Tag: Los Alamos Historical Society

In the mid 1930s, AJ Connell released a brochure for the Los Alamos Ranch School entitled, “The Guest House”. In Connell’s mind, it was good for the parents of his ranch school boys to come and visit their children. It might be suggested, as is supported by the historical information, that AJ Connell wasn’t exactly comfortable being around the fairer sex.

Because most of the parents coming to visit were from the East Coast, they tended to stay for longer stretches of time. A week or even two wasn’t an unusual duration for a stay. Considering travel options available at the time, no wonder the families came to visit for longer than a weekend! Modern travelers complain about a two hour layover in an airport! And don’t even get me started on the crazed inconvenience of driving an hour or two by good road in a modern automobile to get to an airport!

Connell maintained that “a boys school” was too cold of a place for parents, especially mothers. So, with that in mind, he built a guest house. But… the guest house wasn’t the original intention of the building. Nope. It goes a bit further back than the 1930s.

School Nurse & Matron

It didn’t take long for AJ Connell and the all male staff at LARS realized they would benefit from having a woman around. (Ahem, isn’t that what USUALLY happens?) Keep in mind this was a good ten years before AJ brought his sister May up to the Pajarito Plateau to live in Master Cottage #2.

With boys engaging in far more than just classroom instruction and living incredibly far from home, it was soon necessary to hire a nurse and a matron. Sometime after 1918, Connell arranged for the construction of a rustic cabin for his school nurse and matron. Connell often suggested that he wouldn’t “coddle” a woman employee at his school. However, I do find it fascinating that instead of hiring a nurse AND a matron, he rolled it into one job and decided a single female on the property could do two jobs. Hmm.

With that in mind, the rustic cabin was a 20ft by 20ft log structure on a native stone foundation. The walls were unfinished pine slat siding and the roof had a pyramid like cap on it. It had a small porch on the east side supported by two sizable Ponderosa logs and had plenty of windows to let in light. The nurse/matron’s living quarters occupied the back room and the front of the building served as the infirmary. A single central wood stove kept the cold at bay in the cheery cottage.

Miss Genevieve Ranger moved into the infirmary likely sometime in 1922. I cannot even begin to imagine what that would’ve been like for one lone young woman to be responsible for a pack of men and boys. She was known to keep a dog with her for company.

The records seem to be a bit vague on the exact timing of this building’s construction as the infirmary is listed in some sources as dating to 1918. Mary Byers states in her Historical Society work that the cottage was completed in 1922, which is when it started showing up in ranch school photographs. Regardless, the building has been the longest regularly occupied and used structure in Los Alamos. Built (for sure) in 1922, it has remained in use from then until today and will likely remain in use for the foreseeable future as it now houses the Los Alamos History Museum!

In 1924, Miss Ranger experienced some health problems that caused her to leave her post at the ranch school. Connell somewhat reluctantly admitted the school would benefit from having a nurse AND a matron in residence as there were an awful lot of men and boys around. The infirmary was conveniently close to shops, farm buildings, and the Big House, but it was two small in its current configuration to support two females occupying it.

in the winter of 1925, Connell asked the ranch school carpenter, Pedro Gonzales to add two rooms onto the infirmary. A second entry provided a private entrance to a new apartment at the west side of the building. The pyramid style roof was upgraded to a standard, two pitched roof and the new improved infirmary was ready to go.

Well…at least for a few more years.

The Guest Cottage Years

When Fuller Lodge was completed in 1928, Connell moved the nurse and the matron onto the second floor. This provided an opportunity to develop the former infirmary into guest quarters for families wishing to visit their children at the ranch school.

Where Connell might not approve of “coddling” the school nurse or matron, he finally did acknowledge that the families he was hoping to entice into sending their boys to school probably needed more than a “rustic cabin” during their week long stays.

Pedro Gonzales was tasked once again with a ranch school remodel. I find this rather an interesting parallel to what so many of my local friends and clients have done with their Los Alamos homes. Apparently the local contractor having to go back six different times over the years to remodel the same house for a different tenant or even the same tenant has been going on since the 1920s!

Gonzales did beautiful work transforming the infirmary into a more traditional and attractive mountain style log cabin with horizontal beam sills and stone fireplaces in a very familiar pueblo style. Hardwood floors covered with bright Navajo rugs. The apartment on the east opened onto Miss Ranger’s sunny porch. The west facing apartment exited to an outdoor sitting area that included a lovely landscaped courtyard view.

Connell’s Guest Cottage was such a raging success that he had to add more apartments in 1935. As with many ranch school renovations or new builds in the 1930s, Connell called on John Gaw Meem to design the new addition in stone. Meem created a lovely set of one bedroom apartments, each with a private bath and shower!

Hot water was carried through iron pipes from Fuller Lodge. Interior walls were plastered. The furniture and artwork was locally sourced and the brochures claimed the largest apartment came with “a native corner fireplace”. The cost of a stay in the Ranch School Guest House was $6 per day. I cannot begin to imagine what it would’ve been like to take a vacation to the wild west at your son’s boarding school!

Project Y Years

During the Manhattan Project, the Army Corps of Engineers remodeled the Guest Cottage into private accommodations. The stone half of the structure became the Blue and Brown Rooms. General Leslie Groves had priority on the Blue Room whenever he was in town. Richard C Tolman, Groves’ scientific advisor, occupied the Brown Room during his stays. The rooms at that time included a bedroom and bathroom with an office. Each unit had its own bathtub, making the Guest Cottage a definite part of Bathtub Row.

The wooden half of the Guest Cottage was remodeled into a single apartment with a combination bedroom and living area, bathroom, and also a small kitchen. Ernest and Peggy Titterton, part of the British Mission, occupied this “East Room” during their tenure in Los Alamos. Having come from war ravaged Britain, the Tittertons very much enjoyed being part of a thriving and safe small town atop a high desert plateau.

Mr. Titterton was an accomplished pianist who was often found at Fuller Lodge playing to a crowd. Ernest not only covered the classics, he was also good for jazz and popular tunes. Ernest and Peggy loved Friday night dinners at the Lodge when thick steaks were on the menu for a single dollar. It seems only fair that Ernest Titterton enjoyed his stay in Los Alamos as he was the individual responsible for the historic task of triggering the world’s first atomic explosion at Trinity.

The Hotel Years

After the war, the AEC once again remodeled the Guest Cottage about the time Fuller Lodge became a “modern” hotel. I think many of us forget that was a thing! The hotel served the needs of the fledgling Scientific Laboratory, which meant the Guest Cottage wasn’t needed to house visitors anymore.

The original structure of the infirmary on the east side of the building was converted into a two bedroom apartment with a small living room and even a carport on the back! The space was occupied by the Ralph Carlisle Smith, Assistant Director of the Laboratory who remained from 1946 until 1952. Smith was a military document expert who was a blatant history nerd and adored living in the oldest structure in Los Alamos.

When Smith left Los Alamos, the Fuller Lodge Hotel manager and his wife moved in. Robert and Mary Martin enjoyed life in the Guest Cottage. Mary felt certain that some of the hand carved chests and rustic bedroom furniture had been made by the ranch school boys in the Arts and Crafts Building. The Martins occupied the building until the AEC began to dispose of their housing and structures in Los Alamos and the Lodge closed as a hotel.

The Museum Years

Through hard work on the part of local residents, history buffs, and lovers of all things Los Alamos, the AEC dispersal included turning over Fuller Lodge and eventually the Guest Cottage to Los Alamos County in order to be used as a community center of sorts. Not long after, on July 23, 1968 the Los Alamos Historical Society signed a contract with the county to lease the Guest Cottage for the purpose of a history museum. On July 28, 1968, the Los Alamos History Museum opened to the public.

The Guest Cottage’s transformation from empty and worn out apartment of many configurations to museum was an incredible labor of love. The procedure pictured below of raising the building in order to create a new foundation is similar to the necessary work that needs to happen to the Oppenheimer House. Techniques have changed since July of 1968, but the costs have become exponential! To learn more about that effort, click HERE.

The museum is still in operation today! If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit and tour the interesting items on display then please do! I’m so grateful to the Historical Society for their help in putting these posts together and to the archive for their photo galleries. I’m not a historian, I’m a real estate broker. But I love this town and I find the history of our community absolutely fascinating! So when you’re looking for someone to geek out over how cool your house in Los Alamos is, give me a call! I’d love to talk buying and selling Los Alamos Real Estate with you!

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.

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.

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.

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.