Santa Fe Homes come in many stripes: clean contemporaries, Spanish Mission revivals, brick cottages, Victorians, and Craftsman bungalows as well as numerous variations on the Pueblo adobe—what people think of as quintessential Santa Fe. Actually, Santa Fe Style is a pastiche of architectural elements, the result of a centuries old dialog between several cultures. Its roots reach back to the Pueblo Indians whose sprawling, multi-storied, communal homes were made of mud, grass, wood and stone. In the 1600s, arriving Spaniards introduced new techniques and features: adobe bricks, carved wooden doors, ornamental corbels, hornos and interior courtyards among them Then, in the 20th century, citizens of the newly formed State of New Mexico sought to codify the elements of these historical styles into a unique architectural fingerprint. With the Santa Fe Historic Zoning ordinance of 1957, spearheaded by John Gaw Meem, a clearly defined Pueblo style construction became the law.
Leave a Reply