2 days ago
Los Alamos Historical Society hopes to turn Oppenheimer House into museum, tourist site
The Los Alamos home where Manhattan Project scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer lived with his family during World War II has never been open to the public.
That will change soon if a fundraising campaign being mounted by the Los Alamos Historical Society is successful.
The nonprofit is seeking to raise $5 million to renovate and restore the Oppenheimer House, create some exhibits and programming related to the time the famed scientist spent in Los Alamos, and integrate the home into the Los Alamos History Museum campus.
A little less than $2 million has been raised already, said Todd Nickols, the executive director of the historical society. That leaves approximately $3 million to be generated through the campaign that will begin this fall.
Nickols said getting the house — which he described as a jewel of Los Alamos history — restored to the point that it could be opened to public tours is the focus of the fundraising drive.
But that will be easier said than done. The historical society did not take possession of the home until 2020, three-quarters of a century after the Oppenheimer family moved out, and the organization will face many challenges in restoring it, Nickols said.
'It was in pretty bad shape,' he said.
The owners who turned the home over to the historical society, Helene and Bergen 'Jerry' Suydam, had done what they could to care for the property, he said. But the Suydams were challenged by their own health issues, he said, and that diverted their attention from maintaining the house.
Job one: Build a foundation
The job of restoring the home already has begun with work on the roof. But the bigger task will be shoring up the underside of the house.
Nickols said the Oppenheimer House was not built on a foundation; its main joists sit directly on the ground. As a result, it has slid approximately 2 feet south-southeast since it was built in 1929 as part of the Los Alamos Ranch School.
Plans call for building a foundation under the house, something that will have to be accomplished by removing the wood flooring to accommodate the pouring of concrete for helical piers, Nickols said.
'We have to go from inside [the house],' he said. 'There's no crawl space.'
A good deal of surveying and soil testing will be done first, he said, but those time-consuming steps are a necessary part of the process.
'We have a one-time shot to do this correct,' he said. 'So it's better to take the extra time to do it well.'
The foundation work also will be very costly, he said, eating up a significant amount of the project's $5 million price tag.
'It's crazy expensive,' he said. 'That's just how it goes.'
Other work on the house will include asbestos abatement, repainting of exterior and interior walls, tree removal, plumbing improvements, a new electrical system, a fire suppression system and making it accessible to people with disabilities.
Movie spurs Oppenheimer interest
Nickols said it would have been nice to have the project done before director Christopher Nolan and his crew showed up in Los Alamos in 2022 to film his Oppenheimer biopic, the 2024 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Many scenes from the movie were shot at the Oppenheimer House, and Nickols said Nolan and his crew could not have been better to work with.
The famed director himself remarked on how Oppenheimer's essence seemed to linger in the house, Nickols said. He credited the film with igniting interest in the house.
'What it really did for us was it brought visitors and put us back on the map,' Nickols said.
The Los Alamos History Museum doubled its annual visitation in the wake of the release of Oppenheimer. The filming of Oppenheimer in the place where so many of its historic events unfolded contributed its own chapter to the city's legacy, he said.
'That filming is part of our history,' Nickols said.
It also caused interest in Oppenheimer himself to surge among people younger than 30, he said — something that has led historical society officials to cater to that crowd specifically in their planning for the exhibits at the house.
'This is where it's going to get fun,' Nickols said, adding the exhibits will include reliance on the latest technology, including artificial intelligence. 'I have a personal goal of having a hologram or a robot that looks like Oppenheimer welcoming people to the house.'
When the project is done, the house will not feature many artifacts from Oppenheimer or his family, Nickols said, for one simple reason: The ultra-high secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project meant the people who worked on it essentially were allowed to bring only their clothes with them to Los Alamos.
'You were brought into the Lamy train station, and all your possessions were dumped out of your luggage, and they threw away your bags,' Nickols said, explaining government officials feared some of the luggage might have been outfitted with clandestine surveillance devices. 'You were not allowed to take much of anything with you.'
That same veil of secrecy means there are not many photos of Oppenheimer in Los Alamos. But there are several photos of the house dating back to its time before Oppenheimer occupied it and after the Atomic Energy Commission vacated it in the mid-1960s, he said.
'So we have evidence to know what changes had been made to it, and our goal is to put it back together to [what it looked like] when Oppenheimer was there.'
Preservation fund
Nickols said the society also hopes to raise $1 million for a preservation fund devoted to the home's future maintenance needs.
Partnering with the historical society on the project is Enterprise Bank & Trust, which has pledged to match donations up to $500,000 by contributing up to $125,000 annually for four years.
The first matching gift will be presented in January 2026, a news release touting the fundraising campaign said.
Nickols noted the decadeslong relationship between the bank and the historical society and said Enterprise's contributions will help his organization transform the home into 'a powerful and immersive educational experience for visitors from around the world.'
