Hubbell Trading Post Administrative History

Building Roster

Figure 21. The Hubbell home, HB-2, photo from 1965. The tall TV antenna has since been removed. NPS photo, HUTR Neg. 89.

Hubbell Residence

HB-2: Adobe walls---16" to 18" thick---on a shallow stone and mud mortar foundation. Board and viga ceiling, boards covered with bark and straw to keep the earth from sifting down. Adobe mud was then spread across the board ceiling to serve as the original roof. A later roof of rafters, boards, and mineral-surfaced rolled roofing was added above the old earthen roof (renewed in spring, 1991). Exterior walls are covered with adobe plaster, interior walls are plastered and painted. Flooring is tongue and groove on 2 X 6 joists. [5]

Figure 22. The interior of the Hubbell home, the hall, looking north to the front door. The decor is essentially the same today. The bedrooms are off both sides of this room. National Park Service photo, HUTR Neg. 265.

If one is to judge by the tree-ring study, the front part of the house---the hall-living area, and the adjoining bedrooms---was under construction in 1900 and 1901, the southern end of the house, which initially consisted of a staff dining room and root cellar, may have been completed in 1897-1898. The two structures were joined, probably in 1910, by the addition of the present kitchen and the two rooms on either side of the courtyard. The residence, then, was under construction from about 1897 until about 1910, with some modern refinements, such as electricity and running water, entering the structure in the 1920s. There are porches at the south and north ends of the house. The interior of the house is furnished very much as Dorothy Hubbell left it in 1967 and looks as it might have in, say, 1920, when Dorothy arrived. (The contents of the house can be studied by referring to several comprehensive furnishings studies on file in the Curator's office.) [6]

Figure 23. Hubbell Residence. The southern end of the house was completed in 1897-1898, the front section in 1900-1901. The two separate structures were joined in about 1910 with the addition of the kitchen and the rooms on either side of the patio. Southwestern architecture lends itself to such additions, which rarely seem to detract from the original plan.