Adobe brick makers get hands on for historic preservation
Kathy Gurland spread and patted and slapped mud Saturday, her silver rings caked in the earth.
“Oh my god, a community event making adobe. How could you ask for anything better,” said Gurland, who was visiting Santa Fe from Brooklyn, N.Y. “I love it.”
Gurland was crouched in the courtyard of the Palace of the Governors — one of the most famous adobe buildings in Santa Fe — working her fingers in the straw-filled mud that would become an adobe brick, prodding the mush into the corners of a wooden mold.
On Saturday, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation and Cornerstones, a nonprofit that helps with historic preservation of buildings, hosted the first day of their second annual adobe brick-making event, aimed at teaching the public about making adobe and restocking the brick supply for restoration projects.
The hundred or so bricks made Saturday, and those created over the next three Saturdays in May,
will air dry and then be used for Cornerstones’ preservation projects in the region. Potential sites include the Plaza del Cerro in Chimayó, historic churches throughout Northern New Mexico and potentially the Old Santa
Fe Trail Building right here in the city, the former home of the Southwest Regional Office of the National Park Service.
Brick builders on Saturday were invited to write their names on a small, plastic chip and stuff
it inside their blocks. They’ll get a notification down the road telling them which project their brick was used for, organizers said, and their name tag could even be discovered a thousand years from now by archaeologists excavating the historic sites.
“To get local people involved with this or visitors — either way it’s going to give them a sense of what’s under this building, how it’s built,” said Pete Warzel, director of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, referring to the Palace of the Governors and many of the other old adobe buildings throughout Santa Fe.
Jake Barrow, executive director of Cornerstones, said the groups plan to host the four-day brickmaking event every spring.
“Traditionally, in the spring is the time to make adobe bricks,” he said. “If you build your bricks in May, you can use them in July, August, September to build with.”
He also pointed out that May is National Historic Preservation Month. The bricks, he said, are the public’s contribution to historic preservation in the local area.
“And it’s fun,” Warzel added. “I get a kick out of these adults playing in the mud.”
While volunteers from the host groups mixed straw with dirt from the bed of the Santa Fe River, shoveled the mix into block-like molds and taught participants how to mold the dirt into shape, Gurland pounded away.
For hours, she dug her fingers into the cool dirt, kneading it into shape and tossing out big rocks that might weaken the block’s structural integrity. Inside a few of the bricks, she buried name tags for her two sisters, who both died of cancer.
On the other end of the courtyard was a traditional horno that Melanie Laborwit, with the New Mexico History Museum, said was built using some of the adobe blocks from last year’s brick-making event. On Sunday, Laborwit said, the museum will host its first public baking class using that oven.
The structure was a sort of physical proof of the internal rewards Gurland felt for doing manual labor on her vacation.
“You’re a tourist and you go places, but to actually contribute, it’s amazing,” Gurland said. “I believe in being a part of the community. I don’t want to just take from the community.”