The Alexander Grzelachowski House and Store is a one-story, Territorialstyle, long rectangular building, located in a rural setting in the village of Puerto de Luna. It is constructed of roughly cut sandstone plastered only on the main facade and has a low-pitched, metal-clad, side-gable roof. A long, Territorial-style portal extends across the entire main (east) facade. Under the portal are original Territorial windows and doors with characteristic pedimented trim. The floor plan is two rooms deep without connecting hallways. An undivided room extends across the entire south end and formerly contained a store and post office. North of this room lie six domestic rooms.
A file of three auxiliary rooms constructed of exposed adobe, without Territorial or other distinguishing stylistic features, once extended west from the back of the store but was torn down in the late 1970s. The main building has not undergone major alterations of plan or decoration and has not been modernized even by the addition of plumbing. It is an exceptional example of a nineteenth-century, Territorial-style, combined dwelling and place of business. Unoccupied since the mid 1960’s, it is in need of significant rehabilitation.
The building is located on thirty acres of land in Puerto de Luna, a small community located in the Pecos River Valley and surrounded by low hills and mesas. Just north of the northeast corner of the building was a well, now covered. A short distance north of the nominated boundary lie livestock pens roughly constructed of boards, corrugated metal, and adobe. In about 1985, a mobile home was placed directly in front (east) of the house, at a distance of about 80 feet. Approximately halfway between the house and the mobile home is a lone tree from which hangs a contraption for slaughtering animals.
At the back of the house the land slopes gently to the west toward an arroyo which flows through the property. This area once contained extensive gardens and vineyards. Beyond the arroyo is an orchard of which about four historic trees remain, and beyond that is an artificial lake created by the present owner, and finally the Pecos River.
On the white-plastered main façade, the portal is supported by eight squared, unpainted posts. Each rests on a small sandstone block and is topped with pieces of molding arranged to suggest small square capitals. The floor of the portal is lined with concrete which in most places is even with ground level. Under the portal there are three doors and four large, double-hung, wooden windows. The doors are recessed, but the windows placed near the exterior wall.
Proceeding from south to north on the main façade, at the south end of the building, entering the room which once contained the Grzelachowski store, are a pair of doors and a 9/6, double-hung, wooden window, both simply framed without decorative lintels . The window, the surrounding trim of both the window and doorway, as well as the recessed panels of the double door are painted light green. A narrow strip of the same color has been painted at floor level on the wall from the southeast corner nearly to a set of large, partially glazed, double doors. This, the most formal entrance on the main façade is deeply recessed, panel lined, and topped with a molded pediment. It leads into what appears to have been a hall/parlor separating the store from the living quarters of the Grzelachowski family.
The surrounding trim and recessed panels of the doors are painted the same light green. The upper two thirds of each door is glazed with four long vertical panes, placed two over two. The bottom third of each contains two recessed panels. North of the double doors are three 2/2 windows and, at the north end, a single paneled door. Like the doors into the hall/parlor, these four openings are topped with pedimented lintels. However, the frames and trim are painted dark green and the recessed door panels a contrasting white.
