Storied Santa Fe building comes on the market

By: Paul Weideman
Published online: Sunday, January 01, 2012
Appeared in: Home, Santa Fe Real Estate Guide
Edition: January 2012 Vol. 14 No. 10

Everyone knows it as “the white building.” And in what other American town would people use such a moniker to describe a single building? Most cities have hundreds or thousands of white buildings. But this is earth-tone Santa Fe, and the structure at 206 McKenzie Street is not only white but tremendously distinctive, both for its history and architecture.

“I enjoy romanticizing properties with Spanish names, but this one is just ‘the white building.’ Old names stick,” said Realtor Christopher Webster. “It’s an old friend.”

Sotheby’s International Realty’s Webster and Tai Bixby are representing the property, on the market for $3.6 million. The marketing materials describe it as a Santa Fe landmark known for its “peeling white paint, high walls and mature trees, multi-paned windows and pots of red geraniums tucked into the balcony railings on second- story French doors.”

The Escudero property, as it was long called, was built in about 1882, although some portions may predate 1790. A century or so later, it was acquired by J.A. Martinez.

A news brief in the Aug. 11, 1908, Santa Fe New Mexican, reported, “J.A. Martinez, wealthy sheep raiser at Arroyo Hondo, Taos County, but whose family home is in this city, arrived here last evening and will spend the fall and winter at the family home on Grant Avenue.”

Martinez deeded the property to his daughter, Cleofas (Mrs. Venceslao) Jaramillo. Cleofas, née Martinez, was a native of the Arroyo Hondo community north of Taos. In 1898, she married Colonel Venceslao Jaramillo, a member of Territorial Governor Miguel A. Otero’s staff who would go on to serve as a senator in the New Mexico Legislature. The couple lived in El Rito until his untimely death in 1920.

Cleofas Jaramillo moved to Santa Fe and was resident at the house in question from 1922 to 1932 and from 1938 to 1943. The first of the many additions to the property are believed to have been developed by Jaramillo in the 1920s. Her daughter met her end in this house.

Eighteen-year-old Angelina Jaramillo was sexually assaulted and murdered here in 1931. Thomas Johnson, an African-American auto mechanic who had a history of property crimes, was arrested and convicted of the crimes. In Justice Betrayed: A Double Killing in Old Santa Fe, author Ralph Melnick substantiates the old rumor that the wrong man was put to death (the first to die in New Mexico’s electric chair) because of racism and a coverup — Santa Fe’s real-life version of a novel written three decades later: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Cleofas Jaramillo went on to found La Sociedad Folklórica de Santa Fe in 1935, and authored several books, among them Shadows of the Past (1941) and her autobiography, Romance of a Little Village Girl (1955).

In the three years between Jaramillo’s stays in the Escudero house, artist and developer Hazel Hyde lived there, and made some major changes. On the Griffin Street section, a second story and studio were added, and the facade was changed from Territorial to Renaissance Revival. Sometime after 1937, the courtyard walls were raised to roof height, “a major change to the building’s appearance which makes it impossible to distinguish buildings from courtyards,” according to a 1995 historic building survey.

Another notice in The New Mexican, this one in the social section of the April 14, 1939, paper, announced, “La Casa Cercada, the latest in Santa Fe’s rapidly growing number of apartment courts, will be officially opened to Santa Fe Monday by Miss Hazel Hyde...

“Seven apartments, all with outside entrances, all practically soundproof, and all beautifully furnished with draperies, wall hangings, furniture, lace curtains, from all over the world, picked up by Miss Hyde in her travels, are included in the new court...”

In the kitchen of one of the apartments is a range hood created as a replica of an Old Mexico hood by Katherine Stinson Otero, one of America’s pioneering woman aviators, who moved to Santa Fe in the late 1930s, married the son of former Territorial Governor Miguel Otero, and was an architect and home builder for many years.

A building at 142 Griffin Street — part of the structural history at the Escudero site — was demolished in the early 1940s when the property was owned by Edna Ballard, founder of the I Am religious organization. She had it until 1953. The I Am sanctuary is now in another white building, also having interesting architectural values, located at the corner of Old Taos Highway and Paseo de Peralta.

When Hazel Hyde developed La Casa Cercada, each of the seven apartments had its own address: 144, 146, 148 and 150 Griffin Street, and 200, 204 and 206 McKenzie Street. Since 1958, the property has had one address: 206 McKenzie Street.

Nine units ranging from 399 to 2,644 square feet comprise 206 McKenzie today.

“The primary apartment building,” according to Webster, “is a two-story structure founded upon the original thick adobe walls of the Jaramillo house.” Later additions were built using pentile (a brick produced by the not-too-distant penitentiary for about two decades, starting in the late 1920s), concrete block, wood frame, and brick.

“This two-story part was apparently built in the 1930s,” said Jan Wisniewski, architect at Lorn Tryk Architects, which has the largest of the nine units. “The walls up here are fired brick. We know that because we had to drill into them for our computer wiring.”

The 206 McKenzie property is not in perfect shape. There are places where the plaster needs repair. The windows are the old, single-glaze type, insulation is fairly thin, the heating systems are outdated, and a recent environmental assessment found some materials in the building that may contain asbestos, and painted surfaces that may contain lead.

But the place has great soul, full of interesting, charming spaces and connections among the spaces. “And it’s right downtown and it has all these gardens and courtyards. It’s a magnificent property,” Wisniewski said.

The two-story building — 11,923 square feet on a lot of 0.6 acres — is currently leased to both residential and commercial tenants and featuring a variety of historic and modern finishes. There are fireplaces and sun porches and courtyards, and 22 parking spaces.

“The iconic White Building compound in the heart of downtown Santa Fe is now available for reimagining and reinventing. This is a rare opportunity to own a Santa Fe landmark,” the marketing materials say. “The original structure was built circa 1890 during the time that the Catron/Johnson/Griffin neighborhood was first developed around the Chile Line [Denver & Rio Grande Railroad] terminus that ended on nearby Johnson Street.”

Webster said people with European sensibilities would love the place — “This building has a similar feel to what you’d find in Spain or Portugal or Italy.”

Under its Business Capitol District (BCD) zoning, the white building is open to residential, office, art gallery, studio, retail, hospitality, multi-family, and restaurant uses. See http://santafesir.com/listing/201104763 for more information.