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

CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH

The church rose along with the convento. Still, at the end of the third year of construction, the crews had completed the convento, but the church stood only to a height of about thirteen feet. At this height, the masons had laid a little more than 1/3 of the total volume of its stonework. Because of its height and complex structure, the church would require three more years of work to complete the masonry, roofing, interior woodwork, plastering, and decoration. If the crews worked at a normal rate of construction, the church was ready for dedication by 1632.

The crews constructed the walls of the nave, transept, and apse with a thickness of 4 1/2 feet, and the facade wall with a thickness of just under four feet. These were relatively thin walls for their height, but the design allowed for their thinness by including reinforcing tower buttresses ten feet square at principal corners. [23]

The construction of the church was a more complex task than the construction of the convento had been. The complexity of the construction resulted from the inclusion of structural wood elements such as door and window lintels and roof beams at several levels rather than at one level as in the convento. As they reached each element of wood construction, the crew carefully prepared the ledge or platform where the beams would rest. When several elements were involved, one supporting another, such as lintel beams supporting the floor joists of the choir loft, their sequence of construction became critical. Two wall height levels presented the most complex sequencing problems to Gutiérrez and his construction crew. Wall heights varied between 9 1/2 to 13 1/2 feet, where most of the door and window lintels and the choir loft, porch, and adjoining convento room roof beams all had to be installed, and twenty-eight to thirty-five feet, where the church roofing was constructed.

The First Level of Wood Construction

Along the east wall of the church, construction stopped at 10 1/2 feet on the south side of the sacristy wall and 13 1/2 feet north of it. The crew lifted the roof vigas for the adjoining sacristy, ambulatorio, and friary rooms into place, with corbels under the sacristy vigas. Then they continued the construction of the wall, encasing the ends of the vigas in stone.

At the south front and southeast corner, however, the job was more complex. The choir loft joists or floor support beams could not be laid until the main supporting viga for the choir loft, running across the width of the nave; the supporting posts and vigas of the front porch; and the lintel beams for the main doorway were all in place. [24]

The main choir loft viga was not a simple structure. The beam itself was about thirty-seven feet long and twelve inches square, and covered with decorative carving. Beneath it were one-foot-square corbels set into the walls at each end, and two vertical supporting posts with bolsters equally spaced between the walls. Above it, resting on top of the choir loft floor joists and also set into the side walls of the nave, was the bottom rail of the bannister of the choir loft.

Outside the church, the supporting beam of the porch was almost identical in construction. It had additional posts at the sides, holding up the ends of the beam, but between these was the same arrangement of two evenly-spaced posts topped by bolsters holding up the beam. Resting on the beam were the joists of the porch and choir loft, and above this was the bottom rail of the porch bannister.

The crews had to assemble three sets of supporting beams at the same time to construct this complex arrangement. They set up the front porch posts and bolsters and the interior posts and bolsters, then laid the corbels and beams in place, supported by the posts. At the same time they laid the lintels across the top of the main doorway, making an opening 9 1/2 feet high by 7 1/2 feet wide at the outer face of the wall. [25]

The thirteen joists supporting the floor of the choir loft were then lifted into place. Each joist was about ten inches square and thirty-five feet long, extending from the supporting beam of the porch outside the front wall, across the wall top and the lintel of the main door, down the nave to the main support beam of the choir loft. [26]

Once the joists were in place, the masons continued the stonework of the facade (the front wall of the church), and the side walls. The masons laid stone between the choir loft joists at the top of the facade. In the center of the facade, above the lintel of the main entrance doorway, the carpenters assembled the frame of the doorway opening from the choir loft out onto the porch roof or balcony, with the sill resting on the tops of the choir loft joists and the fill stone between them. At the same time they built a similar door frame at the east side of the choir loft, set into the nave wall. This doorway opened onto the landing of the stairway from the convento to the choir loft.

Across the top of the joists where they rested on the main, choir loft support viga, a woodwork crew laid the second beam securing it in position and forming the lower rail of the choir loft bannister. Where the joists rested on the supporting beam of the porch, the crew laid a similar rail for the porch bannister. [27] Finally, the porch and the choir loft received a floor of latillas, matting, and plastered clay. [28]

The work on other parts of the church walls continued. When the walls reached thirteen feet, the carpenters set the frames for two windows into the walls at the midpoints of the nave, one on the east wall and one on the west. [29] At fourteen feet they assembled the lower posts and panels of the bannister of the choir loft, and put the middle bannister rail in place. [30] When the walls reached eighteen to nineteen feet, the carpenters pieced together the top posts and panels of the choir loft bannister, and then set the upper bannister rail in place. At the same time they put in the lintels over the east and west nave windows, over the doorway from the stairway to the choir loft, and over the doorway from the choir loft to the front porch.