Scarce Hispanic Artifacts, Architecture Find a Preservation Home
By Denise Tessier
(A version of this article and the afternote first appeared in EMHS Newsletters in the year 2000.)
East Mountain Historical Society members took a field trip in the summer of 1999 through three settlers’ structures built after the Civil War – a stone barn from Tajique and a wooden cabin and stand-alone kitchen from Tijeras – authentically equipped and maintained as they were when first occupied. All three structures sit along a single dirt path and share a colonial garden – in Corrales.
Yes, in Corrales.
These substantive pieces of East Mountain history make up just a segment of the remarkable breadth of Casa San Ysidro – a compound in Corrales devoted to the preservation of scarce Hispanic New Mexican artifacts, architecture and details. Also known as the Gutierrez/Minge House, the complex was started in 1952 when noted historian Ward Alan Minge and his wife, Shirley Jolly, bought an old, Corrales adobe home that belonged to descendants of don Felipe Gutierrez, recipient of the Bernalillo Township Land Grant in 1704.
Because the Gutierrez house is located across from the old San Ysidro Church, it is named for the patron saint of farming, San Ysidro Labrador. The broader name is appropriate because Casa San Ysidro, acquired through donation and purchase by the Albuquerque Museum in 1997, came to include much more than the Gutierrez house, as EMHS members learned on their tour July 7.
Once the Minges put their life-long passion and devotion to history into the house, it became a repository for artifacts and even buildings that would otherwise have been lost to time.
The tour of the house starts with the original Gutierrez house. Completely restored, with kitchen, hallway, parlor and bedrooms filled with period furniture, one’s visit feels like keeping an appointment with don Felipe himself. Items in the home range from the rare – like a Mexican choclatera (for making chocolate) to common helpers like the cazo, a huge pot for making soap, dying wool, doing laundry and bathing. A chandelier, made of tiered tin cans cut into rings like paper, hangs with practical elegance in the hall.
Most fascinating was that while each room appeared painted a different color, all were actually plastered. The vivid colors come from mud Alan Minge collected around New Mexico: pink from Acoma, brown from Corrales, dark plum from La Bajada (appropriately, in the Victorian parlor).
Extending from the restored house one encounters Minge’s “recreation” of early New Mexican history. It starts with a courtyard of bricks, vigas, doors and details taken from early New Mexican structures, authentic down to its garden of wild rose, blackberries, grapes, hollyhock, lilac and yarrow.
Off one side of the courtyard is a room with elaborate French brass bed that once belonged to Gov. Manuel Armijo. To the west is a huge sala built specifically to accommodate the entire roof of a church from Tomé. To the south is a weaving room with European treadle loom from 1785; just west of that is a room featuring a sheepherder’s fireplace; built-in bancos let up to two herders warm themselves by a fire.
And past the courtyard are the many outbuildings Minge collected from around the state, stocked with wagons and tools appropriate to each. Of special relevancy for our group, of course, were the post-Civil War cookhouse and settler’s cabin from Tijeras, both wood structures, and the stone Tajique barn. The barn, our guide said, took Minge two days to take apart and two years to reassemble. All pieces were numbered in the process. Inside the barn were rare tools, including utensils to measure grains, coffee grinder, ox goad, double-handled saw, wine press, bear trap and wooden rake. Most unusual was a pitchfork made of a single piece of wood; someone had specifically pruned and trained a young tree to create it.
More on the East Mountain Structures Moved to Casa San Ysidro
Before writing the previous feature on the EMHS field trip to Casa San Ysidro in Corrales, then-editor Denise Tessier wrote to historian and Casa San Ysidro founder Alan Ward Minge in hopes of eliciting more detail on the history of three historic structures EMHS viewed during the tour. Minge replied after the newsletter was printed, providing the following details.
September 16, 1999
… The stone barn was a gift from Lorenzo Barela on the Barela ranch near Tajique. The family furnished most of the firewood for Casa San Ysidro. On a visit to the ranch in the late 1950s, the Barelas were dismantling the barn and when they saw how interested we were, they offered to bring the entire barn to us in Corrales. The stones were not marked, but we had the measurements of the original. It took me over 15 years to reassemble, not two years which the docents told your group. The Barelas enjoyed visiting the barn while delivering loads of wood because, they explained, they played in the barn when they were little children. Lorenzo also told me his ancestors went by wagon to get the stone, originally from the abandoned pueblo ruins at Quarai.
The two log houses (fuertes) I bought from a Mrs. Engelbrecht, who claimed to inherit the homesteads, land and buildings from a Mr. Griego in Escobosa. She sold these buildings after dismantling them, so we had to puzzle how to rebuild them. She sold the fuertes (in the 1960s) because she feared “hippies” might otherwise burn them. She said the log buildings had been used by families who worked for the Griegos. I had a crew to help with assembly and we started with the bunkhouse. We had to erect and reerect five times before we got the building stable and right. With this experience, we only had to re-erect the cook shack twice. We were very impressed by the size of the lower logs used in both buildings.
Hope this helps.
Alan Minge
