real estate market is here in in Los Alamos, it’s not nearly as nuts as it back when it all started. In fact, if you’re ready to talk modern real estate in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m your hometown real estate broker. I’d love to chat about your home in Los Alamos.

Trailer Living in Los Alamos

July 25, 2022 /

There is one thing that has always been and will likely always be true about housing in Los Alamos. It’s creative. Whether you live in group housing, a condo, an apartment, a single family home on Barranca Mesa, a five acre plot of land in Pajarito Acres, a mobile home, or even an Air BnB. You’ll probably agree that housing options in Los Alamos are sometimes unusual, but always creative!

There are currently three mobile home parks in Los Alamos. La Mesa and Tsikumu Village are up on North Mesa and of course Elk Ridge (formerly Royal Crest) is on East Jemez Rd at the top of what we locals often refer to as the “Truck Route”. Each mobile home park offers its own unique array of amenities.

Homeowners in Tsikumu Village own not only their manufactured home, but the lot it sits on. Some of these homes have incredible views from the canyon’s edge. La Mesa Trailer Park has a more traditional arrangement with manufactured homes owned by the homeowner and lots owned by a landlord. The park itself has a great location on North Mesa close to a dog park, playgrounds, athletic fields, and the Middle School. Elk Ridge offers a little more flexibility in the sort of “trailer home” an occupant wants to put on their rented lot. If you’ve got a travel trailer of any sort, you’re welcome to set up for “permanent” use at Elk Ridge.

It might be difficult to imagine choosing to live in your fifth wheel or camp trailer for months on end while working at LANL. However, if you look back at the beginning of Los Alamos housing history, you’ll find that Laboratory employees have been doing this since the very beginning. Not only that, but the sort of camping trailers available on the market in the 1940s weren’t going to come with a full kitchen, shower, satellite television, and perhaps even a gas fireplace. They were pretty basic back then. And a good number of them were manufactured by their owners.

Back in the early to mid 1940s, the Los Alamos site had already far exceeded its original call for “sufficient housing for a dozen scientists”. It didn’t take long for even the most skilled workers to be given a bed in 23 expandable trailers and 47 standard trailers. Even though the term “expandable trailer” calls to mind any number of modern camp trailers, these were most definitely not modern. By the time the sides had been folded away from the middle, the living room wound up being about 13×6 feet. If you can’t imagine what sort of space that is, think a box stall for livestock in a barn. Thank goodness they weren’t trying to fit their big screen television inside!

The trailers brought in to serve for temporary housing weren’t going to win any esthetic design contests.

Of course, if came to the Manhattan Engineer District when the trailer park was already full, you might have been assigned a hutment. Quonset Hutments were originally designed for war in the Pacific theater. Thanks to this fact, Los Alamos residents dubbed the huts the Pacific Hutments. Shaped a bit like an airplane hangar, these were used as duplexes with one front door on either end of the tube.

Last but not least, we come full circle to the folks who took the option to drive their own campers or “caravans” up to Los Alamos in order to take up residence in the trailer park. In his book about Los Alamos housing, Craig Martin estimates there were over 250 privately owned trailers parked in town to provide housing for their owners. If you’ve ever looked at a RV from the 1940s, they weren’t going to provide you with the creature comforts we expect from such a vehicle today. In fact, these didn’t even have any kind of indoor plumbing.

These days it isn’t uncommon for people to debate what to do with the MariMac Plaza or the old Hilltop House hotel. There’s been a lot of talk about how to best present Los Alamos to the public when newcomers first drive into town. Now, imagine a time before tourism. The first thing people saw when they approached the general vicinity of our new roundabout was a maze of over three hundred expandable, standard, and camper trailers. It’s rather amazing anyone stuck around!

Quonset Huts in the Pacific were white. Here in Los Alamos they were Army Green!

That’s right, folks. The location of Los Alamos’s very first “trailer park” is the lot occupied by the MariMac Plaza and the Hilltop House hotel. Just across Central Avenue from this “trailer park”, the Pacific Hutments crouched in rows of round topped buildings. Keep in mind that none of these dwellings had indoor plumbing. This meant that there were latrine and shower trailers parked in between the rows of trailers and hutments.

While Los Alamos wasn’t exactly putting its best foot forward back then, people were here for the mission and not the housing. Maybe, like almost all of us at one time, newcomers were so transfixed by the incredible views that they simply didn’t care how creative their housing was. They just wanted to be here in this amazing city on the hill. If you’d like to join the community of Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to talk Real Estate with you!

The First Single Family House in Los Alamos

July 17, 2022 /

Being in the Real Estate business, I hear so many things from buyers and sellers on what they feel makes a house a home. If you were to change up the geographical location, some folks might talk about a condo on a lake. Perhaps a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City. Maybe they want a tiny apartment in some far flung location like Livorno, Italy where buildings are literally perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

Can you imagine?

Perhaps one of the most popular and longest lasting concepts of idyllic American life is the proverbial three bedroom, two bathroom house with a white picket fence, two children, two cars, and maybe a dog and a cat. Most of us grew up with this concept somewhere in our minds even though it’s certainly not the sort of place the cast of Sesame Street ever called home.

It shouldn’t be surprising then that one of the first and most often verbalized wishes of early Los Alamos residents was a desire for single family housing.

What many of us don’t realize is that the Ranch School Master Houses with their quaint log cabin looks and claw foot bathtubs weren’t used as single family housing during the war. Even Hans Bethe was sharing with physicist Edwin McMillan. The Arts & Crafts Cottage hosted Lt Col Whitney Ashbridge, Capt Gerald Tyler, A.L. Hughes, and Enrico Ferme at various times and sometimes more or less at once! These gentlemen occasionally had wives with them, but a good number of them were by themselves and sharing quarters while they worked sunup to sundown on the project of a lifetime.

The first single family homes in Los Alamos weren’t even intentionally created to satisfy the wishes of the residents. The project happened because of a sharp increase in personnel needed for the design of a plutonium implosion bomb in 1944. In July of that year, the Robert McKee Construction Company was contracted to bring in 100 prefabricated homes. The most readily available “houses” happened to be flat roofed units that resembled a box. Each building included small rooms in a basic layout that sat on blocks and weren’t even particularly airtight.

Well, there IS a white picket fence…

“McKeeville”, as it was soon called, was situated on seven city blocks that seemed to spring up overnight with absolutely no thought given to the landscape. Existing pinon and juniper trees were bulldozed to speed up construction. The location was essentially between Central Avenue and Canyon Road. Those city blocks no longer exist, but they would have been crammed into the area of present day Iris and Myrtle Streets. The houses were contracted in July 1944. By October of the same year they were ready and by Christmas they were full.

Once again, the residents of Los Alamos thought rather wistfully of the Sundt Apartments. When the Sundts had been built, the contractor had allowed the streets to flow with the natural landscape. Trees had been preserved. The neighborhoods seemed less “military” in looks and the buildings were sturdy and reliable.

Ah, the good old Sundt Apartments

In striking contrast, the McKee houses had cracks and crevices that did nothing to keep the dirt out. During the spring winds, furniture and appliances were coated with dust. Add the soot coming from the oil furnaces to the atmosphere in McKeeville and the entire neighborhood had a dingy, dirty feel to it. In short, they were a slight improvement on “Morganville“, but were most definitely not the sort of home you’d go out and purchase to live in on purpose.

The only thing residents agreed on was the the McKeeville homes were better than those in Morganville.

Residents of McKeeville had a variety of complaints about the latest cheap housing brought in to ease the overcrowding in Los Alamos. Bedrooms were so small that a double bed took up the entirety of the floor space. The houses were so similar and the streets so uniform, that it was nearly impossible to tell one dwelling from another. Remember that streets were not labeled back in those days. One resident commented that she felt fortunate the McKee house she shared with her husband was located next to the laundry unit. She reported using the laundry building to help her find her way home each day.

On the upside of the whole situation was Robert McKee’s insistence that inexpensive maple furniture be included in each McKee house. While these furnishings were still considered substandard compared to what most people had in their homes, it was apparently an upgrade from what was called GI furniture used in Morganville and the other housing in Los Alamos.

Pause for a moment or two and chuckle about that. Have you tried to shop for real maple furniture these days? Evidently residents of McKeeville in 1945 would not have been impressed by the bargains we find at IKEA. I have to wonder to myself if this GI furniture might not be similar to the prefab things we tend to pick up at Walmart or Target. Oh, the irony!

As always, I want to tip my hat to Craig Martin’s field guide to housing in Los Alamos. I encourage you to purchase a copy from the Los Alamos Historical Society for yourself. If you have any interest in Los Alamos housing, this book is a wealth of information. Keep checking back in with my blog as we continue our tour through Los Alamos housing past, present, and even future! And when you’re ready to start hunting for your own Los Alamos housing, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you.

A Word About Los Alamos & Rent

July 10, 2022 /

There is not a doubt in anyone’s mind that the topic of rents, mortgage payments, and how much each individual is paying for one or the other is a worldwide issue. Before the recent fluctuations in interest rates, the historically low cost of borrowing money to purchase a home made buying more financially attractive than renting. Whether you pay rent here in Los Alamos or not, there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of these facts might make you feel a lot better about your current housing situation in Los Alamos.

How Important Are YOU?

While most of us are willing to acknowledge that there is something of a hierarchy attached to the importance of jobs, modern minds have begun to understand that the proverbial “rocket scientist” is really just as important in the grand scheme of things as “schoolteacher”, “doctor”, “lawyer”, and (for a lot of us lately) “fast food worker”. If nothing else, our experiences through the pandemic of not being able to go into a store, sit in a restaurant, or receive a package or mail because there was quite literally nobody to deliver it, have changed our values in a lasting way.

In the early 1940’s when Los Alamos was still a military installation doing top-secret work for the war effort, housing was assigned much in the same way it was assigned at any military installation. But instead of being assigned by rank, it was assigned based upon how important YOUR job was to the mission.

Of course, top staff members, prominent scientists, and other important persons were immediately assigned to Bathtub Row. The Ranch School Master Houses had indoor plumbing, decent kitchen facilities, were of a good size, and had the fabled bathtub. If you didn’t rate a Master House, you had very limited options when it came to your quarters.

The “Hans Bethe House”, named for one of its more historic occupants

Newcomers would be sent to the housing office, which was located in an old converted garage left from the ranch school days. They would fill out a form to establish their job or function on the Army post, and their family size. They would then be given a housing assignment and informed of what their rent would be each month.

A married couple rated one bedroom. Married with a child got a you a second bedroom. More than one child and you might get a three bedroom if there was one available. It was pretty common for Los Alamos residents to joke that nobody had better have more than three children at the most, and more than two kids was pushing it. Keep in mind that most of the three bedroom units available at that time were much smaller than the Group housing we are familiar with today. Ever considered living in your travel trailer with your kids for an extended period of time? Oh, and don’t forget that all of those modern conveniences available in your travel trailer wouldn’t have been a thing at all. Families didn’t even have their own furniture.

It might look fun, but how about doing it year round?

What Would YOU Pay to Live in a Shoebox?

The topic of Rents in Los Alamos really didn’t become a subject of discussion until 1944 when an influx of new workers caused the Army to hurriedly contract Morgan and Sons to “build” some 28 duplexes on an already flat and treeless section of land east of Bathtub Row. These pre fab duplexes would have essentially been the first housing in the vicinity of what is now Sage Loop.

Welcome home to “Morganville”. Doesn’t everyone want a coal bin in front to add to the curb appeal?

To call the housing project slapdash would probably be generous. There were eight one bedroom units, fifteen two bedroom units and five three bedroom units. The area was dubbed “Morganville” for the construction contractor. Buildings were boring and essentially identical and the streets were rigidly uniform. One resident was heard to call the houses “Little Horrors”. After all, the Army was desperately trying to make their budget stretch and had cut corners everywhere they could. These were supposed to be “temporary”. Why spend the cash to make them nice?

Morganville was really the first time that residents of Los Alamos had experienced a serious decline in the quality of housing. Suddenly the Sundt Apartments looked rather posh. And yet rents in Los Alamos were not determined by what housing unit you were assigned. They were determined by your salary.

The Sundts had their issues, but they were actually solidly build dwellings.

Kay Mark, wife of physicist Carson Mark, was said to have called the system of housing and rents in Los Alamos a “curious experiment in socialism: To each according to his need; from each according to his salary.”

Anyone who earned less than $2600 per year paid $17/mo in rent. While it’s difficult to imagine living on $2600 per year, that was a respectable salary in 1944. It’s equally impossible to imagine paying $17/mo in rent! But if you were one of the highest paid scientists at that time you might have been paying $67/mo in rent. Would you be irritated if you were a scientist paying three times the amount of rent for your cramped, poorly constructed and cheaply built Morganville house when a regular day laborer was paying $17/mo for a much nicer place in a prettier neighborhood?

It’s such an interesting system. And if you truly appreciate the evolution of the housing market here in Los Alamos, take a moment to see just how far things have come in some areas, and how they haven’t changed at all in others. It simply doesn’t do any justice to the history of housing in Los Alamos not to consider the way it all began. There is nowhere else like it and whether you fully understand it or not, moving to Los Alamos makes YOU a part of this amazing history!

View of Rio Grande and a home above taken from a spot near Hell Hole in White Rock.

The good news is that the Morganville houses are no longer part of the housing pool here in Los Alamos. And while we’re not paying $17 or even $67 per month for housing, the home prices are certainly beginning to stabilize in response to national trends in interest rates and home buying. So when you’re ready to talk housing here in Los Alamos, please give me a call! I’m your hometown Los Alamos Real Estate Broker, and I’d love to chat with you!

The Oldest “House” in Los Alamos

June 28, 2022 /

If I asked you which home in Los Alamos is the “oldest”, your mind would probably meander toward Bathrub Row with its row of log cabin homes dating back to the Los Alamos Ranch School. Or, you might be one of the local history buffs who can name off one of the homesteader cabins currently sitting over at the North Mesa Stables, having been transported there decades ago to be used for animal shelters.

Early cabin or barn? You decide…

Either of those options would certainly fit the description of the “oldest house”. But there’s another “oldest house” sitting on Trinity Drive not far from the hospital that is very much an “oldest house” in its own right.

The addition to the right of the building was added at some point after original construction.

Going all the way back to the beginning of Los Alamos, the scientific staff was housed in the ranch school buildings. But even from the beginning when Oppenheimer and Bradbury were trying to visualize what Site Y might look like, there was an open acknowledgement that the Manhattan Project had two parts. The Science part and the Laboratory part. Mostly meaning that while you can brainstorm an idea all you want, if there is ever going to be a project, there has to be a facility to build it in.

Building a facility requires laborers, construction staff, support personnel, administrative staff, and probably so many other people that it isn’t surprising the theme of Los Alamos from the beginning has been, “Um, where are we supposed to put all of these folks?”

In December of 1942, M.M. Sundt Construction Company was contracted to build… Build what? It isn’t as if they could tell anyone in detail what was being built in the mysterious city. So, Eugene Sundt is said to have taken one look at the plans he was handed and decided he was building a small military post for about 200 men. Accurate guess wasn’t it? Well, except for the 200 men bit. The number of employees/residents has never been accurate. Not then. Not now.

The reason Sundt’s company was given the contract was that they’d only just finished a large scale project in “nearby” Las Vegas, NM. The Tucson based contractor had a one stop shop for construction. Everything from framing to painting, plumbing, electrical, and everything in between. His equipment was already in the area and ready to go. The fewer contractors read into the project, the better for the secrecy of Los Alamos.

By March 1943, Sundt’s company had opened 42 duplex apartments for use of the staff at Los Alamos. These apartments were clustered in an arc from about where Central Park Square is now to the intersection of Trinity and Oppenheimer Drives. These apartment buildings were called Sundts. The first batch were one bedroom single story duplexes.

Apartments were accessed by narrow curving streets following the natural grade of the land in order to decrease the cost of building roads and dealing with drainage issues. The first Sundts looked like log cabins. The eventual calling card of all Sundts was an enormous stovepipe jutting out from the roof at a height that most people agreed looked ridiculous.

Eventually, Sundts included, one, two, and even three bedroom duplexes and quadruplexes with four units per building. As the war continued and certain construction material limitations went into place, Sundts went from log cabin style, to attractive white clapboard siding and a pitched roof, and eventually to a flat roofed building sided with plasterboard covered in a dull green tar paper. It did not make for much in the way of curb appeal! In fact, those assigned to tar paper covered Sundts called the original log cabin style Sundts “Snob Hollow” and the clapboard sided ones “de Sundts”. People really don’t change, do we?

The tarpaper exterior made for a dark and foreboding building.

The building sitting at 3491 Trinity Drive is a flat roof quadruplex built with the last group of Sundts contracted in 1943. Records indicate the building went up in 1950. Considering the convoluted history of recordkeeping in Los Alamos, it’s possible that date isn’t entirely accurate because the Sundts were never meant to be permanent structures anyway. For whatever reason, most likely having to do with terrain, that building was the furthermost Sundt from the center of “town” back in the late forties. The other Sundts were clustered around the land sitting between Trinity Drive and Canyon Road. A few of the original one bedroom duplexes were in the vicinity of Peach Street behind Bathtub Row. Those would have been the “Snob Hollow” Sundts.

It’s difficult for a modern eye to decide that the white clapboard siding really makes this version more attractive than the later tar paper covered Sundts.

Since most of the other Sundts were torn down to make way for modernized apartment buildings and condos, it’s highly possible that the conversion of that last building from residence to dental office more than a few decades ago is responsible for its preservation. Oddly enough, though the building is zoned for commercial use, it is still considered a condo with an A and B side. I don’t know if it’s fortunate or unfortunate that an updating of the HVAC system eventually eliminated the trademark stovepipe jutting out of the roof. The original Sundts all had a central coal burning furnace that heated all the apartment units inside. Former residents have spoken about how hot the buildings were even in the dead of winter and how difficult it was to maintain a consistent temperature. I don’t think any of us would enjoy sitting in a dental operatory with the temperature hovering somewhere between hot-summer-day and hell-on-earth!

A few fun facts about the Sundts and other early housing options here in Los Alamos:

  • There were no street signs or addresses in Los Alamos. Your building had a T Number and newcomers had to wander the confusing, curved roads asking directions until they stumbled upon their housing assignment.
  • Eventually there were 332 Sundt apartment units in Los Alamos.
  • The common furnace in a Sundt required a “furnace man” to stoke the fire and put in coal. To make coal delivery easier, the coal chute and therefore the kitchen, were on the side closest to the “road”. So the back of a Sundt was the front and vice versa.
  • Cooking units were coal and wood burning. These “black beauties” were so outdated it would have been like cooking on your Great Great Grandma’s stove.
  • The item most sought after by wives living in Sundts were electric hot plates. Electricity was in high demand for laboratory functions in Los Alamos so all electrical appliances were essentially banned. That meant you had to buy an electric hot plate on the black market.
  • The furnace of a Sundt was too big for the size of the building. As a result, the water would often come out of the pipes already boiling.
  • Cast iron was considered vital to the war effort. In 1942 the government stopped all new homes from having a bathtub installed. The Sundts were built with a shower only, and THAT is how Bathtub Row got its name. Those bathtubs predated the war rationing on cast iron. Bathtubs would not make another appearance in Los Alamos housing until the Denver Steels were built.

So take a trip down Trinity Drive and take a peek at the last remaining Sundt apartment in Los Alamos. It looks very unassuming in its current stuccoed form. But if you want to really appreciate your own housing situation in Los Alamos, remind yourself that the Sundt was, for quite a long time, the best available housing in Los Alamos. In fact, until the Denver Steels and then the Western Area were built, the Sundts were preferred by residents. Their floorplans were much roomier than other options available at the time, and they had indoor plumbing! And when you’re ready to find your own home in Los Alamos, indoor plumbing included of course, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you!

The Kitchen Sink Crisis

June 22, 2022 /

Have you ever stood at your kitchen sink and paid attention to something other than what’s in that sink? Believe it or not, the question of whether or not a person had the ability to gaze out the window while washing up, dishes or otherwise, became a really hot topic in Los Alamos sometime around 1947.

By January of 1946 there was a firm agreement among the “powers that be” that Los Alamos was going to become a permanent facility. There were multiple opinions regarding what, exactly, the identity of that facility would be. But Los Alamos was deemed necessary and that meant transitioning the town from what amounted to a giant hodgepodge collection of temporary housing, trailers, huts (yes, they were called hutments!), and old ranch school buildings, into a viable town with real housing for scientists, support staff, and their growing families.

The first place tagged for Los Alamos expansion was the Western Area. It seemed logical mostly because the land was already clear and flat-ish. “Ish” because the natural mountain meadow of Western Area had been the town golf course and horse pasture for years. The other thing that made it desirable was the probability of getting utilities over there without having to jump a canyon in order to do so.

Community planner Lawrence B Sheridan was commissioned to design a neighborhood. It was the height of modernity with the big horseshoe main drag and swooping side streets ending in quiet cul-de-sacs. Pictured below during construction, Western Area was supposed to be the answer to the housing crisis in Los Alamos. By 1947, there were more than a few barriers between dreams and reality.

Western Area Under Construction

The building contract was won by a company called McKee. The builder came up with two different models. One was concrete block covered in stucco and the other was wood frame with siding. Since there were no streets in the Western Area at the time these sample homes were built, the homes went up on Spruce Street. The Army Commander in charge at that time crowed that “Every home will have a bathtub!” While that was true, there was a laundry list of other things that worried potential occupants.

A women’s organization called the Mesa Club actually made a detailed list of improvements they felt necessary to render the model homes liveable. The list was detailed because one of the complaints was that the linen closet was not deep enough to adequately accommodate a set of folded sheets. Other items of complaint were that the windows were not set as to encourage a cross breeze, the windows in the children’s rooms were too high, and the major complaint was that the kitchen sink was placed in such a way that it faced a blank wall. After all, whoever heard of a kitchen sink that didn’t have a window over it?

If you’ve ever lived in a modern apartment complex you might have had more than a few kitchens without any windows at all. Of course, what the Mesa Club wasn’t grasping was that an optimal way to cut construction costs was to place the kitchen sink near the same wall that housed the plumbing for the bathroom. The Commander scoffed at the ladies’ complaints and told them there was no call for building “custom type houses”. After all, the last housing actually built in Los Alamos were the Sundt Apartments. (If you don’t know what a Sundt is, I’m planning a post about these fascinating apartments later on.) For a cost comparison, a Sundt Apartment building that housed up to four families cost $3000 to build. Each single family home or half duplex in the Western Area project carried a price tag of $14000!

But the ladies of the Mesa Club weren’t about to drop the topic of the kitchen sink. They rallied their husbands, a good number of them prominent Laboratory employees. 30 of the Laboratory’s top scientists put their signatures on a letter which was sent to Washington DC. The letter cited more than one issue with the housing options planned for the Western Area. Houses had only gone up on 41st and 42nd Streets before a task force was assigned to come out here to Los Alamos to see what all the fuss was about. Yes. A task force was called out over the kitchen sink… The next time you think you have a housing issue here in Los Alamos, just remind yourself of kitchen sinks and laugh.

This modified Western has some updating, but a lot of the exterior features are still present and make for an attractive home. Imagine how amazing this might have looked to a family previously living in a hutment or trailer with outdoor plumbing!

Needless to say, the kitchen sink was indeed moved. Because of this, for quite some time there were half a dozen houses on 41st and 42nd Streets that had the kitchen sink in the original position. It’s a safe bet that these have undergone plenty of renovations over the years. But sometimes I am just a bit curious to know if there are still homes in the Western Area with the kitchen sink facing a blank wall.

One of the most luxurious features was the third bedroom available in more than one version of the Western Area homes. To families who had been sleeping in cramped quarters for quite some time, it probably felt huge! Still, homes were assigned based upon family size. To merit a three bedroom home, you needed to be a family of at least five people. And while there was a bathtub in every house, a good number of these homes did not come with a shower. Believe it or not, tub and shower combos were not considered “standard” until well into the eighties.

Construction on Western Area continued once the initial complaints were addressed. Construction began at the intersection of Trinity and Diamond Drives and went around the horseshoe expanding first to the West, then the North, and then East. This created a bizarre situation for some families. Because of construction traffic, if you were assigned a house on the Northern side of the horseshoe, you got to move in last even though your home had been finished for months!

A good example of an Orignal Western. While the carport is now enclosed, you can see how basic the home design is. Also note the “high windows” in the “children’s room”.

Because of the delays in building the Western Area, and the housing crunch in general, there were several other short term housing options brought in to fill the gap. Last week I blogged about the Denver Steels – or Denver Metals. If you missed that post, click here. There were a few other short term options that I’ll talk about in future posts. But until then, don’t forget to pick up Craig Martin’s book about Los Alamos housing. Some of the information is bound to make the pieces of our housing history click into place! You can purchase Quads, Duplexes, and Sunken Living Rooms here. And when you’re ready to go in search of your own Dream Home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you!

What’s the Deal With Denver Steel?

June 12, 2022 /

All villages, towns, and cities have neighborhoods with names that go way back. Most of these names made perfect sense in the beginning, but the meanings might have been lost over time for any number of reasons. Los Alamos has more than a few oddly named neighborhoods. After all, our most historic area of town is called “Bathtub Row”. But another one of my all time favorites is the “Denver Steels” neighborhood tucked just behind Los Alamos High School on Pueblo Mesa. Believe it or not, the Denver Steels has the dubious honor of being one of the very first single family home neighborhoods in Los Alamos County.

Original drawing of a Denver Steel home

There are a lot of myths about how the Denver Steels got to Los Alamos. Really though, they aren’t myths so much as blended stories about early housing solutions proposed and executed in an effort to ease the housing crisis in Post War Los Alamos.

Myth #1

The homes were shipped here from the Washington State area. I’ve even heard a variation where they were the previous dwellings of steel workers in Washington State, hence the Denver Steels name. Of course, this myth makes no mention of how the word “Denver” came into play.

The truth is that there were temporary houses shipped to Los Alamos from Washington State. The Manhattan Engineer District, or MED, was in charge of operations in 1946. While the Western Area was being built, which was a whole other hassle we’ll talk about some other time, the MED brought 107 “houses” from their plutonium facility in Hanford, WA to Los Alamos. The homes were placed along 10th Street, Rim Road, and Canyon Road. I don’t know about you, but I seriously wish I could’ve been witness to the caravan of 214 flatbed trailers trucking up the Main Hill Road, each with half a Hanford Home strapped onboard. What a sight!

Literally the quote from potential occupants was, “Well, they have indoor plumbing!”

Myth #2

The Denver Steels were originally military troop housing on a base somewhere else in the US. Maybe Denver? There are certainly a number of potential military installations in the Colorado region to choose from. But this myth is once again, not a myth, but a truth based upon another temporary housing solution from our past.

The military installation was Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and the units were duplexes, triplexes, and quadraplexes. There were 270 units of these wood framed domiciles and honestly they looked like military housing. Each individual “pod” was 672 square feet. The structures were placed on Canyon Road, Manhattan Loop, and what used to be M, O, & P Streets in 1947. Currently those areas are in the vicinity of Myrtle and Pine Streets. At the time of their initial usage, these homes were considered the most desirable housing in Los Alamos. Yet the major complaint was that people wanted single family housing. Sound familiar?

There was a definite military look to these homes.

The Real Story

In late 1947 the Army authorized the purchase of housing for the military officers still stationed here in Los Alamos. At that time there were a lot of pre fab housing experiments going on in the US. You can check out my Lustron Homes post if you want to read more about that. But this shouldn’t be a surprise if you think about it. This was Post War America, the Baby Boomer generation was being born. Families wanted the American Dream they’d fought so hard for and they wanted it now! So the pre fab housing boom created some really interesting options.

Enter the Denver Steels. Or rather, the Denver Metals, as they were originally known. These units had steel I-beam framing and aluminum siding. They were fabricated by a steel company in Denver, Colorado and shipped in pieces to Los Alamos where they were assembled in record time.

718 sq ft of no nonsense utility – All were 2 bedroom and one bathroom

It might surprise you to know that the first 39 of these homes were actually placed over on Rim Road and Quartz not far from the other temporary housing brought to Los Alamos. Perhaps that’s where the myths got jumbled together. None of those 39 original Denver Steels are still around. They went the way of the Hanford homes and the Fort Leonard Wood multi units.

There were originally 251 Denver Steels ordered, but only 200 of them managed to be carefully situated onto Pueblo Mesa. Of those 200, half were reserved for the new civilian security inspectors coming into town. Craig Martin’s book on housing in Los Alamos doesn’t specify where the missing 12 were placed. But it’s probable that they were near the original 39 in an area that underwent multiple overhauls. Truthfully, the Denver Steels weren’t intended to be long term housing options for families in Los Alamos.

The original units were 718 square feet. Every home had two bedrooms and one bathroom and there was no bathtub. Only a shower. There were two models available from the company. The Marquette and the Columbine. Strangely, there were only 2 Marquettes ordered. The rest of the homes were the Columbine model and considering the minimal differences between the two, trying to find those two Marquettes would be like chasing the proverbial needle in the haystack. The most memorable feature of the Denver Steels wasn’t a feature at all. It was the fact that the all metal construction created a bizarre situation of simultaneous sweating and freezing in the wintertime. This resulted in the exterior walls being coated with ice. It would be interesting to know if this worked like natural insulation or not. But considering the mass amount of renovating, remodeling, and updating that has gone on in the Denver Steels in the last 75 years, it would be unlikely that any of the homes still have that unique problem.

Hard to believe that this inviting home ever resembled that original drawing!

Truly, the renaissance of the Denver Steels has been incredible. The area has long been considered a “starter” home neighborhood here in Los Alamos because of the modest square footage of the homes and the reasonable pricing. But some of the remodels have nearly doubled the 718 sq ft homes and in the last two years some of the sale prices of these beautifully updated homes have rivaled those of other “higher end” neighborhoods in town.

This home still has the original front window configuration. Two panes on the right, three on the left!

Though many of the updated versions of the Denver Steels have been added onto, it is sometimes still possible to see the ghost of the original construction if you know what you’re looking for. Take a tour of the neighborhood sometime and you’ll get a peek at the wonderful creativity and ingenuity of homeowners throughout the years.

Can YOU see the original structure?

As always, Craig Martin’s book, Quads, Shoeboxes and Sunken Living Rooms: A History of Los Alamos Housing, has been an invaluable and fascinating resource for this post. If you haven’t already, you should pick one up from the Historical Society’s Website. It’s a great resource for anyone who loves the uniqueness of Los Alamos, or even if it drives you nuts! And as always, if you’re ready to talk Real Estate in Los Alamos, I’m your hometown Real Estate Broker. Give me a call! I’d love to talk with you!

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