Old Santa Fe Trail Building National Historic Landmark Landscape: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Intermountain Support Office Santa Fe, National Park Service
Morrow, Reardon, Wilkinson, Ltd.. 2005. Old Santa Fe Trail Building National Historic Landmark Landscape: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Intermountain Support Office Santa Fe, National Park Service. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 850083. NPS Intermountain Regional Office. Intermountain Regional Office/CLI Database
The Old Santa Fe Trail Building, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is built upon an alluvial terrace on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on 8.04 acres of pinon juniper woodland. The Old Santa Fe Trail Building landscape includes the office building complex (building, courtyards/patios, entrance road and parking lots), Arroyo Chamiso, and surrounding pinyon‑juniper vegetation. It is a designed landscape with a lush interior and peripheral courtyards and native exterior plantings. Unique architectural elements in the landscape include exterior adobe walls which follow the edges of parking lots and signify the entrance to the site as one approaches the buildings from Old Santa Fe Trail. The building and site were constructed between 1937 and 1941, during the New Deal Era. The construction period depicts the artistry and craft of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews and the architectural style known as Spanish Pueblo Revival. During the construction, the CCC crews both protected and established new stands of native vegetation near the building. In the peripheral and interior courtyards, the planting scheme utilized exotic and naturalized plants to emulate historic courtyard design. The landscape retains much of its original integrity, which includes the walls, stone curbing, native, exotic and naturalized vegetation, flagstone paving and parking lots. Although the New Deal Era creates significance for the building, the site's proximity to the Old Santa Fe Trail also contributes to its significance as a part of a larger historic landscape. The Old Santa Fe Trail Building (OSFTB) cultural landscape is a historic designed landscape that accurately represents the efforts of the National Park Service to design and the CCC and WPA to construct buildings and their surrounding environments using revived and re‑interpreted local vernacular design traditions. This fine attention to detail is exhibited in features such as flagstone patios, hand carved vigas inside the buildings as well as along the portals, adobe bancos lining the courtyards and patios, and adobe walls demarcating interior and exterior plantings and site design. For example, adobe walls follow the edges of parking lots and mark the entrance to the site from the Old Santa Fe Trail. The site has acquired significance by its association with the regional revival of architectural traditions (here known as “Spanish‑Pueblo Revival” style) and important designers and architects such as John Gaw Meem, Isaac Hamilton Rapp, and others. The site has acquired additional significance by its association with the 1930s NPS design tenets articulated by Albert Good in Park and Recreation Structures and referred to as “Parkitecture” or “Government Rustic style”. The key period of significance is the beginning of its construction in July 1937 to December 1941, following the completion of construction and landscaping operations. The Old Santa Fe Trail building retains its integrity as an administrative office for the National Park Service. The building is the largest known adobe office building and one of the largest secular adobe buildings in the United States.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Morrow, Reardon, Wilkinson, Ltd.
- Date of Issue
- 2005-06-30
- Publisher
- NPS Intermountain Regional Office
- Units
- IMR , IMSF
- Keywords
- Administrative Office, Architecture, art, Cecil Doty, Civilian Conservation Corps, Conservation, Conservation of Natural resources, garden, Government Office, Harvey Cornell, Historic Designed Landscape, Historic Preservation, Historic Vernacular Landscape, Isaac Hamilton Rapp, John Gaw Meem, Landscape architecture, New Mexico, Old Santa Fe Trail Building, Origin and Development of the National Park Service, Period Revivals, Plaza, Public Space, Recreation, Region III Headquarters Building, Rustic style, Sante Fe, Social Historic, Southwest Regional Office Building, Spanish-Pueblo Revival Style, The 1930s: Era of Public Works, Transportation, Vernacular architecture, Works Progress Administration