The Main House

The walls of the main house were constructed with a combination of blocks of adobe and native limestone, 14- to 16-inches thick, covered with plaster or stucco. According to Martin, all exterior walls of the Navarro House were covered with stucco, except for the north wall with its exposed rubble limestone. It is thought that the house first consisted of only the front two rooms facing Laredo Street, and later, a portion of the back porch was enclosed to create two smaller rooms. The original front rooms each have built-in cupboards. Martin posed that these cupboards had been windows overlooking the back porch and courtyard before the room additions were constructed and the windows converted to storage. Finally, a larger room was built along the north wall of the building, making the main house a five-room, L-shaped structure. The floors were tongue-and-groove cypress wood, nailed to cedar stringers on a limestone foundation. Because there was no crawl space under the house, Martin and his crew could not level the sagging historic floor, so “a concrete slab was poured from wall to wall, and the original finished floor placed on top.” From the courtyard, one could enter the second-largest room in the house, which was at the northeastern end of the L-shaped building. Navarro may have used this room as a bedroom; on the other hand, there are also references to this room having been the dining room. A fireplace was located on the north wall of this room with a carved wood mantel, similar to the styling of the other two fireplaces in the front rooms of the main house.