Built with Brotherly love
THE COLLEGE OF SANTA FE CAMPUS AND BUILDINGS
The architectural history of the college founded in Santa Fe in 1859 began in a small adobe building next to San Miguel Chapel. Five Christian Brothers, led by Brother Botulph of Germany, labored in humble quarters until 1878, when a beautiful three-story adobe building was completed. Another large building, built of fired brick, joined it in 1887. (These survive as the Lamy Building and Lew Wallace Building, respectively, both housing state government offices.) Botulph died in 1906 after 36 years of service at the Santa Fe institution. Its next renowned president was Louisiana native Brother Benildus, who took charge in 1932. He soon introduced plans to expand the program into a four-year college and add five new buildings with He hired John Gaw Meem to design a 500-seat chapel and auditorium, a substantial dormitory, a refectory, and classroom buildings for elementary and high-school students. However, the fundraising campaign, conducted in the last days of World War II, was not a success.
With the war threatening to put a major dent in tourism, the city purchased 236 acres on its southern outskirts, and the state’s congressional delegation convinced the War Department to build a military hospital there, according to No Halls of Ivy: The Gritty Story of the College of Santa Fe 1947-2009 (Lasallian Christian Brothers, 2013) by Richard McCord. The rapid construction of “semi-permanent” buildings started in late 1942. The first patient at Bruns General Hospital — named after an important doctor in the Army Medical Corps — was admitted on April 17, 1943. The well-equipped hospital grew to nearly 200 structures, most of them connected by covered walks, with 2,200 beds and also a bakery, chapel, gymnasium, theater, and library. There was even a railroad line directly to the hospital. Celebrities who visited patients during the war years included Basil Rathbone, Norma Shearer, Groucho Marx, and Helen Keller.
Just a month after the end of World War II, the Army’s surgeon general announced that Bruns would be shuttered, primarily because it was not built with the type of fireproofing necessary in permanent buildings. Hospital functions ended on Dec. 31, 1946. Brother Benildus had already submitted an application for the site, and he ended up getting 114 acres, with no down payment owed to the War Assets Administration. The property included 37 buildings. The former post library was brick, but all the rest were wood-frame buildings with asbestos-shingle siding and tarpaper roofs. In several of the former hospital wards, interior walls were added to convert them to classrooms and dormitories.
The new college got under way in Sept. 1947 with 14 faculty members and 148 students. A barracks building that served as the Bruns library and post exchange was converted into the college’s library. The “old gym” was used not only for physical education but for classes and, from 1947 to 1967, for intercollegiate athletics.
By 1958, 11 years had passed and the Christian Brothers had spent about $300,000 simply to maintain the buildings that would eventually be known as “the barracks.” But in that year they proposed the construction of new permanent classrooms, a library, and a science building. After the death of Brother Benildus, the new president, Brother Cyprian Luke Roney, worked with architects Philippe Register and Kenneth Clark on a campus master plan. Brother Luke secured a $500,000 line of credit from a St. Louis investment bank and chose Register to design the first building, named after Benildus.
“This building is strictly modern in style and will serve as the prototype of the buildings to be built in the future,” a college description read at the time. “It is one of the most handsome structures to be erected in the Santa Fe area in recent years, and is a credit to the architectural skill of its designer, who did not hesitate to depart from the imitative styles usually used in the region.” Rather than conforming to the SpanishPueblo and Territorial revival styles dominating the city’s historic district, Register brought in aspects of Europe’s International Style, such as ribbon windows, corner windows, and plenty of metal on the exterior surfaces. The first floor of the 1961 Benildus Hall was used for the college library (open to the public), and there were 11 classrooms on the second floor.
The college’s alumni association established a weekly bingo night to pay off the loan for the construction of Benildus. Game proceeds handily took care of that debt, and the bingo games actually continued until 2010.
A 1961 study conducted by the school noted that the old Army buildings had first-rate sprinkler systems and were connected by long covered corridors that were advantageous in bad weather, but heating and maintenance costs were high. In spite of their age, the barracks were appraised at nearly $1.5 million. Nevertheless, the report called for the replacement of
all the temporary buildings over the next decade or so — which, it was estimated, could cost $7 million. By the time of the next self-study report in 1964, the college had added two dormitories and the 1962 administration building, St. Joseph Hall. An $850,000 liberal arts center was planned next.
The name of the growing school was changed to the College of Santa Fe in 1966. Among the reasons, McCord wrote, were that the institution was becoming increasingly secular and there was a proliferation of saint-named institutions in the city already — St. Michael’s High School, St. Vincent Hospital, and the new St. John’s College. Also, the change was seen as beneficial to a $4.5 million fundraising campaign focusing on the Santa Fe community, for the construction of several new buildings in time for the 25th anniversary gala in 1972.
The campus saw a dramatic change in the next five years. With the decision to admit female students in the fall of 1966, enrollment shot up to 1,130 a year later. Three new dormitories and a liberal-arts center boasting a 514-seat theater were built in 1965; a physical-education complex was added in 1967; ground was broken for a $1 million girls’ dorm in 1969; and in 1970 a dedication was held for the $1.8 million library and adjacent Southwest Annex and The Forum lecture hall.
The $1.8 million E.E. Fogelson Library Center was dedicated in Oct. 1970 in honor of the businessman, rancher, and husband of film star Greer Garson. Buddy Fogelson and Garson were married in Santa Fe in the summer of 1949. Over the years, the couple donated more than $5 million to the college. The liberal-arts center (later known as the Greer Garson Theatre) was a major beneficiary of their generosity. And it was there, 10 years later, that Garson had her last stage performance, starring in The Madwoman
In an eight-page tribute to the college on Aug. 15, 1971, The Santa Fe New Mexican explained the functions of the two buildings flanking the new library: “The Forum Annex serves as a classroom and a community center for lectures, discussions, and debates. The Southwest Americana Annex ... houses material and memorabilia of the Southwest [and also has] a lecture room ... for use by the public as well as the college.” The paper reported that College of Santa Fe enrollment in the previous school year had reached 1,366.
Brother Luke stepped down in 1982 and was replaced by Christian Brother Donald Mouton, a 1957 St. Michael’s College graduate. Also in 1982, the brothers sold five acres fronting Cerrillos Road to the discount department-store chain Skaggs of Salt Lake City for $780,000. The proceeds paid for needed roof work on the library and the gymnasium, and the sale closed off the Cerrillos Road entrance to the college. Finances were a continuing challenge. In No Halls
of Ivy, McCord writes that 1983 tuition, $113 per credit hour, only made up 48 percent of the school’s $4.9 million annual operating budget. Later that decade, though, a new master plan included plans to convert the gymnasium into a video- and filmproduction center, develop a second campus entrance from Siringo Road, and build an arts center, a chapel, new offices, a building for the student union and conference rooms, and a new physical education building.
Another boon from the college’s chief benefactors came with a $3 million donation from Garson for the video and film building. The Garson Communication Center (aka Garson Studios), with its two large soundstages, opened in Oct. 1990. Nine months later, The New Mexican announced a groundbreaking for the new fitness center and gym; the Rudolph Weyerhaeuser Driscoll Fitness Center opened in 1992.
A particularly high-profile addition to the campus came with a $3 million grant from the BurnettTandy Foundation. This would help build a fine arts center for the College of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Art Institute. The financing package was completed with $1 million from the Thaw Charitable Trust and another $2 million from the foundation. The college purchased the Beaumont Newhall library because a Center for Photographic Arts would be an important piece of the new Visual Arts Center. The renowned architect Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico City was appointed in Aug. 1995.
Three of the old barracks were razed prior to the construction of five dramatic, angular buildings. The
Visual Arts Center opened in Jan. 1999. Legorreta called the stucco color “enchilada red,” and president James Fries defended it as “still an earth tone,” a reference to the dominant paradigm for buildings in Santa Fe’s historic district. Brighter colors, all of which Legorreta said he had seen in clay around the Santa Fe area, appear on interior walls.
The college added a 48-unit student apartment complex in 1998. Two years later, the Institute of American Indian Arts, which had been housed in CSF barracks since 1981, departed for its new campus five miles south. In 2001, the college began building the world-class Shellaberger Tennis Center. The $4 million first phase boasted six indoor courts, and the center was completed with the 1,000-seat outdoor Heldman Stadium in June 2004. The Shellaberger was designed by Santa Fe architect Oru Bose in association with Dekker/Perich/Sabatini of Albuquerque. Oddly, the school’s intercollegiate tennis team, The Spin, was dissolved after three years — in spite of its 46-16 record — to shift the college’s focus more toward academics.
In Feb. 2007, President Mark Lombardi said CSF would soon open a student service center and a new dormitory. But he left the following May, citing personal reasons. Then the plans all fell apart. There would be no more growth. The college closed in May 2009.
This April, the city set about destroying the old Bruns hospital barracks. The other campus buildings remain, for now. Downtown, the original adobe quarters of St. Michael’s College still stand adjacent to San Miguel Chapel. Just south of that building, which now serves as the chapel gift shop, is the 1878 college building, without its third floor and tower. Those were claimed by a fire in 1926, but the rest of the structure is intact. It is now known as the Lamy Building and is used for state offices. So is the 1887 St. Michael’s College building, now called the Lew Wallace Building.
The City of Santa Fe and Laureate Education resurrected CSF in 2010 as the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. The two curving entrance walls are long gone. Engraved with “College of Santa Fe” and “Chartered 1874,” they were built in 1984 with another gift from Garson.