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::FEATURE ARTICLES:: Cleff dwellings With 40 years in the business,
H.L. Cleff Construction nails the New Mexico adobe look A small painting of Taos Gorge hangs in the study of a North Valley home in Albuquerque. The painting, by artist Michael Stack, renders the monumental gorge with quiet irony, veiling the spectacular view with mist and distance. Like the painting, houses built by H.L. Cleff Construction
express themselves without shouting and, like the gorge, they take
their form from the New Mexico landscape. The Cleffs’ ease with
local styles springs from 40 years of building experience. The Stack painting belongs to a very fine collection of Western art assembled by Gene Barnhouse and Carmen Otero for their Cleff home in the North Valley. The paintings, along with antique furniture and details of the house itself, recreate the look of Albuquerque’s grand old historic adobes. Built in 1994, the house looks as if it has sat beside the bosque for decades. Lofty cottonwoods rise through openings framed in the roofs of the front porch and back portal, giving the impression the trees grew up around the building. In reality, Otero and Barnhouse, with designer Eric Spurlock, laid out the house around the property’s 50 existing trees. Once Otero and Barnhouse had decided on the house’s basic scheme—an arc that curves toward the river, with doors from all main rooms opening to a rear portal—they looked for a builder. It didn’t take long to settle on H.L. Cleff Construction. After talking with Trenton Cleff, Otero said they knew their builder would “go with the owners’ vision.”
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The so-called “church house” at the Cleff compound on Rio Grande Boulevard is reminiscent of John Gaw Meem’s Abiquiu church.
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