John Steele grew up on the only house on the block.

"I remember sitting out here on the patio and getting lunch (handed to him out of the window) and staring out over to the Jemez (Mountains)," he said. "The only thing in our view was the Indian School."

New homes, many in the adobe style, now surround the historic Hayte-Wientge mansion on Haven Hill, north of Paseo de Peralta and east of Rosario Cemetery, and the Steele family no longer owns the 138-year-old house.

But this weekend John Steele and his two brothers are paying what might be a final visit. They are among 28 Steele family members from Virginia, South Carolina, Arizona and New Mexico who came to Santa Fe for a reunion in the old house.

The house

Their childhood home is a landmark in Santa Fe, a Victorian house known for its red French mansard roof. According to a 1995 story in The New Mexican, Walter V. Hayt, a native New Yorker, built the mansion from hand-molded bricks because commercially manufactured brick was not yet available. Construction was completed in 1882, according to a listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

On the south side, a stone walkway leads to the front door. The house has its original pinewood floors. In the parlor, floor-to-ceiling windows once offered full views of the state Capitol and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

A wooden staircase winds to the second story where there are three bedrooms. A hand-dug basement was built after the original construction. Several fireplaces provide heat.

Hayt, who had moved to New Mexico in 1879 and was a prominent merchant in Santa Fe, lived in the house with his wife, Alice. In 1888, he sold the house for $3,000 to Christina F. Wientge, who was married to jeweler Frederick Wientge.

Frederick Wientge died suddenly of typhoid fever contracted while serving as one of President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders during the Spanish American War. He is buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.

A widow with four daughters, Christina Wientge remodeled the downstairs for herself and her daughters and rented out the second floor to boarders. In the 1920s, the house was wired for electricity and chandeliers were installed. She lived in the mansion until her death in 1944.

Her daughters, Freda and Eve, continued to live in the house. Freda married David Steele and the couple raised their four boys there. During that time the mansion became known as the Steele house. After Eve's death in 1972, the house was bought by Bill Williams.

The house is now owned by a man from England, who allowed the Steeles to spend time there reminiscing.

Memories

John, Paul, William and Howard Steele all grew up in the mansion on the hill.

Howard died in 2006, but his daughter Pat Stotts organized a family reunion so the surviving brothers could visit the house again.

"My dad helped lay rocks to build the arroyo with the WPA," Paul, 86, said. "I would walk up here from Santa Fe High and eat lunch. We also had a 7,000-acre ranch out on the west side of town. I would have to go there and ride the rim and fix the fence wherever it was broken. People used to come there and get firewood but they never would fix the fence, so I did."

Paul, like the rest of his brothers, graduated from Santa Fe High School. He served in World War II after he earned his diploma.

"Uncle Sam drafted me in 1944. I was in 31 combat missions in Germany," Paul said. "He told me I would fly airplanes for my country, but he didn't tell me I would get a wife."

Touring the house, John, the youngest brother at 78, noted, "This is where my grandma (Christina) taught me my ABC's and how to count. There are a lot of memories here when I was younger I used to come up here and sit with her on her bed. She would ask me to get her a glass of wine, so I would walk to her closet where she kept the wine and fill a small glass. My mom would come up and ask if I gave my grandma some wine and I would look at her, smile and say no. It was our secret."

Bill, 90, said he remembers when the house was the only one on the block. "We could see the entire city of Santa Fe from our front porch," he said from the dining room where he ate meals growing up. "It seems like home again."

The boys eventually left Santa Fe. John and Paul moved to Virginia. Bill moved to California and now lives in Las Cruces.

They were all excited to tell their grandchildren stories from the past.

The future

"My uncles keep saying this is the last time (they might all be together at the house), and it could very well be," Stotts said.

But for younger family members this was also an opportunity to listen to their clan's stories.

"I didn't know a lot of these people at first," said Kathleen Brady of Santa Fe. "I've known about my family's history but I never really had a chance to sit down and talk with the people who were a part of it."

"It's amazing," said Bill Steele's grandson, Dean Olano. "I'm learning a lot that I never knew before. I was told that my grandma used to hear sounds and when she would tell my grandpa he would find out it was just the blinds, but she thought it was ghost because she heard it again in another part of the house."

The house did have a reputation among local children for being haunted, but John Steele dismissed such stories.

"My friend Raider used to tell people it was haunted but it was never haunted," he said.

The family plans a stop to the National Cemetery today to visit Frederick Wientge's grave and share a last meal together at the old family mansion.

"I wanted everyone to know the history of the house," Stotts said. "It's their history."

Contact Shaun Griswold at 986-3052 or e-mail sgriswold@sfnewmexican.com.