The house at 1002 Old Pecos Trail, at the corner of Coronado Road, is for sale. Once considered the entrance to Santa Fe, it has lived many lives. It was built in 1918 by the artist and architect of Spanish Pueblo revival, Carlos Vierra, for himself and his wife, Ada Talbert Ogle. Vierra was given the land (in a life estate) and $5000 to build the house by his patron and state senator, Frank Springer. In 1919, the local paper reported, “ It (the construction) promises to be the last word on original Santa Fe style houses with several sweeping porches.” Local artists, architects, and style pundits all stopped by to give suggestions. It took three years to build the two story adobe home. Details included vigas and corbels in the living room that were carved and painted in the same way as the Saint Francis auditorium in the Fine Arts Museum. The ceilings were differentiated, using adzed boards, split cedar or aspen latillas and rounded or square vigas. Almost all rooms had corner fireplaces, with a raised beehive fireplace with a stepped wall in the living room and an artistic design of twisted wood set into the plaster of Vierra’s two-story studio.
In its early years, the home entertained Santa Fe’s artist colony, members of the School of American Archaeology, the Historical Society and New Mexico Board of Regents. Carlos Vierra was on the committee for the construction and highly instrumental in the design of the Fine Arts Museum, where he finished the murals and used his own face as the inspiration for Christopher Columbus. An editorial published the day after Vierra’s death in 1937 noted, “It was Vierra’s insistence upon purity of style that saved Santa Fe from many an architectural monstrosity.” Vierra is also credited, along with friends, for organizing the opposition to stop city fathers from tearing down the Palace of the Governors to make room for downtown stores. Vierra insisted that the Palace be used as studios for artists, which eventually helped establish the city’s reputation as an artist colony. After his death, the local newspaper attributed Vierra’s lifelong passion for the arts as one reason Santa Fe is known not only as the “City Different” but the “City Beautiful.”
The Vierra property reverted to the Springer family in the early 1940’s. Springer, caring for the well-being of Vierra’s wife, payed generously for the house. Ada Springer and her sister Eva lived there for many years. In the late 70’s, Larry Hays and Eugene Law became the owners, living upstairs and using the downstairs as the showroom for the clients of Charles David Interiors. The artist Rik Dillingham also had his studio there. It is thanks to Hay’s research that the property today is on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Historic Properties.
The last owners of this significant home were Gladys and Julius Heldman, former tennis champions who came to Santa Fe in the early 1980’s. They bought the property for a record-breaking price of $1,000,000. They told their Realtor that they needed a house with an indoor tennis court and a lake for fishing. The tennis court was built on-site, bermed into the property, but the lake turned out to be fifty miles away in Pecos, fishing holes for Julius and his friend Don Meredith. Many tennis legends visited the Heldmans, and played on their court, including Don Budge and Billy Jean King, who created World Tennis Magazine with Gladys. The Heldmans legacy can also be found in the new indoor courts given by them to the College of Santa Fe, a generous gift from a couple that loved tennis and created the first private indoor court in Santa Fe at their beloved Carlos Vierra House.
