Santa Cruz Mission Architecture and buildings

On February 17, 1793, work began on a new church that had a stone foundation and five feet thick adobe brick walls.  It was 112 feet long and 29 feet wide and took a year to build.  This was to be the main church at the mission for about 65 years.  Adobe is made by mixing mud, straw, clay and animal manure and then  packing it tightly into a box shaped brick mold, then leaving it out in the sun to bake and get hard.  The adobe bricks measured about 17 inches long, 8 inches wide and 3 inches high.  It took thousands of bricks to build a single building and Mission Santa Cruz, at its height, had more than 30 buildings, including a gristmill, a weaving room and a two story granary.  

           When the padres first arrived in this area to start a Mission, the local houses were built of branches and tule reeds.  Since the Mission buildings would be made of different materials, the first job at the new Mission was building huts or small rooms for the padres and soldiers to live in, until large, permanent buildings could be planned.  The first permanent building was probably the Mission church, because the padres always thought churches were the most important.  At first, most of the new Native American Mission workers lived in the same kind of reed houses they had always known.  Later, many workers would be able to move into adobe homes while they lived and worked at this Mission.  

 

 Mission Life was different for the Ohlone tribe: