After
we retired eleven years ago my wife Mars and I joined our local Historical
Society – and we quickly learned that history is not just created by generals,
presidents, and explorers. Nor is it
driven solely by sweeping events and grand ideas. It is also made by those that create the
infrastructure that allows history to happen – people like homebuilders Allen
Stamm and Alfred G. Hubbard
In
the first part of the twentieth century a pair of 300-year-old municipalities that
are 2,000 miles apart had a an identical problem. Santa Fe New Mexico (established in 1607 by
Spanish Colonists), and Wethersfield, Connecticut ("Ye Most Auncient Towne
in Connecticut” founded in 1634 by English settlers from nearby Massachusetts) were
each experiencing an identity crisis. In
the end, one would choose to become “a city different from other American
cities and also a city different from its recent Victorian past” as well as an
“exotic tourist destination” – while the other would opt to transition into a
residence community “progressively more distinctive and distinguishable from
the of the neighboring suburbs.
Santa
Fe, NM established in 1607, is the second oldest city set up by European
colonists in the United States (St. Augustine, Florida being the first) – and
contains the oldest church (San Miguel
Chapel, 1610) as well as the oldest government building in the country (The
Palace of the Governors, 1610 – 1612).
In 1821, after years of conflict between the native Pueblo Americans and
the colonial Spanish, Mexico won its independence from Spain and the city
became the capital of the Mexican territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Shortly thereafter William Becknell opened
the 1,000 mile-long Santa Fe Trail, which brought hundreds of new settlers to
the area. In 1846, during the beginnings
of the Mexican American War, General, Stephen Watts Kearny, captured the city
and raised the American flag over the Town Plaza. At the conclusion of that
conflict Mexico ceded the territories of New Mexico and California to the
United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. When New Mexico was granted American
statehood in 1912 Santa Fe, with a population of 5,000, remained its capitol
city.
The
1900s also saw the start of the urban planning movement as the ideas of utopian
visionaries, infrastructure engineers, and local governments were combined to
create blueprints for developing towns and cities in order to mitigate the
consequences of the industrial age.. Faced
with their new status as a state capitol Santa Fe’s city leaders saw the need
for such a strategic document.
Unfortunately the city could not afford to hire a professional planner,
so Mayor Arthur Seligman appointed local businessman Harry H. Dorman plus
archeologists Edgar Lee Hewett and Sylvanus Morley of the Museum of New
Mexico/School of American Archeology who had studied Anasazi ruins in the area,
to develop the plan. The trio sent out
numerous letters seeking advice from nationally known experts such as city
planner John Nolan and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. –
received a great number of helpful replies – and created the town’s first formal
development plan, which they based upon the principals of historic
preservation, and the philosophy of the “City Beautiful” movement which
believed that introducing grandeur and beautification in cities would promote a
harmonious social order, increase the quality of life, and create a more moral citizenry.
Similarly, in our home town of
Wethersfield, Connecticut the beginning of the 20th century prompted
the town’s Planning Commission to issue its own
“Plan of A Residence Suburb” prepared in 1928 by Herbert S. Swan, City
Planner.
The
document begins “But yesterday Wethersfield was a rural community; today it is
semi-rural; tomorrow it promises to be one of Hartford’s densely built
suburbs.” (Hartford is Connecticut’s
capitol city and immediately adjacent to Wethersfield on the north.)
This transition “will involve a complete break with past
traditions. Farms that have been tilled
for nearly three hundred years will be cut up into building lots; wire fences
enclosing dairy pastures will give way to city streets; quiet country lanes,
now grass-grown and all but deserted will develop into traffic thoroughfares
carrying hundreds of vehicles per hour; comparatively small fields will become
the home places of crowded thousands.”
But
while Santa Fe looked to the principles of the “City Beautiful” Movement for
guidance, the philosophical underpinnings of Wethersfield’s strategy was based
upon the more tactically oriented “New Brunswick Plan” whose tenets, if
followed would assure that “Wethersfield is able to develop a constructive plan
before the whole town has been ruined through piecemeal planning.”
In the first half of the twentieth century
many men were involved in the transition of Wethersfield from “a mere village
of scattered houses with its surrounding farms into a fair-sized residential
suburb.” The best known and most
successful were Albert G. Hubbard and Harrison A. Bosworth who between them
built over 100 houses in what is now the town’s historic district and many more
throughout the remainder of town –
building “on spec”, and establishing substantial portions of many of today’s
neighborhoods.
In
fact, the March 18, 1929 Hartford Courant published the Wethersfield Grand
List, a compilation of all real estate parcels and business personal property
within the town, under the headline, “Hubbard Holdings Lead Wethersfield Grand
List, Value
Place at $120,774” (over $1.6
million in 2016).
Albert
G. Hubbard was born in Southington, Connecticut in 1886 and moved to
Wethersfield at the age of twenty-one.
Working as a carpenter he built at least two houses in the neighboring town of Hartford
but left that job in 1910 and bought four lots on Wolcott Hill Road in
Wethersfield with the intention of developing them. He sold his first Wethersfield house to James
Goodrich for $2,600.and in the years after 1910 Hubbard designed and built over
200 homes throughout town offering sixty-seven different plans to choose from.
A
typical Hubbard sales brochure asserted that:
“Wethersfield has much to commend it to the man who would be near his office,
yet away from the city’s turmoil…an unusually sporty 18 hole golf course…an
exceptional Yacht harbor and the beautiful Connecticut River winds its way down
to long Island Sound. Horseback riding
has many devotees here with bridal paths to suit all“. And, in the ethnically coded language of the
day for a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant town, “86% of our population are American
Born.”
Priced
between $4,500 and $20,000 ($54,000 to $240,000 in 2016), “Hubbard Houses” were
built to meet the needs of the modern suburban family.
“Conveniences that a few years ago would
have been considered luxuries even in the most expensive residences, are included
as a matter of course in these moderately priced homes, including: attractive
vestibules, center halls, staircase and large living rooms with fireplaces,
cheerful dining rooms with corner cupboards, sub parlors with cozy fireplaces,
modern kitchens with convenient built-in cabinets and sunny breakfast nooks,
first floor lavatories, two to four large, light, airy bedrooms on the second
floor, a beautiful tile bath, large open attic or sometimes a finished
one. The roofs are covered with a heavy
asphalt shingle, the warm rich beauty of autumn blends of russet, old gold,
burnt orange, browns, blues, greens, and yellow, which harmonizes with the body
colors and trim. An attractive velvety
lawn with shrubs and walks, a good rear yard, with a
flower or vegetable garden for that outdoor exercise, a one- or two-car garage
which completes the setting and makes it a complete modern home.”
Each
street in a Hubbard community was marked with a distinctive street sign
depicting a charming house and tree. These signs have been recreated in some
parts of the town’s Historic District. Some
streets were also marked with large stone pillars topped by flowered urns.
And
Hubbard also worked to create a sense of community in his housing developments.
“Being
of neighborly spirit, Mrs. [Isabel] Hubbard and I endeavored to know our
homeowners intimately. But as such a
group goes beyond a certain limit, individual calling is out of the question.” So in March 1925 A.G. and Isabel Hubbard held
a dinner at the Masonic Hall for all those who had purchased his homes. 186 people attended and one month later a
similar event inaugurated the “Hubbard Community Club” providing
“entertainments, dances, suppers,
picnics, masquerade parties and other jollifications.” The town’s annual report for that year asked,
“Can you imagine a community anywhere else like this?” The club was active for many years and, in
addition to the celebrations, held an annual “Olla Podrida” variety show to
raise money for charitable activities.
For
his own home A. G. Hubbard chose the historic Silas W. Robbins house at 185
Broad Street – built in 1873 in the three-story, “Second Empire” style by Silas
Robbins, an owner of the seed business Johnson, Robbins and Co. Hubbard divided the estate’s extensive
grounds of elms, maple trees, evergreens and flowers and created Robbinswood
Drive. Albert and Isabel had three
children – Lucille, Lawrence and Mabelle who was killed by an automobile at the
age of eight. The house was heavily
damaged by fire in 1996. It has been
restored and is now a bed and breakfast.
As
Nora Howard, former Director of Wethersfield Historical Society has written,
“Hubbard, like the many Wethersfield builders who preceded him, knew that he
was leaving a legacy of well-built and appealing homes. At the same time, he was
consciously creating for ‘his‘
homeowners something that is timeless.”
The
living quarters constructed in 1633 by John Oldham and the other “Ten
Adventurers” who came through the wilderness from Massachusetts Colony to found
Connecticut’s “most auncient towne” – offered shelter, but not much more than
that – “the first homes here were dugouts
or, as they appear to have been called, cellars. These cellars were made by digging a pit in
the ground, preferably in the side of a bank, and then lining the sides of the
excavation with stones and upright logs.
With a roof of logs, bark or thatch, and the earth banked high on the
outside, a house that was at least big enough to stand erect in, and even move
around a bit, was possible.”
While
none of Albert Hubbard’s sixty-seven house plans was even remotely an attempt
to recreate these original Wethersfield houses – Santa Fe’s chosen adobe style
architecture is very much adopted from the Native American dwellings that the
Spanish saw for the first time when they arrived in the Rio Grande Valley in
the 16th century.
But
housing was not the only concern of the implementers of the 1912 Santa Fe City
Plan. Chairman Dorman wrote, “The City of Santa Fe is planning extensive
improvements that include the laying out of parks and boulevards, the extension
of streets, the restrictions of manufacturing plants to a suitable district,
the elimination of bill-boards, and the bringing about of some sort of
architectural homogeneity.”
However,
while other “City Beautiful” municipalities such as Chicago, Memphis Tennessee,
and Coral Gables, Florida chose the neoclassical Beaux Arts style as their
guide to “architectural homogeneity”
Santa Fe selected a revival style based upon its own pre-1850 architectural
past – a conscious decision to be the “City Different” in the “City Beautiful”
movement. After studying the architectural photographs taken by his Museum
colleague Jesse Nussbaum, Morley prescribed a flat-roofed, one-story, adobe (or
adobe stucco) building with a room placed on each side of a portal as THE Santa
Fe building style. The goal was to make
the entire community into an exotic tourist destination – and to that end the
1912 plan stated “that it should be the duty of all city officials to guard the
old streets against any change that will affect their appearance…We further recommend
that no building permits be issued…until proper assurance is given that the
architecture will conform externally with the [newly defined] Santa Fe Style.”
The
makeover continued in spite of the expressed opposition from members of the two-thirds
majority Hispanic community such as Ortiz y Pino – “I am happy my ancestors
built of adobe, so that rather than have them desecrated by ignoramuses, they
have, for the most part, gone back to the earth.”
Like
most Spanish towns Santa Fe is organized around a central plaza, with the main
church (St. Francis Cathedral), Palace of the Governors, and (in its earlier
days) the residences of the main civil and religious officials, and most
important residents (“vecinos”) of the town. Streets radiate out from the square at right
angles in a pattern that would be extended as the settlement grew. A 1930 competition for the redesign of the
plaza, sponsored by Cyrus McCormick Jr. of Chicago was won by architect John
Gaw Meem. Meem’s redesign added
Spanish-style portals on the east and west sides and redid all the building
facades in either the approved Spanish-Pueblo or Territorial Revival style (the
latter a hybrid of Greek Revival and adobe).
The
1940 census showed Santa Fe’s population at 20,325 – almost three times that of
the 1912 Plan – partially due to an increase in the number of jobs in government
and occupations created by increasing automobile usage. The housing for this increased population however
remained clustered around the center of town.
The “1999 General Plan” of Santa
Fe reported, “As late as the mid-1940s,
urban areas were confined to a oval area measuring a mile by three-quarters of
a mile. The farthest residence was a
ten-minute walk from the Plaza.” But an
80-acre parcel of land, located 2.5 miles west of the city center was the site
of two less traditional housing complexes.
From
the mid 1930s to 1942 the property was the location of a camp for the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) – a federal
program established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 to relieve
unemployment and promote environmental conservation. Santa Fe’s CCC Company 833
Corpsmen worked on various projects in Bandelier National Park – as well as rodent
control at Glorista Mesa; emergency road repair at East Senorita Canyon; and fence,
erosion control, road maintenance at Canada de los Alamo.
They also constructed the Old Santa Fe Trail
Building near the intersection of Camino del Monte Sol and the Old Santa Fe
Trail – “The Single Most Recognizable CCC Contribution to the National Park
Service” according to “New Mexico: A History”, by Joseph P. Sanchez, Robert L.
Spude, and Arthur R. Gomez.
After
the start of World War II the CCC property was converted to the Santa Fe Japanese
Internment Camp where between 1942 and 1946 as many as 2,100 Japanese at a time
were imprisoned. 
In addition to those
whose only offense was their ethnicity there were also 866
"renunciants," Japanese American who had explicitly given up their U.S.
citizenship, and 313 Japanese Americans designated as "troublemakers"
at other internment camps. A small riot
occurred in March 1945 when officials transferred some of the leading
pro-Japanese inmates to another site. German
and Italian nationals were also held there, and over the five years more than
4,500 men passed through the facility.
For a time the camps were basically the only housing
units outside the central town neighborhood. However according to the1999 Santa Fe General
Plan “Low density suburban style developments were built in the city following
World War II at increasing distances from the Downtown.”
And
many of them were the work of University of New Mexico graduate and WWII U.S.
Navy Veteran Allen Stamm, who built almost 2,800 homes in the Santa Fe area
between 1939 and 1980. The early models
of his houses had two bedrooms, one bath, living room, kitchen, hardwood
floors, vigas, kiva fireplaces, nichos and other traditional touches, superlative
workmanship, one-car garage, a walled back yard – with an open front yard
because Stamm (like A.G. Hubbard) wanted the people living in his houses to
know each other. They varied in price from $3,800 to $4,500 ($64,000 - $76,000
in 2016), with a $300 down payment and $40 monthly mortgage – within the price
range of ordinary Santa Feans. Later
styles were priced at a still modest $10,000 to $20,000.
Stamm
shaped several of New Mexico’s capitol city’s most distinctive neighborhoods: Camino
Mafiana, Camino Alegre, Carlos Rey – and Casa Solana built partially on the
former site of the CCC/Internment Camp.
(Our daughter-in-law and son live in one of the Casa Solana Stamm
houses.)
Allen
Stamm was named a Santa Fe “Living Treasure” in 2003 not only for his
contribution to the city’s development but also for his employment
practices. His write-up reads in part, “He hired women consultants to design the
kitchens. He made places for Christmas trees and highchairs, and built garages
that were easily converted into bedrooms for growing families. He instituted
year-round work for his employees as well as an insurance plan, partnerships
for his top executives, and a one-year unconditional guarantee on his
houses—all unheard-of concepts before he came. He elevated the building
industry’s standards, here and throughout the state. He received many awards,
and served countless local causes, from the hospital to the animal shelter.”
Racial Covenants were a common
part of housing deeds from the 1920s through the 1960s (including in Santa Fe)–
with language such as “No person of African or Oriental race shall use or
occupy any building lot” or occupancy is prohibited by “any race but the white
race” – alongside prohibitions on “trailers
and tents” and “noxious or offensive activities.” Interestingly “whites only” provisions were
not applied against Hispanics in Santa Fe, possibly because Hispanic is
considered ethnic rather than racial.
Such
covenants were actually a requirement for some Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
funding. And Santa Fe subdivisions such
as The Tano Addition (built by John Gaw Meem), The Zia Addition (Robert McKee)
and La Cuma Addition (School of American Research), built in 1940s contained
these restrictions – as well as two of Allen Stamm’s developments Casa Alegre
and Casa Manana. Nonetheless, Stamm’s
business partner from 1953, Lee Brown remembers, Stamm only once mentioning the
issue of race.
In
the early 1960s an African-American woman was house hunting in Santa Fe and there
was some confusion in the Stamm organization as to how to handle her, given the
existence of these covenants. “Give them whatever they want; show them whatever
they want,” Brown recalls Stamm saying.
Over
the years, as families grew, garages were converted to bedrooms, rooms were
added on, and in some cases, second stories were added.
“Allen
would be perfectly fine with that. He
wanted people to be happy in his houses. All he would ask is that the quality
of the work be up to his standards,” commented Santa Fe Building Contractor Ed
Crockett
Like Albert Hubbard whose eight-year
old daughter was killed by an automobile, Allen Stamm suffered similar anguish
when his nine-year-old daughter, Linda, was kidnapped November 10, 1950.
“Your child has been kidnapped. The amount is $20,000 cash or negotiable
bonds. Put same in envelope on top of your Sol y Lomas gate tonight if you can.
If not until tomorrow night put a red rag as sign ... If not at all—your kid
will die of cold and hunger. New Mexico is an easy place to lose a body. Do not
talk about this to police, FBI or friends. Any effort to interfere with our
messenger, the child dies.”
The
kidnapper, Dr. Nancy DuVal Campbell – a well-respected, 43-year old Santa Fe
gynecologist and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University – was captured by
FBI and local police the following night as she attempted to pick up the ransom
money and Linda was safely returned to the Stamms. Dr. Campbell seemed an unlikely criminal but
the prosecution argued that she had been motivated by a need to repay several
large debts. The jury rejected her
insanity defense, and she was sentenced to 10 – 15 years in prison. Released in 1957 because of good behavior and
“gain time”, she was later pardoned by New Mexico Governor “Lonesome” Dave
Cargo in 1968 and died in Santa Fe in 1981.
Linda
Stamm was sent to Arizona with to live with relatives, but later returned to
Santa Fe as a sculptor under her married name of Strong.
In
1979 she created a sculpture showing a group of children engaged in a water
pistol fight, which was installed in Santa Fe’s Riverside Park. But after the 1999 shootings at Colorado’s Columbine
High School many citizens wrote letters to the editor of the local Santa Fe New
Mexican newspaper protesting the portrayal of gun-wielding children and she
provided a new work of art in which water hoses replaced the pistols.
Allen Stamm died in 2003 at the
age of 91 and, in the same year, was formally acclaimed one of the Santa Fe
Living Treasures. His tribute says in
part:
“No other Santa Fe builder in the
modern era contributed as much as Allen Stamm did to the bedrock concept of
‘home.’ A visionary as well as a man of immense integrity, character,
compassion and humanity, he built thousands of high-quality—but not
high-cost—houses all across the face of this community. He worked always to
make them livable, durable, handsome, architecturally sensitive, friendly and,
perhaps most important, affordable for ordinary Santa Feans with average
incomes.
“During his ‘retirement,’ in an era
when numerous builders were catering to upscale clients, Stamm continued to
work tirelessly for affordable housing in Santa Fe, and to support local
causes. When he died early this year [2003] at the age of 91, he was still at
it. For a residence in Santa Fe, there is no higher tribute than to say it is a
‘Stamm House’—and like the homes he built, his legacy will stand the test of
time.”
One time in my former
professional life as an Information Technology Manager I was brought in to find
out why some software that my employer had purchased was not performing as
promised. After a rather heated meeting
with the vendor’s Technical Representative I was finally told, “Well you know
Jim – marketing people say marketing things.”
But
that is not always the way it is. Albert Hubbard was a successful builder in
part because he was a good salesman – but mostly because his houses lived up to
his hype. So I suspect it was with Allen
Stamm also.
“There are no dividends to compare with
comfort and contentment, no returns equal to the personal pride felt by the man
who owns the home that shelters his family.”
The above quote from a Hubbard
sales brochure reflects the hyperbole of a practiced marketer as well the
paternalistic gender perspective of that era.
Nonetheless
it is, in essence, largely true. And I
would add that the resulting sense of self-worth and satisfaction may allow, or
maybe even cause, that man – or that woman – to contribute to the history of
their community or of the larger world.
That
is what infrastructures do – and that is why those who create them have a place
in that history.
Sources:
http://santafecenterforappliedresearch.blogspot.com
Santa Fe: A Historical Walking Tour
By Shirley Lail, Pedro Dominguez, Darren Court
The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a
Modern Regional Tradition By Chris Wilson
The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a
Modern Regional Tradition By Chris Wilson
Some Old Wethersfield houses and
gardens.” Adams, Henry Sherman, Printed Privately for the Wethersfield Women’s
Saturday Afternoon Club, 1909
My
latest discovery is the official state flower, the Yucca – something that I
thought of more as a decorating cliché than as a “real” plant – the Ficus of
front yards. In Connecticut, where we
now live, its sword-shaped leaves and tall clusters of white flowers incongruously
attempt to provide a desert accent to the already-quite-green New England home
landscape. At the North Carolina shore
where we vacation annually you can’t swing a dead sea gull without hitting a
phalanx of these tropical looking plants standing guard along the sidewalk, trying
to make it look as if a southern beach cottage was built in the wild wasteland rather
than later backfilled by stock from a nearby nursery.
Yuccas
also have a really neat self-propagation system known as “mutualistic
pollination” wherein an insect called the Yucca moth intentionally transfers
the pollen from the (male) stamens of one plant to the (female) stigma of
another, while, at the same time laying an egg in the flower. The resulting larval moth feeds on some of the
developing Yucca seeds, leaving behind enough seed to perpetuate the species. Any plant that has its own eponymous,
dedicated, species survival support team is at the top of my personal floral
coolness chart.
