Lamy of Santa Fe (67 page)

Work was advancing in the nave in 1873, with a wide central aisle separated from two narrower side aisles by the first indications of plain stone columns, which were to be surmounted by Corinthian capitals and connected by semicircular arches which recalled the interior of Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle at Lempdes. The adobe north transept and sanctuary of the old cathedral would have to remain part of the new—it was impossible to know where funds would come from to replace these in addition to the old nave. But the trouble was even more general, for despite all efforts to continue, work on the cathedral was halted from 1873 until 1878. Lamy had already spent fifty thousand dollars and in 1875 he said it would take as much more to complete the new stone section, and a year later he had to report that in fact he would need twenty-five thousand francs a year for seven or eight years to reach the end of the project.

Even at that, he saw that the original plans would have to be simplified—no carved figures could now be expected to take their places in the facade, and the only ‘‘mosaic” effect would survive in alternate large red and yellow blocks of sandstone in the arches of door and shallow niches on the ground level at front and sides. The modifications which had to be accepted were planned during the five-year hiatus in the construction. A new architect was found to replace the departed Antoine Mouly, but proved unsatisfactory. The cathedral rectors in turn assumed responsibility for what could be done, and in fact when work was resumed in 1878, directed much of it. But again the progress was slow, falling behind schedule, and again for lack of means to pay for workmen and supplies. In 1881 “the good and saintly archbishop was never in greater need than now.”

But during all the intermittent labor on the exterior of the new cathedral, services continued within the old. Going there was like passing through an outer shell to enter an inner tabernacle. The great ornament of the adobe interior was the carved and polychromed stone reredos above the main altar. When Lamy sold the
Castrense
in 1859, he had had the reredos removed from there to the cathedral, and had put the newly arrived Father Salpointe in charge of it to replace an old tinselled altar piece which newcomers had seen with such amazement after the mid-century war. It was fitted into the sanctuary, which as in other native churches narrowed like the head of a coffin, and the adobe plaster embraced it in dusty plainness. The carved stone panels and their faded colors showed the more beautifully for the starkness of the enclosing walls, in one of which a humble wooden door frame
opened into the sacristy. The eighteenth-century carving was thought to be “stucco and fresco work” when an American captain saw it in 1881. He gave one of the last descriptions of the interior of the old St Francis Cathedral after he attended Mass there and, later, vespers, on Holy Thursday in 1881.

“I arrived,” he wrote, “as the bells were tolling and was fully rewarded for my trouble. The old church is in itself a study (the parroquia) of great interest; it is cruciform in shape, with walls of adobe, bent slightly out of perpendicular. Along these walls, at regular intervals, are arranged rows of candles in tin sconces with tin reflectors. The roof is contained by bare beams. The plaster work of the interior evinces a barbaric taste, but there is much worthy of admiration. The ceilings are blocked out in square panels tinted in green; two of the walls are laid off in pink and two in light brown. The pictures are, with scarcely an exception, tawdry in execution, loud colors predominating, no doubt with good effect upon the minds of the Indians.… In one place, a picture of the Madonna and Child represents them both with gaudy crowns of gold and red velvet.”

He was fascinated by the styles of the service, both the august and the plebeian. “The vestments of Archbishop Lamy and the attendant priests were gorgeous fabrics of golden damask.” The archbishop's throne was a walnut armchair carved in motifs of Victorian Gothic which rose along sides and top to a tall pinnacle flanked by finials resembling miniature pyramids connected by their bases. The arms, seat, and back were upholstered in dark cherry velvet bound by gold tape. The whole—surely the grandest piece of furniture in Santa Fe—stood on casters, and expressed a character of both ceremonial and period style.

“The congregation,” continued the captain with growing amazement, “was largely composed of women and children almost all of whom were of Mexican or Indian blood, swarthy countenances, coal black manes and flashing eyes being the rule, although there was by no means a total absence of beautiful faces. Fashion had made some innovations upon the ancient style of dress; cheap straw bonnets and the last Chatham street outrage in the shape of cheap hats were ranged alongside the traditional tapalo and rebosa [sic].” There was an excellent sermon, but the captain could scarcely hear it, for “such an epidemic of coughing, hawking, spitting, and snuffling seized upon the congregation that it was impossible for me, a foreigner, to make out one third of what was being said,” which was “utterly ruined in its effect by the continuous barking of the women and children. The sermon over, Archbishop Lamy washed the feet of the twelve altar boys, a custom which I have never before seen in this country.”

At various times, Lamy raffled off his horses, his carriage, to gain a little money for the building, and most of the meagre funds regularly due to the archdiocese went for the cathedral expenses. The local citizens were as generous as the times allowed—Major José Sena in the end managed to raise contributions totalling $135,000, the Contreras family gave $10,000, José Leandro Perea $5000, and the Protestants, Jewish, and military residents were responsive with gifts; but there never seemed enough, either of money or time. The Jews of Santa Fe were happy to see the Hebrew symbol for Yahweh carved and set within a stone triangle over the main door, and some said this was done by Lamy out of gratitude for Jewish support—though theologians pointed out that the triangle and the Hebraic letters symbolized the Holy Trinity enclosing the Godhead, a device long known in traditional use by the Church.

In 1884 the new nave would be closed over by the vaultings of the roof, finished in volcanic tufa from the Cerro Mogino twelve miles from Santa Fe. The originally planned dimensions would then be seen in their reduced measure: from the front to the transepts, one hundred twenty feet; width, sixty feet; height of nave, fifty-five feet. The towers first designed to reach upward in three diminishing drums would never have their spires topping off at one hundred thirty-five feet, but would stop short by eighty-five feet—a modification proper for both aesthetic and engineering considerations, since the planned height was out of proportion to the scale of the rest, and the added weight might have caused the spires to fall. The fundamental land of the site, porous with generations of old graves, seemed in a constant state of settling—so much so that the architect finally in charge (it was Machebeuf's nephew Michael) added subordinate arches to uphold the main side arches of the nave to arrest cracking which had already begun. The walls of the nave were not strictly parallel—a possible reflection of the original conformation of the old adobe walls which they were to replace, and which, in their imprecision, had given such touching evidence of the craftsman's hand upon the very surface.

The year 1884 would mark a great stage, however inconclusive, in the work of making the cathedral, when an extraordinary enterprise took place. The stone enclosure was complete as far as the adobe sanctuary and side chapel. Old St Francis's stood complete within the new; and now the citizens of Santa Fe, on a volunteer basis, came to take down, brick by brick and timber by timber, the original church; and for weeks carried these elements out the new stone door to waiting waggons until nothing was left of the original nave, and the new columns and arches and vaulting were revealed in their stark, plain, but fine symmetry. The new walls were joined to the earthen walls of
the old transepts. The cathedral had its complete interior, made of both new and old; and in an eloquent way its contrasting styles and materials spoke for the history—heritage and experience—embraced by Lamy's life. In the dirt floor of the sanctuary (compacted dust carpeted over) Lamy would finally direct that two graves be dug and walled with concrete where the archbishops of Santa Fe would lie, the graves to be in line with the epistle side of the high altar.

The French inheritance was most fully realized when the Chapel of Our Lady of Light at the Loretto convent was completed in 1878. Of a much smaller scale than the cathedral, the chapel represented less of a continuing burden financially. Young Projectus Mouly had given it his time as architect during the five-year lapse of construction on St Francis's. It was believed that the chapel was built after memories of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris; and in greatly more humble terms—heavy where the original was light, stolid where the other was elegant—it did make certain allusions to its great model. It rose, slender and narrow, in the Gothic style, with rows of finials along the tops of the walls against the steep-sloping red roof. The chapel was twenty-five feet wide and seventy-five deep, including the sanctuary. Shallow stone and mortar buttresses stood against the walls at symmetrical intervals. An extended crown-like needle rested on top of the roof—though at the sanctuary end rather than above the center of the nave as in Paris. There was a rose window in the facade, and the main door was arched and decorated with trefoils and free-standing articulated pilasters. Arches and lesser windows were set in the front under the sharply angled roof line. The ochreous gray stone like that of the cathedral, and the volcanic material for the roof, came from Lamy's nearby quarries. Windows of stained glass had been ordered from France and were installed in time for the consecration performed on 25 April 1878, by Monsignor Eguillon, vicar general, and chaplain of the convent.

The Loretto sisters saw the work proceed without interruption, though there were certain difficulties. Projectus Mouly was an energetic worker—he once rode to Denver on a burro to obtain a rotary stone crusher—and he was also an artist with a strong vision. When certain “persons in authority criticized his work” as architect and engineer of the chapel, asking for changes in the design, he took offense, refused to agree to alterations, resigned, and, declared a watchful and sympathetic nun, fell into bad company. He wrote to his father in France telling what had happened, even giving reassurances that his new companion, with his fault (probably drinking), of which the father knew, would not endanger him. But it was not long until Projectus died of pneumonia in St Vincent's Hospital.

Yet work on the chapel continued without interruption; and the sisters by their prudent financial management of their income-producing school evidently faced no such crises as Lamy with his cathedral. They imported from France a harmonium for the choir loft—an instrument by Debain, who described himself as
“Inventeur de I'harmonium”
and one who held a patent “By appointment to the Emperor.” With an oak veneer case, a single manual, and two carpeted treadles, the harmonium had, in addition to the usual stops, several which made “effects'' possible—a saxophone (after the horn invented in Belgium in 1840), a musette or bagpipe, accordion, a celesta, and, for ardent moments, the
tremblant
. The entire chapel “so creditable to the Territory,” said the
New Mexican
, was “entirely due to the efforts and consideration of Archbishop Lamy, who has given the work from the commencement his personal attention and supervision.” He was so often at the construction site that, as with the cathedral builders, he would take his lunch with the masons and carpenters of the chapel. Completed before any of the other foreign buildings of the city, the chapel by itself gave a strong first statement of the forces of change.

More were to come. A few weeks before the Loretto chapel was dedicated, the Christian Brothers began to demolish their old college farther up the lane known as College street. In the middle of the month the cornerstone was laid for a two-storey building with a third storey incorporated in a mansard roof. A tall central cupola rose at the center. The walls were made of adobes—the college quickly became celebrated as the tallest adobe building erected in the Southwest. It stood just south of the old chapel of San Miguel, which was in a dilapidated condition since its adobe towers had collapsed during a strong storm, to lie in heaps of rubble against the front. The new college rose upon the contributions raised by Brother Botolph, the president. Various parishes and towns gave money, many individuals gave sheep, others oxen, heifers, a goat, lumber, until the building cost of $19,362 was met. With that structure, once again central France came into view. In its long, three-tiered facade, its Mansard roof, its ranks of symmetrical windows, it was akin, even if remotely, to the seminary of Mont-Ferrand, where the archbishop and so many of his clergy had taken their studies; and in its long dim narrow corridors, ribbed in dark wood, with classrooms and faculty quarters on the first two floors, and dormitories on the third behind the gable windows, it brought the very image of a propriety never before seen in such purpose at Santa Fe.

It stood also as strong evidence of the achievements in education of the Brothers, under the rule of their order across the world; and the
other New Mexico cities where they maintained schools could see St Michael's as the monument to an ideal of education which, even as later secular schools and colleges came rapidly to life, first helped the territory to join the world. Again the visible character of Santa Fe knew change from the old manner of three centuries of flat earthen roofs where grass took seed.

The last of the religious buildings to come with Lamy's program of building in the alien style was the academy of the Loretto sisters. It stood just to the south of the unfinished cathedral, and was completed in 1881. Again, it was a building of adobe, rising sixty feet to three storeys, with a pointed cupola supporting a cross. Its manner reflected mid-nineteenth-century continental architecture, with a mansard roof faced in slate from St Louis which Mother Magdalen in one of her last official acts went personally to buy and bring home. Again the sisters, with Lamy's firm support, proceeded on their own to create a building of dignity, decorously in harmony with the sophisticated idiom of its time, in contrast to the simple fabrications of Santa Fe, which in outline so often resembled the drawings of children unencumbered with any but local, and locally sufficient, manners. Conviction and energy saw the venture to a successful finish. “We started our own brickyard and opened our own quarry,” said Mother Magdalen, “had our own lime burnt to order and our own lumber sawn by our own natives.…”