A beautiful remodel of historic warehouse
The Santa Fe New Mexican - Santa Fe, N.M.
Author: Paul Weideman, Date: Apr 7, 2002
(Copyright 2002 Santa Fe New Mexican)

Architect Mark Hogan and David and Lisa Barker have transformed the interior of the historic Gross Kelly & Company Warehouse into one of the most beautiful commercial spaces in Santa Fe.

The hallmark of the design is a large, central floor penetration with a splendid stairway down to the lower level. Barker Realty's agents are accommodated in rows of wood-and-glass offices along the long east and west walls. Hogan incorporated spacious lobbies on both levels, a conference room and a pair of standout bathrooms boasting gorgeous tile and black sinks.

On the exterior, the team retained the front façade on the north side, focusing restoration energies on the east portal facing the railroad infrastructure. That wall now is punctuated by windows and glass doors that open onto a long portal that recalls the loading function it served during much of the first half of the 20th century.

When it opened in Santa Fe 89 years ago this summer, the Gross Kelly & Company Warehouse had the distinction of being the first commercial building done in the new Spanish Pueblo Revival architectural style in New Mexico.

At the time, a group of Santa Fe artists and anthropologists were engaged in a campaign to establish a building style based on Indian and Spanish precedents in Northern New Mexico. These enthusiasts had surveyed existing buildings in the region to arrive at the synthetic Spanish Pueblo Revival style: adobe or adobe-look walls, a flat roof with parapet and canales, projecting viga ends, and long portals supported by posts and corbels.

The architects of this "New-Old" building style believed it was historically appropriate and thus a fitting antidote to the Americanization that threatened to put a Colonial-style bank on every available corner but they also thought it would attract visitors and badly needed tourist dollars.

Santa Fe had never recovered from the news, more than 30 years before, that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway decided to bypass Santa Fe. Business leaders had spent years preparing for the coming of the railroad, reasonably anticipating that it would engender a new, thriving commercial center.

A hastily arranged city bond issue permitted the financing of a branch line from Lamy in 1880, but Santa Fe's railroad district proceeded to grow undramatically. Even the coming of a second railroad, the north-oriented Texas, Santa Fe & Northern failed to create a real boom.

There was, nevertheless, some concentration of commercial activity around the rail yards in the early 20th century. Most of the buildings, including those that housed the Hondo Pine Lumber Yard and Planing Mill and the D.L. Miller and Co. Cracker Factory, are gone. The old Gross Kelly Warehouse at 530 S. Guadalupe thankfully remains.

Gross Kelly & Co. was an important company in the history of the Southwest, its business stretching back to the beginnings of railroad commerce. It evolved from the pioneering forwarding-and- commission houses that set up businesses at the railheads of the westward-advancing railroad, according to an article in the October 1989 Bulletin of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation.

These firms served the important function of expediting the transfer of goods manufactured in the Eastern United States from points of arrival at the railheads to final destinations, and of effecting their exchange for the raw materials of the Western frontier, including livestock, timber, furs, hides and wool.

For the company's Santa Fe warehouse, president Harry Warren Kelly chose Isaac Hamilton Rapp of the Trinidad, Colo., firm Rapp & Rapp, whose major commissions already included Gross Kelly's Las Vegas headquarters and the New Mexico territorial capitol building and would later include the Museum of Fine Art and La Fonda.

For the Gross Kelly Warehouse Rapp employed a symmetrical façade with side towers inspired by mission churches such as those at San Felipe and Acoma pueblos. The building's walls were made of brick but the architect added exterior stucco and other simulations decorative viga ends projecting from exterior walls and concrete- formed battering to simulate the contours of adobe in concord with the Spanish Pueblo Revival style that would come to dominate and define Santa Fe.

Loading docks ran the length of both long sides of the building; five railroad cars could be unloaded simultaneously from an adjacent track. The greater part of the interior was a large open room where goods were stored. The warehouse offered everything from biscuits and canned vegetables to barbed wire, poultry netting and patent medicines.

"That warehouse was like a Sam's Club because you could buy in bulk," Mayor Larry Delgado said in a 2001 interview. "My father was the postmaster when the post office was across the street from the cathedral and he would buy there. So did my wife's grandfather, Cesario Ortiz, who owned City Cash Market at the corner of San Francisco and Burro Alley."

The warehouse, coupled with another successful warehouse established by the Ilfeld Company nearby, brought a degree of prosperity to Santa Fe "some small measure of the role it had enjoyed as a hub of commerce in the days of the Santa Fe Trail and had lost to other towns more favored by the principal railroad," said the Historic Santa Fe Foundation article.

The Gross Kelly Warehouse is an anchor tenant of what will be a revitalized, developed rail-yard district under a master plan recently developed by The Design Workshop, a national urban- planning company with an office in Santa Fe. The district's central plaza lies just beyond the portal on the east side of the building; an appropriate railing on that porch is one of the few remaining items on the Barkers' remodel project.

"We originally hoped we could leave the railing off to keep the original appearance," said Mark Hogan of Hogan Group Inc. "Unfortunately the drop to grade was sufficient that we can't meet code so we do still have to do a railing."

Hogan, who has worked in Santa Fe architecture including the first phase of the Lensic renovation for 13 years, found a large, empty warehouse with a basement when he first entered the Gross Kelly Warehouse.

"Fortunately the building had been altered very little," he said. "It was not in great shape but was sound structurally, so it really was a matter of removing a lot of stuff from the various additions that had been done since its use as a warehouse."

The black-railed stairway cut in the main floor was designed to admit light into the remodeled basement.

"It was critical to make use of the lower level, but it was essentially only serviceable for storage and there was a lack of exterior windows, plus it's half a level below grade so there was no way to get windows down there," Hogan said. "The building was originally designed with large skylights and we actually added one more to match the existing ones and they bring light into the offices."

Much of the wall space in those work spaces is glass set in dark- stained maple.

"Again, there were not a lot of exterior windows and so we wanted to borrow more light off that center space," Hogan said. "We started looking for something that we could integrate with the historic feel of the building and compliment the rustic warehouse shell. Turn-of- century banks came to mind, so we started to explore that idea and it seemed to click."

The Barker Realty building also features original rafters, steel trusses and heavy wood floors; and new metal fixtures, including handsome standing light fixtures with mica windows, by Brett Chomer.

Demolition for the remodel began in September 2000, construction started in early February 2001 and Barker Realty moved in in mid- April. The Barkers purchased the building nine months ago, although the property is owned by the city.

"This was a bold move by the Barkers because they didn't own the ground lease," Hogan said. "They needed to make a decision and I think they put their faith in the process.

"We used national and state guidelines as our bible, then interfaced with city planning and the rail-yard people. The city was really great. They bent over backward to help us get through the permit process as well as deal with compliance issues. I think everyone wants something positive to happen in the railyard. The Barkers took the first step and everyone wanted success."

David Barker said his wife was intricately involved in the building process with Hogan and Jamison Construction. The project also involved quarters at the north end of the building for the Santa Fe Farmers' Market, Friends of the Farmers' Market and New Mexico Farm Connection.

"Our agents were excited about this building but we're a family- type group and we had been in a smaller space for seven years so it was painful," Lisa Barker said. "It took six months to settle in.

"This building gets used for a lot of community events, too. "We've had children's performances and chamber music, and also a number of groups like Pro Musica, the Farmer's Market and Santa Fe Community Foundation use our conference room."

Third-generation Santa Fean Laughlin Barker established Barker Realty more than 25 years ago. David and Lisa Barker have owned and operated the real-estate business for 15 years. They moved the company to the Gross Kelly Warehouse from a building at 370 Galisteo, which is in the midst of a remodel for motel use; the Old Santa Fe Inn there is scheduled for a June 2002 opening.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

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