Su Casa :: Feature Articles:: Rustic Integrity

An old farmhouse from the last years of the 19th century, a stolid dairy operation from the early and middle decades of the 20th century—it is hard to imagine more prosaic, functional, or typical buildings upon the American landscape. They are rooted in practicality, designed for work, simple to the point of plainness.

The buildings that Paul Richard has renovated and renewed in Taos stand apart most notably for their sublime location. Their purity of function and noteworthy spot on the globe alone make them worthy of preservation. They sit upon the broad pastoral plain that is defined by the deep sliced earth of the Rio Grande gorge and the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains that rise so sharply and distinctly over Taos. Farmland spreads along the boundaries of Taos Pueblo’s pristine setting. Water runs through the ancient acequia, and the earth has a thick richness that suggests more water is not far beneath the surface.

Mere dots on the landscape in contrast to the pasture land and grand peaks around them, the buildings have the feel of Midwestern practicality felicitously combined with Southwestern materials and building techniques. Richard’s house, though two-storied as any rural Ohio farm, is constructed of adobe with solid, earthen walls and beamed ceilings. Dairy cows once plodded through the gently deteriorating cedar fencing and patiently waited to be milked in the dairy barn.

Bottling machines and old coolers still stand in honor of the hardworking farmer, his family, and the docile cows. With such homey operations now gone, the farm was due for a new life in keeping with the owner’s deeply felt need to maintain and preserve the rural setting and the undeveloped lands that distinguish this unique landscape.

Foremost for the owner, Richard’s father-in-law, was the maintenance of this tranquil setting of low-profile buildings. Here, his extended family might enjoy both an opportunity to gather in an idyllic setting and a chance to add to the common good by protecting a significant site from random development. It was his good fortune to have a son-in-law who was prepared by both personal inclination and training to take on what might have appeared an unrewarding task to others. The quiet simplicity of the rural farm life, its gentle poverty, had left most of the buildings almost beyond reasonable hope of renovation.