The Adobe Evolution

THE ADOBE EVOLUTION A rebirth for man's oldest building material by Nolan Hester

Dawn on the night-cooled desert. A warm mist rising from a web of irrigation ditches glows rouge in the low morning light. As the sun pulls away from the ridge, rays leap out and strike the tawny houses of the Indian village. Men from the village are are already in the fields, cutting the water of the Gila River from one ditch to another, harnessing the silver strand of life which began in the mountains upstream. Inside the village, women and children ready for work on the big house that is rising slowly above the compound walls. Now, with the men's help, they haul mud from a nearby pit, a basket at a time. Each basket is emptied on the wide walls rising in the middle of the village. Using their hands, they shape the thick mud so it will dry evenly and bear the next mud layer that will come tomorrow.

Through the blazing summer the work continues, as the sun dries each successive course of the wall into a hard, earthen rampart. Finally, a building weighing 2000 tons stands four stories above the village plaza. But no one will live there. Instead, the big house will be the religious focus of the settlement. A place to mark the sun's path and the moon's phases across the sky. Now the Indians are gone, their de-parture a mystery. But at Casa Grande National Monument, near Coolidge, the Big House remains, 600 years after the Hohokam's heyday.

Adobe, that simple combination of earth and water, is gaining new friends and respect today. Once despised as too "dirty" for anyone but the poor, all kinds of people are now discovering adobe's inherent esthetics, durability, and key role in Southwestern history. Shaking off past stigmas, adobe is expanding across Arizona in buildings of sun-flooded glass, dramatic design, and startling energy efficiency.

The changes in adobe construction and fashion mirror Arizona's history. Adobe's roots in the state extend back several thou-sand years to when early Southwest Indi-ans built pit houses, plastering an adobe-like mud slurry over a lattice of branches. The more refined "puddled" technique of the desert Hohokam is echoed by the adobe mortar used in the stone cliff dwellings of Montezuma's Castle and Canyon de Chelly.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the early Spanish used adobe bricks, an idea bor-rowed from the Moors, to build an em-pire in the New World. Their method of making unfired adobe bricks has survived essentially unchanged. Square wooden forms were laid on the ground and filled with a soupy mix of clay, sand, and water, which quickly hardened in the sun. After the forms were removed and a day or so of curing, the bricks were tilted on end for final drying. The final product was four-inch-thick blocks more than a foot square, which could be stacked in walls like mod-ern clay bricks.

Adobe was not necessarily a crude building method, however. The Santa Cruz Valley missions of San Xavier del Bac and San Jose del Tumacacori-the former still in use, the latter preserved as an evoca-tive ruin by the National Park Service-are a testament to adobe's potential. Though Spanish explorers probed the en-tire state, adobe construction generally was limited to a broad belt across Arizo-na's southern half. From Yuma to Willcox,

Nogales to Phoenix, enclaves of historic adobe buildings persist.

The most extensive collection is in Tucson where an eyeful of classic adobe ar-chitecture has been preserved in the Barrio Historico and El Presidio historic districts.

A pastel rainbow of adobe rowhouses-pink, green, baby-blue, cocoa, and cream-stands flush with the narrow streets. The undulating adobe offers few hints of the life behind walled patios and enclosed courtyards. Sunday afternoon finds them alive with children at play, shrieking and giggling as they chase each other. In the shade, watchful mothers chop vegetables for the evening meal, mend clothes, and visit.

To the north, El Presidio district forms the other half of the village which sprang up about the old Spanish fort, the original “Tucson.” The presidio is gone but is recalled in the many adobe-walled gardens of the district, their smooth slabs veiling oases of palms, orange trees, and oleander. Today, the district is a cross section of adobe building styles, early Sonoran to Victorian-trimmed Territorial homes.

La Casa Cordova, impeccably restored as a display of mid-1800s life, exhibits the straightforward Sonoran adobe style, with mud ceiling supported inside by heavy vigas of peeled logs. Between the parallel logs are saguaro rib latillas set in a herringbone pattern. High ceilings let heat rise above the living areas. Glass windows are few since everything had to be hauled overland from Mexico.

The 1880 bridging of Arizona by the Southern Pacific Company set off drastic architectural changes in Tucson. Early Anglo settlers who had done everything they could to disguise the fact their homes were adobe, now could get coveted materials from California and the East. Ga-bled tin roofs were placed atop the adobes. Milled lumber was used to add Victorian-inspired trim.

Changes inside the houses were even greater as rooms were transformed with fancy wallpapers, Oriental rugs, and delicate furniture. Muslin cloth tacked to ceilings kept grit from falling on the new finery. New settlers longed for “decent” brick or wood homes and, as immigration accelerated, adobe was banished to the barrio.

Adobe homes pepper most of Tucson’s neighborhoods, as they do towns across Arizona. And many a back road wraps past the adobe ruins of abandoned mine buildings, deserted ranch houses, lost dreams. Passed by the boom of the state’s urban centers, Florence holds an impressive array of adobe: hundreds of homes, many downtown stores, and Pinal County’s first courthouse.

“People in Florence used to fret about the lack of progress here. But now it’s the best thing about the place-nothing ever happened,” says John Swearengin, manager of McFarland State Park. The adobe courthouse, dating from 1877, is the park’s centerpiece. Restored to its original dignity, the building now houses memorabilia of former Senator and Governor Ernest McFarland.

Not so fortunate is the William Clarke House. Saved from vandals by civic-minded businessmen, the two-story adobe stands in the middle of Florence surrounded by an iron fence. But neglect and decay have continued the vandals’ work. The wood porch stands stripped of paint, the gape of the blank windows grows wider with each season.

During the Great Depression, adobe enjoyed a brief return to fashion. Left with plenty of time and few jobs, people once again turned to it for shelter. But its appeal also touched the well-to-do. Architect Josias Joesler’s St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, in Tucson, stands as a masterpiece of carved Baroque adobe. Much of the Encanto Park area, one of Phoenix’s early neighborhoods, was built with adobe.

In 1936, when Scottsdale was a wide spot on a dusty road out of Phoenix, resort pioneers Jack Stewart, John C. Lin-coln, and architect Edward Loomis Bowes used adobe to cut construction costs and built the now-famous Camelback Inn. Adobe bricks were made on site by har-nessing a rented mule to a homemade mixer. The project had a choppy course. When a sudden rainstorm swept in, 15,000 bricks, laid out to cure in the sun, turned to mud in minutes.

Stewart and Bowes persisted, and their castle of adobe remains the elegant core of the present-day inn. Banks of flowers flank the main entrance, spangles of pe-tunias, snapdragons, daffodils, anemones and hibiscus compete in their brilliance. Inside the lobby is dark and cool, the quick traffic of guests subdued. Stout arches, unhurried in their rise and fall, frame the hallway passages. Great pine beams criss-crossing the two-story lobby amplify the sense of crafted endurance. Thanks to adobe’s solid calm, it is a rest-ful place-just as Jack Stewart envisioned.

But the 30s revival was short-lived. Adobe was soon left in the dust of the post-World War II construction boom, ignored by the new building codes and rejected by fashion. Ironically, builders began imitating Mexican adobe styling, but for 25 years real adobe construction was at a standstill.

As a blast of diesel smoke punches the air as a front-end loader goes chunk-chunk-chunking over the field of clay. It stops

The rustic old-time Arizona atmosphere is still preserved in the territorial adobe homes scattered throughout the southern half of the state. (Right and below) The Smidt home, with traditional Mexican tile floors and rather atypical Tudor arch doorways. Jerry Jacka (Bottom) The Badovinus home in Paradise Valley, features flagstone floors, vigas (exposed beam ceiling), and traditional round arches. Neil Koppes/Richard Embery night winds that drop out of the mountain canyons are captured by low vents on the north wall and help drive accumulated daytime heat out high south openings.

Seals put up the core of the house, the two women handled the finish work. The brick floor they laid on a bed of sand is so tight you couldn't drive a nail into the cracks. Bancos (wall bench seats built of adobe) reduce the need for space-consuming furniture in the modest-sized home.

Adobe's resurgence has spawned a renewed interest in older adobe buildings, too. Like many couples, Ben and Peggy Sackheim have been pouring time and love into restoring their 140-year-old Tucson home-the original post trader's store at Ft. Lowell.

Though the couple had no experience with adobe, they found themselves drawn to the building in their search for a retirement home. "It was the house that sold me on moving here," recalls Sackheim, a former New York advertising executive.

Still, the old adobe required some adjustments by the couple. "At first I didn't know whether to turn it into a hacienda or a monastery," joked Sackheim. An admitted "nut on art," Sackheim was crushed when told the supposedly delicate adobe couldn't withstand his habit of poking nails in walls to hang his art collection. A frustrating search for a solution literally had him up against the wall."

Finally, I said, 'Why don't I try just one nail.' It worked beautifully," he says, laughing at the memory.

Folk-art dealer Kelly Rollings played a pivotal role in saving a part of Tucson's barrio from falling to a freeway. His American West Gallery, a gleaming adobe trimmed with an iron grill menagerie of desert animals, stands at the edge of Roll-ings' one-man restoration project. Little by little, he is transforming his motley collection of 35 adobe buildings into apartments, shops, and professional offices.

The thread that binds all this adobe activity together is pride. The pride of craftsmen taking pains to give their best. The pride of homeowners in a place they know will last more than a lifetime. And, in the case of the barrio, pride in a way of life preserved and revitalized.

For a time it seemed adobe might die out, the skills that built it lost. But the determination of the barrio, the aspirations of young builders, and the growing awareness of adobe's history insure the traditions will endure.