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

ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS

Modifications to the Church

Within a few years of completion of the church, the friars became aware of two things. First, they found the baptistry under the choir loft to be an awkward arrangement. Second, the west nave window allowed too strong a breeze to blow through the church.

The friars decided to construct a new baptistry against the west tower of the facade next to the front porch, rather than outside the west wall of the nave. [52] Placing the baptistry so that it was entered from the porch saved the difficulty of cutting a hole through the wall of the church under the choir. The masons built the baptistry as a simple flat-roofed room, almost square, with the opening for the door flush with the facade of the church and a window in the south wall for light.

The construction showed a number of peculiarities. At the point where it met the facade tower, the wall was neither butted nor tied into the fabric of the church. Instead, the full 3 1/2-foot thickness of the baptistry wall continued across the west face of the tower. An entrance room or foyer of somewhat irregular plan extended from the east wall of the baptistry to the edge of the porch. The thickness of the foyer's south wall varied from two feet ten inches where it abutted the baptistry to three feet ten inches inside the southeast corner. The east front wall of the foyer was two feet two inches in thickness under the edge of the porch roof. Within the context of earlier church and convento construction at Quarai, this irregular work was poor masonry and demonstrated a lower level of planning and expertise. The masons raised the walls to the height of the porch roof, so that the baptistry roof became an extension of the choir loft balcony.

When the baptistry complex was completed, it resembled the baptistry plan at San Bernardo de Awatovi. This was a contemporary mission church on Antelope Mesa near the modern settlements of Jeddito and Keams Canyon in northeastern Arizona, on the western frontier of New Mexico. The Franciscans built this church ca. 1630 as a temporary or visita church with a plain facade and no separate room for a baptistry. About 1640, after giving up on the construction of a larger, permanent church with a plan and dimensions almost identical to Quarai (including the lack of a specific room for the baptistry), the friars improved the smaller church by adding two massive facade towers and a front porch, with a baptistry against one of the towers and a matching room against the other. As at Quarai, the baptistry opened under the roof of a facade porch. [53]

The resemblance between the Awatovi churches and Quarai, and an examination of other churches constructed before 1640, suggests the hypothesis that most churches built in New Mexico before 1640 had no baptistry room, and that the baptismal function was performed in an area under the choir loft. Not until after 1640 did the construction of baptistries as separate rooms become popular for new churches, and the earlier churches added baptistries to their structures during the same period.

About the same time as the construction of the baptistry at Quarai, the friars sealed the west nave window with careful stonework closely resembling that of the interior surface of the nave wall. The masonry formed a stone plug about one foot thick filling the entire window opening. This sealed off drafts and any rain leakage caused by the constant west wind, still a distinct characteristic of Quarai today. [54]

Changes to the Convento

In the late 1650s Fray Jerónimo de la Llana, the guardian of Quarai at the time, undertook a series of alterations to produce additional space within the convento. The most significant additions affected the sacristy, kitchen, and refectory. [55]

De la Llana decided that the convento of Quarai needed a roomier principal cell, and that it should take advantage of the cooler breezes available at the second-story level. He and the masons worked out a design that allowed the construction of a cell on the second story, above the refectory.

The design required several changes at the ground-floor level. The masons built a partition wall two feet thick across the middle of the sacristy, with a doorway at the west end of the wall. This wall was intended to support portions of the structures to be added on the second-floor level, and divided the original sacristy into two rooms (rooms 7 and 4). The masons converted the storeroom (room 6) to a stairwell by constructing a wooden staircase in the small space. They narrowed the doorway from 4 1/2 to 2 1/2 feet by adding stonework to the north edge of the opening and then replastering the area. This allowed the base of the stairway to extend farther south from the north wall without awkwardly blocking part of the doorway.

In the south room (room 4), the masons reorganized the space. They moved the sacristy cabinet from the alcove in the east end of the room, and probably placed it against the south wall. The masons enclosed the alcove itself by constructing a two-foot-thick stone wall across the opening, leaving a doorway at the north end. This converted the alcove to a small closet or storeroom.

The rearrangement of space must have required that the various activities originally carried out in the sacristy chapel had to be divided between the two smaller rooms. Unfortunately, the excavation of these rooms in 1934-35 was not sensitive enough to recognize the details of furnishings and built-in features recording such a reorganization. What evidence is available suggests that the north room (room 7) remained a friar's chapel, while the south room (room 4) became the vestry, or robing room.

Figure 17. Plan of the mission of Quarai about 1670. The portals of the ambulatorio and of the portería have been walled in and the changes to the rooms along the residence hall completed. The kitchen is now on the east side of the hall, and the secure storeroom (room 29) has been built next to it in the second courtyard. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

East of the sacristy, the work crews converted the kitchen into a storeroom. They moved the cooking equipment out of the kitchen, removed the ovens and chimney, and built a partition wall about two feet thick, extending north to south across the at the west edge of the small doorway or window in the south wall. The small doorway or window was probably filled at the same time. Like the partition wall added in the sacristy, the masons built this wall to support structures on the second-floor level. In the east end of the room they built two large, rather asymmetrical stone storage bins, one against the north wall and one against the south wall. The south splay of the double-splay doorway was filled, effectively narrowing the opening. The carpenters removed the narrow double doors and installed a single door pivoted at its north edge, a stronger and more secure arrangement apparently intended to protect the contents of the room. The changes converted the former kitchen to two smaller storerooms.

Above the kitchen roof the masons began construction on the second-story walls of the new cell. They raised the walls of the refectory another eleven feet, installing door and window frames in their assigned places as they went. Where they had built the partition wall across the refectory at ground level, they constructed a second-story partition to separate the cell from the alcove. This resulted in a cell eighteen feet long and 16 1/2 feet wide, and an alcove 8 1/2 feet across and 16 1/2 feet wide, a considerable increase over the largest cell and alcove on the first floor. The second-story cell probably had windows facing north and east and two doorways, one opening south onto the roof of the refectory and the other opening into the alcove. [56]

Above room 7 of the sacristy, between the second-story cell and the stairwell in room 6, the masons built a mirador, a porch-like space with a good roof but open on the south. A bench and stone balustrade probably enclosed the north side, while two posts supported the second-story roof and parapet along the south side. A second bench and balustrade may have enclosed this side between the posts and the side walls. The mirador opened out onto the roof of the south half of the sacristy and the refectory. These two roof surfaces formed an open porch along the south side of the cell. [57]

De la Llana moved the kitchen function from room 8 to room 13, the third or smallest cell. He converted the alcove (room 12) to a small pantry, narrowed the doorway between the two rooms by the addition of a splay opening toward room 13, and built a door into the doorway in order to allow the contents of the room to be secured. [58] He filled the main doorway from the cell into the hall, leaving a small pass-through window at shoulder height, and cut a new doorway through the south wall of the room into the passageway leading from the residence hallway to the second courtyard.

Down the residence hallway, the masons altered room 16, which had been an office or the infirmary. They removed the hallway wall south of the doorway and filled the doorway itself. They built a large square stone pillar in the center of the room, then built a cross wall joining the square pillar to the west wall. The alterations and additions to this room strongly suggest that it was converted to a stairwell. If so, the stairs gave additional access to the roof of the one-story sections of the convento and the second-story celda principal.

At the south end of the hallway, de la Llana changed room 21 from a storeroom to some other use. Adding stonework to the south side of the doorway, the masons narrowed it by one foot so that it was identical to the other doorways along the hall. The infirmary or office use of room 16 probably shifted to room 21. The storage activity of room 21 may have been moved to the old kitchen, room 8. This placed all the storerooms at the north end of the hall, in rooms 8 and 11.

In the patio, de la Llana converted the post-and-lintel portal along the sides of the ambulatorio to a continuous solid wall pierced by windows and doors. The masons added an eleven-inch-thick layer of stone against the inside and outside surfaces of the balustrade and posts, covering the old portal structure. The wall averaged two feet nine inches in thickness. They enclosed the original posts in stonework, and installed wooden window frames in the spaces between the posts. There were a total of ten windows, three on the east and west sides, and two on the north and south, flanking the two entrances into the patio. The windows on the north and south were splayed, with the narrower side toward the patio, while the windows on the east and west were straight-sided. To make the patio visually more pleasing, the masons covered the edges of the corner pillars with a rounded stonework surface, making false round stone pillars. Because the masonry work reduced the size of the windows opening from the patio into the ambulatorio, the ambulatorio became somewhat darker and more enclosed, but less exposed to the weather. [59]

De la Llana also directed changes to the entranceway into the portería. The masons built massive square stone pillars at the east and west corners of the open south side, then enclosed this side with a thin wall, one foot nine inches thick. The wall extended from the corner pillars past the south side of the posts supporting the lintel beam of the south wall, leaving a doorway 3 1/2 feet wide in the center of the wall. The masons probably constructed windows on either side of the central door.

The utility buildings along the east side of the second courtyard undoubtedly changed during this time also, but rebuilding in the nineteenth century obscured these changes. Archeological work, rather than separating the events of the nineteenth century from those of the seventeenth, instead destroyed much of the evidence, and archeologists never became aware that were examining two major construction events. Architectural investigations have been unable to supply significant information about the structures. The seventeenth century as-built plan of the second courtyard buildings, and the changes to that plan, will remain unknown until further excavations are carried out in the second courtyard.

The Famine of 1667 to 1672

In 1667 a severe famine began in New Mexico. The southern pueblos were hard hit by the food shortage. In order to feed the starving Indians of the pueblos, the Franciscans began shipping food by wagon from conventos with surpluses to those with shortages. In order to protect the food supplies, the Salinas missions built secure storerooms for their protection. At Quarai, de la Llana had the masons build a new, two-story kitchen storeroom (room 29) on the first platform of the courtyard abutting the friary wall outside the new kitchen. The interior of the room was fourteen feet wide and extended westward nineteen feet from the convento wall to the first terrace retaining wall, with a floor level about a foot lower than the terrace on which the building stood. The masons built the new walls three feet thick. The interior floor was three feet lower than the floor of the convento, so that the walls of the new room would be sixteen to seventeen feet high if they were raised to the height of the adjacent convento rooms.

The masons cut a new doorway through the east wall of room 13, the new kitchen, into the new storeroom. They built stairs from the kitchen up through the doorway to the second floor level of the storeroom. The cooks probably used the first floor level as the main storage area for the kitchen. They reached this room from the kitchen by a wooden stairway or ladder through the floor from the upper level. A doorway opened onto the second courtyard through the north wall of the storeroom. A massive door closed this doorway, protecting the valuable supplies stored within the room. [60]

Construction in the Pueblo

During the years from the establishment of the mission of Purísima Concepción de Quarai, probably in 1626, to the abandonment of the pueblo and mission in about 1677, the Spanish presence had a strong influence on the pueblo. Although excavation information is limited, the work of Wesley Hurt in 1939-40 demonstrated that most of the pueblo structures around plaza A were built after the arrival of the Spanish. This includes virtually all of the structures forming mounds I and J, and much of mound H.

The alignments of the walls of the structures forming these mounds are striking. The eastern fifty-five feet of the north exterior wall of mound H are almost exactly aligned with the north side of the church and convento, while the north exterior wall of mound J is parallel to the south facade of the church and convento, and aligns with the edge of the platform along the south side of the mission. These alignments suggest that the eastern half of mound H and all of mounds I and J were not only built after the arrival of the Spanish, but were intentionally laid out, probably under the supervision of the Franciscans, to form an enclosed plaza on the west side of the mission.

On the east end of house block J, adjacent to the church, the Spanish built a structure for their own use. This building may have been the casa real or casa de communidad of Quarai, built and maintained by the Franciscans or the governor as the residence for visiting government officials or merchants. [61] The general slope of the ground and the roads used in the nineteenth century imply that the main road from Abó to Quarai and on to Tajique passed from south to north through plaza A, between the casa real and the church. [62]