This is the second of two articles which I invited from resident scholar and historian Marcus C. Gottschalk, who has done extensive primary research concerning the development of the Old Town Plaza. As noted in our previous article, in 2001 Marcus published Pioneer Merchants of the Old Town Plaza, and we appreciate his contribution to this column. This 1860s photograph shows the south side of the Old Town Plaza in Las Vegas, with its nascent Territorial style architecture, which spread throughout New Mexico. The photo is from the cover of Marcus C. Gottschalk’s Pioneer Merchants of the Las Vegas Plaza, courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, and is a James N. Furlong photograph.Buy this photo This 1860s photograph shows the south side of the Old Town Plaza in Las Vegas, with its nascent Territorial style architecture, which spread throughout New Mexico. The photo is from the cover of Marcus C. Gottschalk’s Pioneer Merchants of the Las Vegas Plaza, courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, and is a James N. Furlong photograph. Buy this photo • • • By Marcus C. Gottschalk Contributor The Americanization of the plaza began during the years of Post Las Vegas and continued in earnest in the following two decades until the entire plaza was surrounded by portals and balconies of rough sawn lumber and nearly uninterrupted wooden walkways, as seen in Western movies. The military’s effect on the plaza also included the southeast corner, where U.S. army doctor John Whitlock built a two-story adobe house that was a wonder to all at the time, with its large wooden balcony and not-seen-before plate glass windows. Whitlock positioned the house diagonal to the plaza about where Korte’s furniture store is today. He moved a building on the southeast corner to achieve this, breaking open the gated plaza compound. The house faced east toward the Gallinas River, with a view of the comings and goings on the Santa Fe Trail. In front was a corral large enough to stable a number of horses, such as the army would need. To accomplish this, Doc Whitlock needed lumber. So he set up a sawmill at Hot Springs, today Montezuma, with his partners James Broadwell and John Sease. The mill brought machines from the east to be applied to the generous forests of the area, and sawn lumber became available for window frames, door frames, flooring planks and large wooden porches. James Broadwell also added a second story to his adobe residence on the plaza, where Reflections Hair Studio is today, using wall supports of stone. He also added a large two-story wooden balcony made of rough sawn lumber. The addition of milled lumber to Spanish colonial homes created a new hybrid architectural style called “Territorial,” which superimposed a Greek revival feeling onto plain adobe exteriors. The Territorial style spread throughout the New Mexico territory, including Fort Union. The Las Vegas Hotel is another example of a two-story Territorial styled building that was erected on the plaza in the 1850s. This large hotel was located on one of the properties that von Grolman acquired from Alcalde Maese, where the Plaza Hotel sits today. Though documents do not make it obvious, it was John Dold who seems to have been the builder and proprietor. John and his brother Andres Dold immigrated from Germany and came to Las Vegas to set up a mercantile house on the west side of the plaza, where the Thread Bear and War Dancer shops are today. The Dolds owned a large wagon train that hauled wool, hides and any other local products over the Santa Fe Trail to Missouri to exchange for manufactured goods that were being produced in the industrial portions of the country. Their operations were so successful that they became two of the five wealthiest men in New Mexico, as the 1860 census shows. The hotel’s construction prompted the opening of the northwest corner of the plaza for a road north to Hot Springs. John Dold was a later investor in the sawmill at Hot Springs, as was Trail freighter and merchant Charles Kitchen. Kitchen ran a gambling hall in his Kitchen’s Hotel (where the police station is today), making the plaza the gambling, as well as the mercantile, mecca of the Southwest. By the 1860s, the south side of the plaza was the wool capital of the United States, with as much as two and half million pounds of wool exported from Las Vegas every year. Merchants added second stories and large balconies to their stores on the south side of the plaza, including the Romero, Perea and Gonzales families, and May Hays. (May Hays married Julianita Montoya, and many of their descendants still live in Las Vegas. The last to carry the name here was Ernesto Hays, who was May Hays’ great-grandson, and his daughters are Gloria Martinez, Margaret Chavez, Darlene Hays Coca and Yvonne Hays. (A fascinating aspect of the Hays story is that May Hays was Daniel Boone’s great-grandson, so all the Hays family members in Las Vegas are direct descendants of Daniel Boone, the great American frontiersman and explorer who lived from 1734 to 1820.) The explosion of the two-story Territorial styled buildings created a very distinct architectural picture, not seen elsewhere in such magnitude. Short lived, this extraordinary style soon surrendered to the more current eastern Victorian styles that were brought to New Mexico by the railroad. Instead of adobe and wood, commercial exteriors on the plaza were to be constructed of brick and metal. Just as the railroad could make its impact, the conflagration of 1877 burned down most of the south side, and the frontier Territorial boomtown on the Old Town Plaza would soon have the look of a Victorian city. Jesus L. Lopez is a native of Las Vegas and a local historian. He may be reached at 425-3730. Comment Add new comment Read and share your thoughts on this story
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 12:03:30 +0000
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