`Historical architecture gem’ is mostly empty, leaving an opening for local preservationists

This is the last in a series of three articles about the New Mexico Veterans Home. All photos courtesy of the Geronimo Springs Museum. See Part One See Part Two

Arguably Sierra County’s most historically significant building, the old Carrie Tingley Hospital, is mostly vacant now that the last of its residents have been moved into the six new buildings at the New Mexico Veterans Home.

That leaves only the administration offices in the front part “Old Main” as the old hospital building is called.

The old hospital’s once-famous thermal-water-fed pool, illuminated by sunlight through glass blocks in the walls, has been dry for decades. The entire physical-therapy room is used for storage. 

The auditorium hosted a visit from state Health Department Secretary Pat Allen in November. The cafeteria and kitchen were used for a Thanksgiving meal for residents, their friends and family. The grand common room is occasionally used for recreation, reading and staff meetings. But the lion’s share of this 77,760-square-foot building, including the old residences in the back, is vacant. When I asked to see this part, I was told it is locked up and would not be available to me, though I was assured it is structurally sound.  

The original tract for the hospital was about 150 acres. Over the years, several parcels have been spun off — 67 acres for the city park known as the Healing Waters Trail and 10 acres for Veterans Memorial Park. The nearly 45 acres for the Veterans Home is owned by the state General Services Department. This includes the old hospital, the Annex, a service building and a number of smaller buildings, a nonfunctioning water tower, a staff-development center, the administrator’s residence and a State Police office discretely tucked away at the back of the property. These government properties are not subject to taxation, but the County Assessor values it at $25,539,981. This is without the $60 million worth of new buildings nearest to South Broadway.

I realize labeling the old hospital as the county’s most significant historical building is a stretch. Hillsboro has buildings dating back to the 1800s. Elephant Butte Dam, the county’s largest structure, was completed in 1916. A few residences in Truth or Consequences are believed to date back to the founding of Hot Springs in 1916. Some are said to have been built for workers at the dam site, then when construction was over, floated down the river to the hot springs district. The town’s oldest large building is the former public school on Date Street, completed in 1923, then expanded by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 into a county courthouse. The WPA and the CCC, both Depression-era agencies, also built cabins, walls and other structures near Elephant Butte Dam, and the old Post Office on Main Street. But Carrie Tingley Hospital, 992 South Broadway, opened in 1937, gets my vote for our historical architectural gem.

Since I’m relatively new to the area, I asked two long-time locals with considerable credentials as historians, Sherry Lane Fletcher and Ann Welborn, if they agreed with me. Both did. Welborn, who worked at the hospital in the early 1960s and is a life board member of the Sierra County Historical Society, said she brought up what I told her about the hospital being mostly unused at the December 18 board meeting. “I told them we need to keep it from being torn down,” she said. “They said, `They can’t do that.’ I said, `They sure can and we need to get something going.’ I’m trying to rally them.”

Most of the New Deal artwork in the old hospital has been moved to the new locale in Albuquerque. One that remains is Eugenie Frederica Shonnard’s sculpture fountain in the courtyard just beyond the main entrance. It no longer functions as a fountain and although its four terra cotta turtles and ducks are in good shape, I found it funny that the piece known informally as the “frog fountain” had no frogs. When I found some old photos of the piece, I realized it’s missing the top piece with four frogs spouting water in four directions and a lily flower spouting water upward. David Morgan, public information officer for the state Health Department, told me the top piece is stored elsewhere at the facility and that the Sierra County Historical Society is overseeing the fountain. But Welborn said she knows nothing about that.

Shonnard (1886-1978) grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., and studied at the Students Art League in New York City and in Paris with Auguste Rodin. In 1925, she came to New Mexico at the invitation of the state museum director who offered her studio space in the state Museum of Art. She returned to Santa Fe in 1927 with her widowed mother and stayed for the rest of her life. She spent several weeks in Hot Springs where the “salaried sculptress” was housed and fed by locals, according to newspaper stories at the time. She was paid $400 through the WPA arts division. Shonnard also has works in museums and public places around the country, including New Mexico Tech at Socorro. She willed her residence to the Museum of New Mexico and it is now the office of the museum foundation.

The New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe plans a show of her sculpture, March 8 through August 24, called “Eugenie Shonnard: Breaking the Mold.”