| Santa Fe Style
Santa Fe Style
A Santa Fe Style Home remains a style like no other. It's roots go back centuries to the Anasazi people of the Southwest who lived in condominium-like communities built of mud adobe bricks. Centuries later, Spanish and Mexican settlers created traditional New Mexico homes out of adobe. These homes were both inexpensive, flexible and practical. Adobe bricks were nothing more than sun dried clay mixed with grass and mortared with your everyday mud. This natural organic building material keeps homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The word "adobe" describes not only the mud, but the bricks and buildings created by them. For nearly two millenia, people in the Southwest have used the earth's mud to build cave dwellings, kiva houses, pueblos, hogans, government buildings, haciendas, homes, stores and mansions. Together the word and buildings have set the style, look and feel of casual elegance which continues to evolve due to the blend of Native, Spanish and Anglo people drawn here. For many, adobe homes provide a connection to nature and solace for the soul.
The artist Georgia O'Keefe purchased her adobe Ghost Ranch home in 1940. She called it her 'favorite place' as the landscape and home became her creative place of inspiration.
Today, few original adobe homes remain in 21st Santa Fe. The new Santa Fe Style Home is built of frame and covered with stucco concrete placed low to the ground making the community landscape fit almost invisibly into the high desert terrain. Like the first arrivals on the Old Santa Fe Trail, many visitors and newcomers have trouble distinguishing the homes from the land. Scarity and the high cost of skilled craftman make building in pure adobe brick considerably more expensive today. Yet, the innovative sense of style for which Santa Fe is renowned inspires many newcomers to create, design and remodel homes that combine vision and landscape with the sensibilities of color, space, gardens, openness and elements of those original adobe homes. Look at Behind Adobe Walls by Landt and Lisl Dennis for a glimpse of a wonderful range of personal visions for living spaces in Santa Fe and Taos.
For more information about Santa Fe Style elements and detailed explanations of this architectural vocabulary and local lingo click here.
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