Livestreaming in Tesuque
Dec. 3—When I was a kid, my family lived for a time in Placitas, which, back in the 70s was a mishmash of hippies and people, mostly Hispanics, whose roots went back decades, if not centuries. (For the past 20 years it's been more of a bedroom community for retirees and people who work in Albuquerque.) All that aside, there was a house on the way into Placitas, about a quarter-mile off the road toward the Sandias, that curved out of the ground like a Richard Serra sculpture. Apparently, what made it unique wasn't just the house's shape, but the way it rose out of the ground as though the rest of its circularity was buried beneath. What forever piqued my curiosity about it was that it was said to have a river running through the inside of it — right through the middle of the curve, going from one end of the house to the other. How cool is that?
This all came flashing back after visiting 27 AB Arroyo Griego, a gem of a house in Tesuque that's literally a two-minute walk away from the Tesuque Village Market and Tesuque Elementary School. The flashback coming from a similarly impressive water-under-the-house feature at Arroyo Griego.
According to Kay Matthews, in her book Culture Clash: Environmental Politics in New Mexico Forest Communities, Placitas remained largely Hispanic until the 1940s; the first Anglo family didn't move in until 1948. One of those Anglos was Edna McKinnon, whose house my family bought, and out of which she ran a pre-B&B B&B-style restaurant she called La Casa de Las Huertas (a nod to Placitas' original name, Las Huertas, "The Orchards"). The restaurant itself became a hub for the state's politicos. Way before there was Rio Chama steakhouse, there was McKinnon's hideaway.
McKinnon, reputedly the first female mayordomo in the state, was a former WWI Red Cross nurse and aide to General MacArthur in North Africa. Her frequent guests included General George Patton, Liberace and the Mama Lucy Gang (a cabal of politicians who had a stranglehold on New Mexico's House of Representatives in the 70s). When the hippies descended in the 60s and 70s, they brought with them their school bus homes, their geodesic domes, their good intentions and lots of drugs. A subset of them set up the Drop City South commune, a sister commune to the original rural hippie countercultural artists' community of Drop City, founded just outside Trinidad, Colorado, in 1965. But as Matthews observes, as well-meaning as the newcomers were about wanting to fit in, "the simple fact that the alternative generation came opened the door to the next invasion, which was not so benign."
I mention all this not to imply that Tesuque has shared a fate similar to Placitas, but to point out that its history — and so far, its present and likely its future — has been almost the opposite of Placitas'. Relations in Tesuque between its original residents and its newcomers have been more or less palatable and much less divisive. And there has been little to no development there, unlike what's happened in and around Placitas.
The Rainbow House, as this home used to be called (and which was rented out to director Sam Peckinpah during the filming of Convoy — one of the worst movies ever made, which starred Ali MacGraw, coincidentally a longtime Tesuque resident), was what sprang to mind when Deborah Bodelson took me on a tour of 27 AB Arroyo Griego, in Tesuque. When Bodelson, who's representing Arroyo Griego with her business partner and fellow Santa Fe Properties broker Cary Spier (and who work as the Bodelson-Spier team), ushered me into the home's dining room, it was immediately clear that there was something distinctive about it. There were blocks of windows on either side (facing north and south), with a stream of water running that same north-south route right underneath the floor, directly beneath one's feet. The water comes from the waterfall feature that's in the backyard. The water for both the waterfall and the stream comes from the Tesuque Water Co-op or from a 3,000-gallon cistern on site. Again: How cool is that?
Built in 1993, Arroyo Griego underwent a vast renovation when its current owners bought it four years ago. The AC is new. The heating system is new. The cabinets have been refurbished. The wood floor is new, although the stone floors are not. The solid metal French front doors are new. They made the butler's pantry into an extension of the kitchen. There are custom closets by California Closets in the primary bedroom. The homeowners basically transformed an old adobe into a contemporary, very functional and quite modern version of a Pueblo-style house. And interestingly enough, most of the house is not actually adobe: it's hand-troweled plaster that gives it the appearance, inside and out, of being adobe. The plaster finish gives it a nice, warm Pueblo ambience.
To get to Arroyo Griego, you go up a dirt road (not unusual in most of Tesuque). Arroyo Griego is the last house on the road, a cul-de-sac. Behind it are cottonwoods, trails and lots of open space. The home is walled and gated, and before you get to the front door, you see a fountain and a seating area. There's no yard, per se, but an outdoor area surrounds the house. There's greenery everywhere — fruit trees and plants and flowers, and all of them cultivated organically.
Inside the house, there's a music room with a piano, a common area and an entertaining room with a fireplace. That room opens into the outdoor area. One of the two primary en-suite bedrooms, the main one, offers a view of the waterfall and stream out back. Seasonally, the patio outside the dining area is covered in trumpet vine.
Along with the stream beneath the dining room floor, there are other interesting features as well, the most interesting being the fact that the floors of the garage are tiled. The owners' reasons? The inside of their garage is the first thing they see upon coming home. It's the first thing they see when debouching from their car. It's the first impression a guest receives upon entering. Finally, the homeowners wanted the garage floor to match the rest of the house, so that it, too, feels like part of the house itself.
Really, though, it's that dining room that takes the cake. Who wouldn't want a river, even an admittedly small one, running through their house? I know I would.
Livestreaming in Tesuque
