The Anasazi buildings in Chaco Canyon were the largest apartment-style structures in the world until 1882

Among the Anasazi buildings in Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito (“pretty village” in Spanish) may have been the largest multifamily single-structure dwelling on the planet until the Navarro Flats (aka Spanish Flats) apartment was built in New York City in 1882. How large was it? When was it built? How many man-hours of labor did it take? So much it’s hard to imagine…

How big is Pueblo Bonito?

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From Wikipedia: Pueblo Bonito Description

The site covers 3 acres (1.2 ha) and incorporates approximately 800 rooms. In parts of the village, the tiered structure was four and five stories high.

From the cliffs above, Pueblo Bonito, like many Anasazi buildings, looks like a giant D-shaped structure, with the straight line of the D oriented almost precisely east-west.

When was an apartment-style building larger than Pueblo Bonito constructed?

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From People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture, by Kendrick Frazier

In April 1920 the National Geographic Society’s research committee decided to send an archaeological reconnaissance group to Chaco Canyon to determine whether a detailed examination of a Chaco Canyon ruin should be undertaken. The Society arranged to have the Smithsonian give [its thirty-four-year-old curator of American archaeology Neil M.] Judd a three-month leave of absence to direct the reconnaissance. Judd made the trip and was intrigued by what he found. From the very first he found Pueblo Bonito to be extraordinary…. As he later wrote for the National Geographic: “No other apartment house of comparable size was known in America or in the Old World until the Spanish Flats were erected in 1882 at 59^th Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City.” —Page 44

As an aside, the story of the Spanish Flats apartment building, more correctly named Navarro Flats, is both interesting and tragic.

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From Ephemeral New York, “New York’s most spectacular apartment building,” December 7, 2013

The seven-bedroom duplexes had as much as 7,000 square feet of floor space, including a drawing room, library, and billiards room (but only two bathrooms per apartment).

Each $20,000 duplex was part of one of eight townhouses within the complex.

Some apartments sold, but mostly, New Yorkers didn’t bite. In 1888, de Navarro was fending off lawsuits from mortgage holders, and the enormous complex met with foreclosure.

By the 1920s, it was gone—replaced by newer luxury residences the Hampshire House and Essex House.

A sad ending to a magnificent structure. Much like Pueblo Bonito, though it lasted much, much longer.

When was Pueblo Bonito built and occupied?

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See Anasazi Timeline at AD 800 for context.

From Wikipedia, “Pueblo Bonito”

Pueblo Bonito…was built by the Ancestral Puebloans, who occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126.

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See Anasazi Timeline at AD 900 for context.

From People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture, by Kendrick Frazier

Chacoans began construction in the early 900s at Penasco Blanco, Pueblo Bonito, and Una Vida…. They gave them all remarkable similar floor plans. They created a line of large circular pit structures in the plaza. Behind them they build a row of large ramada-living rooms, a second row of large featureless rooms, and in the rear, a third row of smaller storage rooms. They formed above-ground rectangular rooms into suites, each of which consisted of a ramada-living room, a large room, and paired storage rooms. This pattern of rooms is remarkably similar to smaller sites built in Chaco and in the surrounding area at the same time. —Pages 174-175

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The next major construction, from 1020 to 1050, was at Pueblo Alto, Chetro Ketl, and Pueblo Bonito (additions). The architectural forms begun in the 900s were continued. —Page 176

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Construction during the third period, 1050 to 1075, was mainly of additions to existing buildings. The Chacoan builders added wings, then less symmetrical additions, extensions and modifications. More [labor hours of] construction work was being done each year. —Page 176

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Around A.D. 1075 the Chacoans began an unparalleled flurry of building activity that would last forty years…. From then until 1115 the Chacoans carried out six major construction programs in Chaco Canyon. They built the east and west wings of Pueblo Bonito. —Page 177

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See Anasazi Timeline at AD 1000 and AD 1100 for context.

From Anasazi America: Seventeen Centuries on the Road from Center Place, by David E. Stuart

Most construction in the canyon itself stopped between 1116 and 1120, and some older great houses such as Chetro Ketl were actually being abandoned. But at others, as at Pueblo Bonito, new walls and room blocks were built to close off old courtyards and limit access. —Page 121

In the later years of construction, the work appears to be defensive. From what? Invaders? Angry neighboring clans? Nearby warlords? Hordes of former farmers starving because of drought?

That’s what happens when you research the mysteries of the Anasazi—even Anasazi buildings—you get more questions than answers.

How much labor was involved in building Pueblo Bonito?

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From People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture, by Kendrick Frazier

[Archaeologist Stephen] Lekson has determined that construction of the east wing of Pueblo Bonito required about 193,000 man-hours of Chacoan labor. Half of this labor was devoted to the cutting and transport of trees [see The Anasazi Timbers of Chaco Canyon: A Quarter-Million Hand-Carried Logs] and the quarrying of stone. The other half was devoted to actual construction (masonry, mixing and carrying mortar, installing roofs). Only a small part of this half required skilled labor (shaping and laying stones). —Page 177

 

He assumed for hypothetical purposes that the Chacoan builders worked a ten-hour day and a thirty-day work month. To cut and process all the timer used in the east wing of the Pueblo bonito in a period of one month required about thirty men, or 30 man-months. Transporting the beams would have taken the Chacoans 180 man-months; quarrying and so on, 90 man-months; and construction 324 man-months.

 

He further assumes that the Chacoans took about ten years to complete the east wing. This is a typical span to complete a project during the 1075-1115 building period. Based on the evidence at [Pueblo] Alto, however, he estimates that actual construction was going on for only about three years during this ten-year period. Given all that, Lekson suggests a likely way that labor was apportioned of that span, “A crew of 30 could cut and transport beams for one month every year for seven years, and quarry and construct for four months every year for three years, and build the single largest construction program at Chaco.”

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See Anasazi Timeline at AD 1100 for context.

Hardly a vast labor force! Yet construction was going on at more than one site at a time. How did that affect labor needs? Lekson divided the construction activity into five-year segments and found that the last five years of the eleventh century, A.D. 1095-1100, were the most labor intensive. During those five years, Chacoan construction programs took up an average of 55,645 man-hours, or 5,565 man-days, or 186 man-months, per year. Thus thirty-one men working six months a year or sixty-two men working three months a year could have carried out the most intensive single period of construction at Chaco Canyon. —Page 179

That doesn’t sound like much. Some modern comparison would help.

From an obscure study done in England, “A Survey of Progress In House Building,” by S.W. Forbes, July 1969. [Old, I know, but more modern than A.D. 1100. And I couldn’t find a clearer answer anywhere else.]

The progress of work on a number of housing sites of two storey dwellings was studied to collect information on the man-hour requirements and progress achieved. The distribution of man-hour requirements show a range of just under 600 man-hours a dwelling to just over 1,900 man-hours a dwelling with an average of about 1,110 man-hours. These include all work on site, sub-structures, super-structure and external works. This average is considerably less than the national average generally taken to be of the order of 2,000 man-hours per dwelling.

Using Lekson’s figure of 55,645 man-hours for the most intensive period of construction of Anasazi buildings at Chaco Canyon, and the 1,110 average man-hours figure for a two-story house, the Chacoans’ modern labor equivalent yields about 50 houses.

That seems reasonable to me as a man with no experience whatsoever building a house (though I have built several of porches and arbors, and I’m in the planning stages of building a chicken house).

What Anasazi building might have been like

Years ago I wrote this short piece of flash fiction while imagining Anasazi buildings, particularly the construction of Pueblo Bonito.

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Clik here to view.From The Witchery of Flutes: Forty-seven short dramas of Anasazi daily life.

The Stone-Shaper’s Daughter

The stone-shaper’s daughter followed him to work. Close by, but out of the way, she gathered stones and shaped them with hard river stone until she had rectangular shapes. From these, she built a low wall. The stone-shaper marveled at the precision of her work.

 

Years later, she became the first woman to lead a crew of masons and stone workers in the massive new building in Center Place Canyon. She chafed at the narrow vision of the architect in charge.

 

“He believes three levels is enough, but six levels is truly striking. We can build that high now! But he is too afraid to even let us try.” She said this only to her crew leaders, who she felt were loyal to her.

 

But one of them had more ambition than sense and turned her in to the guard warriors, and the next day she found herself standing before the High Priest accused of insubordination.

 

“You do not speak well of my architect,” said the High Priest.

 

She rubbed her sandpaper hands together and flexed the muscles in her upper arms and shoulders. She well knew the swift judgment of the High Priest and his harsh penalties. But she also knew he placed great value in the unprecedented scale of his monuments. Let the architect defend the smallness of his vision, she thought. She would defend the size of her own vision.

 

“We are building but three levels tall, my master. We could easily build six, perhaps more, to the glory of the spirits.”

 

The High Priest raised his eyebrows and turned to his architect. “If you can truly build taller, then I most strongly wish you to do so,” he said.

 

“Only she says so,” said the architect. “All men masons know she speaks foolishly and without knowledge. Her six levels will fall with the first gust of wind.”

 

The High Priest sat in concentration for a few moments. “What do you need to build a demonstration?” he asked the stone-shaper’s daughter.

 

She quickly calculated in her mind. A dozen masons, she said, and three months. She would build a small six-level block east of the partially completed Great House. Then with a flashing glance at the architect, she requested armed warrior guards to protect against vandals.

 

The High Priest gave an uncharacteristic slight grin, and nodded. “So it shall be.”

 

Six months later, twice as long as she had hoped, she declared the demonstration complete. The High Priest toured the structure in spite of warnings from the architect that it was not safe.

 

Standing on the uppermost rooftop platform of the sixth level, alone with the stone-shaper’s daughter, he pointed to his Great House under construction. “You could make that six levels?”

 

“Yes,” she said, resisting the temptation to promise seven levels, perhaps even more.

 

Back on the ground and standing away, the High Priest had warriors with long sticks push against the walls to try and topple them, but not a stone budged.

 

In his chambers, the High Priest held his hand in the air and spoke. The architect was to be held in an interior chamber while the stone-shaper’s daughter would take the place of the architect. If she failed, she would be put to death. If she succeeded, the architect would be put to death.

 

Three months later, the first sixth-level room sat complete atop the center of the back wall, and half were completed by the end of the first year.

 

“You have succeeded,” said the High Priest. “From this day, you will be called Stone Daughter, and you will complete this monument to the Great Spirits.”

 

She felt proud, yet she knew that with a single misfortune, like the architect, she would be taken to the altar of death.

 

In her old age, blind from milky eyes, she told the story often, but most refused to believe that a stone-shaper’s daughter had doubled the height of the everlasting gifts to the gods.

That’s about it for this Author’s Note. Thanks for reading!

This is background research for…

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Clik here to view.The Next Skywatcher: Prequel to The Last Skywatcher Triple Trilogy Series

Warning! This story contains graphic violence including cannibalism.

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