A national-historic 1845 adobe on Santa Fe’s Historic Eastside. Tent Rock, Inc. served as general contractor for the five-year restoration — preserving the historic shell, integrating modern systems, and adding a new garage in partnership with the project architect and owners.
The estate dates to 1845, when a Spanish officer’s family settled into the adobe at the heart of what is now Santa Fe’s Historic Eastside. Eighty years later, in 1925, the painter Frank Applegate bought the property and made it part of the early Santa Fe arts colony. Both names are still attached to the house, and both the City of Santa Fe and the National Register recognize it as a historic property.
The owners brought us in alongside their architect in 2019. The work that followed ran through December 2024 — five years of measured, deliberate restoration that respected the original 1845 fabric while bringing in the systems and finishes a contemporary home requires.
Tent Rock, Inc. served as the general contractor on the project. The adobe envelope was restored wall plane by wall plane, with hand-troweled mud plaster on the interior and exterior surfaces. The original viga ceilings were preserved throughout, with structural members replaced only where they had failed. The kitchens of the main house and the casita were rebuilt with new cabinetry, marble surfaces, and a La Cornue range that holds the room without crowding the historic shell. The primary and secondary baths were reworked with modern plumbing, tile, and stone while keeping the adobe geometry and the carved-wood door surrounds the building has always had.
The two-story portales and the turned-wood balustrades that face the interior courtyards were restored or rebuilt in kind. Every kiva fireplace was kept, with the hand-formed clay surrounds either preserved or rebuilt in the original manner. Radiant wall heat, zoned HVAC, contemporary lighting, security and life-safety wiring were integrated into the historic envelope without disturbing the exposed beams and adobe surfaces above. A new attached garage was added at the perimeter, scaled and finished to read as original to the property. Site work — entry walks, stone-edged drives, and the courtyard hardscape — completed the picture.
The National Park Service recorded the house for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1937 — one of only eight structures in New Mexico to receive that designation.
Our approach
Our role was equal parts builder and project manager. We coordinated every trade — plaster, masonry, woodwork, cabinetry, mechanical, plumbing, electrical, hardware, and finish — and self-performed the work most closely tied to the building’s historic fabric: the mud plaster, the woodwork that interacts with the original vigas, the lime washes and finish layers.
The architect set the design intent. The owners brought the program and the standards. Tent Rock, Inc. translated both into a building that holds its history without freezing it.
Gallery