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    Home arrow Community arrow About Santa Fe
    About Santa Fe PDF Print E-mail

    Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico.

    The Spanish laid out the city according to the “Laws of the Indies”, town planning rules and ordinances which had been established in 1573 by King Phillip II. The fundamental principle was that the town be laid out around a central plaza. On its north side the Palace of the Governors was located while, on the East, was the church which later became the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.

    An important style implemented in planning the city was the radiating grid of streets centering from the central Plaza. Many were narrow and included small alley-ways, but each gradually merged into the more casual byways of the agricultural perimeter areas. As the city grew throughout the 19th Century, the building styles evolved too, so that by Statehood in 1912, the eclectic nature of the buildings caused it to look like “Anywhere USA” (as Hammett notes). The city government realized that the economic decline, which had started more than twenty years before with the railway moving west and the Federal government closing down Fort Marcy, might be reversed by the promotion of tourism.

    To achieve that goal, the city created the idea of imposing a unified building style – the Spanish Pueblo Revival look, which was based on work done restoring the Palace of the Governors. The sources for this style came from the many defining features of local architecture: vigas and canales from many old adobe homes, churches built many years before and found in the Pueblos, and the earth-toned, adobe-colored look of the exteriors.

    After 1912 this style became official: all buildings were to be built using these elements. By 1930 there was a broadening to include the “Territorial”, a style of the pre-statehood period which included the addition of portals and white-painted window and door pediments. The City had become “Different”. However, as Hammett notes, “in the rush to pueblofy” Santa Fe, the city lost a great deal of its architectural history and eclecticism”. Among the architects most closely associated with this “new” style is John Gaw Meem.

    By an ordinance passed in 1958, new and rebuilt buildings, especially those in designated historic districts, must exhibit a Spanish Territorial or Pueblo style of architecture, with flat roofs and other features suggestive of the area's traditional adobe construction. However, many contemporary houses in the city are built from lumber, concrete blocks, and other common building materials, but with stucco surfaces (known by the locals as "fake adobe", pronounced as one word) reflecting the historic style.

    In 2005/2006 a consultant group from Portland, Oregon has been preparing a “Santa Fe Downtown Vision Plan” to examine the long-range needs for the “downtown” area, roughly bounded by the Paseo de Peralta on the north, south and east sides and by Guadalupe Street on the west. In consultation with members of community groups, who are encouraged to provide feedback, the consultants will make recommendations on whether to proceed with the present policy of focusing on the Territorial and Pueblo styles.

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