Residents line up for pieces of Oppenheimer House flooring in Los Alamos

A long line formed outside the Oppenheimer House on Bathtub Row as Los Alamos residents moved quickly to claim pieces of its original flooring, turning a preservation event into a scramble for a physical piece of the town’s Manhattan Project past. The Los Alamos Historical Society had scheduled the giveaway from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 9, but the flooring was gone by about 10:30 a.m., a sign of how much demand there is for anything tied to one of the county’s most recognizable historic homes.

Todd Nickols, the society’s executive director, helped visitors choose pieces from the flooring as the line moved through the event. The scene underscored a larger question hanging over the house and the district around it: what, exactly, are Los Alamos residents trying to keep when they fight for a tangible artifact from a building that already carries so much meaning? For many, the answer seems to be something they can hold, not just something they can read about.

The Oppenheimer House is a 1929 log-and-stone cottage that was built for May Connell, who taught art and music at the Los Alamos Ranch School. It later became home to J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kitty Oppenheimer, Peter Oppenheimer and Toni Oppenheimer from 1943 to 1945, during the heart of the Manhattan Project. The house sits on Bathtub Row, named for the prewar homes there that had bathtubs rather than showers, a small but telling marker of the difference between the old ranch school era and the wartime housing that followed metal shortages.

The house has long been part of the broader preservation fabric of Los Alamos. The district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and the County Council designated it the Fuller Lodge Historic District in 1984. The Oppenheimer House became part of the Los Alamos History Museum campus in 2020, after Helene and Jerry Suydam deeded it to the historical society. It is now undergoing preservation and renovation, with the society saying in November 2023 that it needed to raise $2 million for work that included foundation stabilization, floor care, roof repairs, electrical upgrades and termite damage.

That effort has grown into a larger campaign. In May 2025, the historical society and Enterprise Bank & Trust launched a fundraising drive for the restoration, with the bank pledging to match donations up to $500,000 over four years, or up to $125,000 a year. The society has said the full project is estimated at $5 million and that phase one was set to begin in summer 2025, alongside a planned $1 million preservation fund for ongoing maintenance. The flooring giveaway showed that even as the house is restored, residents still want a direct link to the place where Los Alamos remembers its origins.