Domingo Tafoya House

Nakita Reed [00:00:04]:
Welcome to tangible Remnants. I'm Nakita Reed and this is my show where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race, and gender. I'm excited that you're here, so let's get into it. Welcome back. Today's episode is another solo episode where I'll be talking about an actual tangible remnant, a historic building that left a mark on the built environment and tells the story of people who came before us. As a framework for this episode, I'll start again with the building and then elaborate on the legacy behind the building. The show notes for this episode will be full of articles and resources if you want to go down the rabbit hole of historical research like I did. Also be sure to head over to our Instagram page, angible remnants to see photos of the building that will be discussed.

Nakita Reed [00:00:53]:
And once on Instagram, if you click on the link in bio, it'll take you to our linked tree where you'll be able to sign up for our newsletter, access resources, and connect with me among a bunch of other things. Alright, so to start, I will give you three clues about this tangible remnant so you can see if you can guess the building. I mean, assuming you're not looking at the title of the episode and all that good stuff. Okay, here are the clues. Number one, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the house sits just above the floodplain of the Rio Grande. Number two, this historical figure and his wife were listed as residents of Alameda in the 1850 territorial census. And number three, it's one of the few pre civil war homes that has remained in the same family for generations in the area. Have a guess.

Nakita Reed [00:01:47]:
All right, let's say it together. Ready? One, two, three. Domingo Tafoya house. Yay. All right, so full disclosure, I was not familiar with this building or family until I went on the National Register website and put in the term Hispanic in the search bar. I wanted to learn something about a historic site associated with hispanic culture. And so I rolled the digital dice and learning more about this house and the lineage of the family that has occupied the building was super interesting. And it was just kind of a great reminder of ways that historic buildings can tell the stories of the people who came before us, particularly when they are documented and listed on the National Register.

Nakita Reed [00:02:31]:
So join me on this journey to learn more about the property and the significance as described on the National Register nomination form prepared in 1980 by an archivist at the Albuquerque Historic Landmark survey named Mary Davis. So here we go. So the one 20 year old Domingo to FoIA House is part of a compound of old adobe buildings located in Alameda, some 10 miles north of Apple kirky in Sidebar Adobe is a building material that's made from earth and organic materials. It's the spanish word for mud brick, and it's among the earliest building material used throughout the world. Okay, back to the form. So the house is a well preserved pre civil war home and one of the few still standing in Alameda, a historic 18th century spanish settlement on the Rio Grande valley north of Albuquerque. Built on the high ground at the eastern edge of the valley, it has survived numerous floods, which by 1904 had erased almost all sign of the original Alameda sediments near the river. This house has remained in the same family since the mid 19th century and has been carefully maintained by the descendants of the early and probably the first owners of the house.

Nakita Reed [00:03:46]:
It stands today as a rare example of a typical hispanic 19th century residence. And while there's no recorded building dates for the house, the Tafoia family records show Nicholas Tafoya, one of the grandfathers of previous owners of the house, was born in the house in 1858. The compound itself is bordered on the east by north Edith Boulevard and on the north and west by a curve in the old Alameda lateral ditch, and then on the south by Alameda road. It sits just above the floodplain of the Rio Grande, and it's kind of nestled between the sandhills of the eastern edge of the plain. And the fact that it sat above the floodplain is really what's helped preserve the building in this location. And so the house itself lies at the northwest corner of the compound, facing south towards an open central area. The building has been renewed over the years. For instance, the roof and the windows have been replaced, and various rooms have been added to the house, but the house retains its early spanish style and massing, and it was built in the traditional linear style of single row of rooms running east west, with the two rooms attached on the southeast.

Nakita Reed [00:05:03]:
All of the rooms facing south each have their own entrance and a window on the south, except for the southeast room. The windows, for the most part, are three over one wood sash windows that are approximately 2ft wide by 4ft tall, and they have flat wood frames, and they were put in over 50 years ago. So while the windows aren't as old as the structure of the building, they still have attained historic age value significance in their own right, since they're more than 50 years old. The kitchen, which is at the northeast corner of the house, was added in the 1930s and has lots of windows. The exterior doors are only 6ft tall, and for reference, standard doors today are 6ft eight inches tall. But the doors there are wood panels and they have a square window in the upper half. The doors are probably contemporary with the windows that were put in in the house as well. There are low interior doors, all of them under 6ft tall, that connect the rooms, and most of the walls throughout the house are about 2ft thick.

Nakita Reed [00:06:03]:
The original roof was a traditional flat dirt roof and it was built up of exposed vigas, and a viga is the spanish term for a beam or a rafter, and it's typically how wooden beams are referred to in traditional adobe architecture. The roof was replaced in the 1960s by what's now a long, low pitched ridge roof. And although the house, the interior of the house retains its original doorways and small rooms, the interior finishing is of later finishing. There's only one area in the house that still has the early ceiling and floor exposed, and the ceiling that is exposed is hand as Ed square Vegas beneath wide planks. And so another sidebar, real quick and adze, so that's spelled a d z e, is a tool that you use to cut wooden. And as I mentioned before, viga is a spanish term for beam or rafter. So a hand as Ed Square Viga is basically a hand cut wood beam, and so that's what's visible on the ceiling. For areas where the original ceiling is exposed.

Nakita Reed [00:07:07]:
All the other ceilings for the most part in the house have been covered over, but it's likely that the vigas are still there under the plaster. So to get into a little bit of the family lineage, Nicholas parents Domingo Tafoya and Anna Maria Martinez are listed as residents of Alameda in the 1850 territorial census, as well as on the 1847 birth record of their daughter Maria conception. It's possible they could have been living in the house almost a decade prior to Nicholas birth. Domingo's younger brother, Thomas Tafoya, is recorded as owning land in Alameda in 1844. Since there's no mention of Domingo's birth in the records in the period of 1822 to 1828, the family may have come from elsewhere in the territory to settle in Alameda, but the 1839 transaction of land on the east mesa of Albuquerque lists Domingo, his brothers and sisters, and Juan Ignacio Tifoia, the father of them all, as the grantors, which would place them at least in Albuquerque in the late 1830s. And so I just think it's interesting how the National Register nomination is kind of using all this other documentation to place the family in Alameda at the property in the compound to really kind of prove the lineage of what's there. The house has many elements of an early mid to 19th century building being two foot thick walls, few, and low set windows, low doorways so typically under 6ft hand as dvigas, and a linear l shaped plan. Its siding also indicates an early building date, and it's clearly related to a compound of early adobe structures which are set at the intersection of these two historic Edith Boulevard and the high old ground road to Bernialo in Santa Fe and Alameda Road, which runs west from Edith towards the site of the old Alameda plaza near the river, and which in the past connected to the east to the maze of roads leading to the Sandia mountains.

Nakita Reed [00:09:13]:
So the Tafoia family records, brought together by father Arthur Tafoe, nephew of the person who was owning the house in the eighties, clearly shows the family's long residence in the house. Nicholas Tafoia was born there in 1858, married Anna Maria Martinez, and their son Manuel was born in the house in 1887. He married Francisquita Maldonado in 1910, and they had at least three Nicholas, Patricia and Laurencita, and Nicholas was born there in 1911. He died in the mid forties and Lorenzenta continued to live in the house with her mother for many years. So one of the interesting things for me about this property is that the unbroken ownership of the ancestral home makes this house especially rare in Albuquerque's north Valley. Apparently most of the old adobe homes here were sold to anglo workers in the decades just before or after the second World War, so learning about this tangible remnant has been fun since. It's a completely different building type than one I've ever worked with, and it's also fascinating to learn about a family that's been caring for the building through generations. I'll put links in the show notes to the National Register Nomination Forum if you want to learn more.

Nakita Reed [00:10:29]:
I enjoyed learning more about this building and the family and the care and the way that the family has stewarded this history just by reading the National Register nomination. Alright, well, if you want to learn more, I'll put links to the National Register nomination in the show notes and you can go down that rabbit hole if you want to. So do you have a favorite historic building, a tangible remnant, if you will, that you want to recommend? Feel free to email me at tangible remnantsmail.com and your suggested building just might make it on the show. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening. Links to amazing resources can be found in the episode's show notes. Special thanks to Sarah Gelberg for allowing me to use snippets of her song Fireflies from her debut album, other people's Secrets, which, by the way, is available wherever music is sold. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show.

Nakita Reed [00:11:21]:
And now that Tangible Remnants is part of the Gable Media network, you can listen and subscribe to all network partner content@gablemedia.com. dot that's Gabl media.com dot. Until next time, remember that historic preservation is a present conversation with our past, about our future. We don't inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children. So let's make sure we're telling our inclusive history.

Sarah Gilberg -music [00:11:49]:
I saw the first Firefly, the sun, and right then I thought of you. Oh, I could see us catching them and setting them free. Honey, that's what you do. That's what you do to me.