Features

It’s About Time

The Historic Districts Ordinance’s architectural restrictions have preserved Santa Fe’s distinctive beauty, but the landmark law is also a flashpoint for controversy. Now, 50 years after its passage, Jason Silverman examines how it continues to shape our city.

What would Santa Fe be today if our town council hadn’t passed the Historic Districts Ordinance in 1957? Irene von Horvath’s got one word: “Albuquerque,” she says with a laugh. The 88-year-old architect and painter is the last surviving member of a group of Santa Feans who imagined, drafted, and lobbied for the landmark urban-planning guidelines that have kept Santa Fe looking like Santa Fe. Without the historic review ordinance, von Horvath might imagine Santa Fe’s venerable neighborhoods being overrun by McMansions, gaudy modernist experiments, and view-obstructing towers.

But would it? Could downtown Santa Fe instead have ended up with a more vibrant, edgy feel? For 50 years, local architects have scoffed at what they describe as the ordinance’s stifling, backwards-looking effects. Trey Jordan, an award-winning architect whose mildly modernist buildings have become flashpoints for controversy, describes the behavior of today’s H (for Historic Design Review)-Board as “despicable.” On the eve of the law’s golden anniversary, the divisive, decisive Santa Fe question—at least for local architects, builders, civic boosters, and historians—is no longer “Red or green?” These days, if you are ready for an earful, ask anyone in the real estate industry, “How do you feel about the H-Board?”

Battles over Santa Fe’s architectural style are nothing new. As early as the 1880s, the Santa Fe New Mexican bemoaned “the shapeless adobe houses that must give way gradually to modern buildings.” As its economy stagnated in the late 1800s, Santa Fe, according to historian Chris Wilson, was torn between becoming “Anywhere, U.S.A.”—the preference of business boosters hoping to attract East Coast investment—and an adobe playground that lured tourists in search of the exotic, picturesque West. In 1912, regionalists, led by archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett, won a first battle, passing a landmark urban plan that, without any legal teeth, set out, in firm language, to “guard the old streets against any change that will affect their appearance.” Around the same time, city officials began bandying the phrase “the City Different” about in its marketing campaigns.

“Santa Fe was one of the earliest places to think in terms of preserving a larger district, of preserving an entire environment,” says Wilson, whose books include The Myth of Santa Fe and Facing Southwest: The Life and Houses of John Gaw Meem. Accompanying the 1912 plan was an orchestrated effort to identify “Santa Fe style” as something distinct from, say, California Mission architecture. The photographer Jesse Nussbaum, along with Sylvanus Morley, documented historic buildings, identifying their unifying features and helping codify what became known as Spanish Pueblo Revival architecture. These buildings had rounded corners, portals, exposed vigas, and earth-toned exteriors and, of course, were “low and long rather than high and narrow,” as one Chamber of Commerce document described them at the time.

After John Gaw Meem arrived in town in the early 1920s as a tuberculosis patient, the historic preservation movement found its most articulate spokesperson and most celebrated practitioner. Trained as an engineer (he never completed his architecture degree), Meem designed 150 houses in Santa Fe, including the Laboratory of Anthropology, a major La Fonda Hotel renovation, and the restoration of the portals around the Plaza. Though at first on the fence about design-review regulations, in time, Meem became an ardent regionalist. By the early 1950s, a handful of municipalities had begun using the law to protect their historic districts. Santa Fe’s mayor Leo Murphy wanted to do the same, and the job to design the specs fell to Irene von Horvath and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Oliver La Farge, both members of Santa Fe’s planning commission (see “Remembering When,” opposite). The duo spent months studying Santa Fe’s buildings, reading design-review guidelines from other cities, and wrangling with other commissioners over the language.

The plan laid out regulations for new construction and renovations, with the guiding spirit driven by the concept of “harmony.” Their Historic Styles Ordinance was passed in October 1957 with help from the eloquent Meem. “I’m sure that all of us here agree that it is a precious and unique heritage, to have a truly regional American architecture that belongs here and nowhere else,” he said at a city meeting that year. “But now, can it survive? Can it once more adapt and assimilate modern contemporary architecture? … The 20th century is in a hurry, it cannot wait. Under the impact of dynamic technology and the pressure of population, it is virtually exploding … If London and Rome are having trouble with this dominating sameness, how long do you think little Santa Fe can retain its unique and delightful character?”

The review process has gained more authority over the years. In 1983, more neighborhoods were added, and later, a stringent height restriction, inspired, some say, by the five-story Eldorado Hotel and, others say, by the multi-story building across from the Main Library on Washington Avenue. Today, the five historic districts—Downtown-Eastside, Don Gaspar, Westside-Guadalupe, Historic Transition, and Historic Review—cover 6.25 square miles, a little less than 20 percent of the city’s total area, and encompass more than 6,000 buildings. In 1992, the ordinance got more teeth, expanding to protect existing buildings and streetscapes from destruction, rather than overseeing only new construction and renovations.

Restrictions shift from district to district. In the residential Don Gaspar area, a variety of roofs (pitched and flat) and materials are allowed. In Westside-Guadalupe, stucco must be “browns, tans, or other earth tones,” and the types of roofs must be “wall dominated,” meaning that their geometry must be dictated more by their walls than their roofs. Some neighborhoods are friendlier to Territorial-style buildings; in others, think adobe, vigas, and rounded corners. Throughout the districts, signage is restricted, and along Canyon Road, “massing”—the appearance of thick, solid walls—is an important consideration. Much of the language in the ordinance is specific: “Earth color means colors found in the earth in the area of the city and may include dull or matte off-white (yeso). Bright white, or dark chocolate brown colors are not included.” But the most important factor in deciding what can be built is whether or not a new structure or addition will “ensure the harmonious, orderly and efficient growth and development of the city.”

Sharon Woods, appointed by Mayor David Coss as H-Board chairman this March, cites numerous examples of buildings or areas that have been saved. The courtyard between Il Vicino and Tokyo New Mex restaurants on West San Francisco Street was nearly swallowed by the Eldorado Hotel. The owners of the Inn at Loretto tried to build in the open space that surrounds the Loretto Chapel, with its lovely wrought-iron fence. (Woods remembers the owners saying they’d put “an adobe womb” around the famed chapel.) Public outcry saved both spaces. “That chapel belongs to everyone, not just to the owners of the Inn at Loretto,” says Woods, a builder and co-author of Santa Fe Style. “We don’t want it blocked from public visibility. That was a huge victory, not just for the H-Board or the city but for the citizens.”

Like any legal document, the Historic Districts Ordinance has plenty of ambiguities, anachronisms, and, perhaps, flaws. Regulating a large swath of a city is complicated. (A 1997 architectural survey identified 26 styles, including Bungalow, Mediterranean, Prairie, Postmodern, and New Mexico Vernacular.) More irksome to architects: For 50 years, the regulations have remained open to interpretation and the whims of those given the power to enforce it. “I feel a real commitment to not be arbitrary or capricious or allow the board to be,” says Woods. “But if it was just black and white, you wouldn’t need a board. There are projects that fit into the ordinance that are just butt ugly—they don’t work in terms of scale or matching what’s around them.”

The inevitable subjectivity of the Historic Districts Ordinance means that, even after a half-century, it continues to inflame passions. One might identify a question at the heart of each debate: What makes Santa Fe special? Von Horvath remembers that at one meeting someone asked, “How many of you have moved to Santa Fe by choice?” “Every hand in the room went up,” she recalls. “Every single person was there by choice. We knew why we liked Santa Fe, and we knew very clearly what we didn’t want for it.”

Or perhaps there’s a better question: What’s the best way to preserve something we all agree is special? David Rasch believes the ordinance is the right way to go. As the head of the city’s Historic Preservation Planning Division for the city, Rasch sees his job as protecting the integrity of the historic neighborhoods, even if that means facing down architects.

“Architects resisted then just like they do today,” he says. “They want to do their own style. They don’t want to follow our prescriptions. My argument is that they can design different kinds of buildings in 80 percent of the city. Why fight over 20 percent?”

But Trey Jordan, who has been cast in the media as both nemesis and victim of Rasch and the H-Board, worries about what he considers to be increasingly strict and increasingly subjective interpretations of the ordinance. Will the H-board freeze-dry the city into some antiquated, unspecified past or, worse, as a kind of faux-adobe Disneyland? Can interesting buildings continue to be built in the city’s key areas? Santa Fe, after all, is a haven for creative people. Shouldn’t its most important neighborhoods reflect that?

Some considered the home Jordan designed for Stephen Mills and Susan Emmet Reid, roughly a mile from the Plaza, too radical for a historic neighborhood—irrespective of the fact that the building plans had been approved by the H-Board. Others found its sage-colored exterior walls and crisp edges a lovely, ingenious update to Santa Fe style. After someone spray-painted the home with Nazi references, Santa Fe’s design ordinance controversies ended up as fodder in The New York Times. Since that building, however, Jordan, whom the New Mexican described as a “21st-century architect in a 17th-century city,” has had the plans for his own house rejected by the H-Board, despite giving what he felt was solid documentation that his proposed building wasn’t all that unusual. “These people have taken into their own hands what is allowed and what isn’t, regardless of the history and streetscape,” Jordan says. “When you talk about neighboring buildings, they don’t care. They want mimicry in a very narrow sense. … I think that if it was a balanced process, we could go through and talk about ways in which the ordinance could be modified to really encourage creativity.” His suggestions: clarify some of the language and add more specificity to the codes. He would also like to see more architects on the board, with the American Institute of Architects, the governing board for the industry, playing a lead role.

But even architects have differing opinions. Victoria Jacobson, a former head of AIA Santa Fe, says she always loved the way Santa Fe looks. That’s why she, along with so many other talented, creative people, first came here—and then stayed. “The ordinance may not be perfect, but it has done an incredible job of keeping the unique visual qualities of Santa Fe intact,” she says. “And they wouldn’t have been otherwise. Most architects consider the ordinance as getting
in the way of good architecture. But what good architecture depends on is good architects.”

Jacobson’s successor, John Barton, current head of AIA, feels differently. “I can’t believe that there are many self-respecting architects who would think it’s a good ordinance,” he says, stressing that he makes these comments as an architect and not as an AIA officer. “I think it needs a lot of revamping. And not just the ordinance, but the whole approach to preservation … This ordinance retards good modern design, or you end up with a stage set in town.”

It’s important to recognize that the continued controversy about the H-Board and the Historic Districts Ordinance grows out of a shared passion for Santa Fe. If we argue about Santa Fe’s architecture, it’s because we understand that our city’s physical identity reflects who we, as Santa Feans, want to be. If no one battles over how crisp the corners of a wall should be in Plano, Sioux Falls, or even in Albuquerque, it’s because the architecture in those cities isn’t asked to shoulder the weight of our collective cultural fantasies. It’s not just locals who project the notions of Santa Fe—often described as “magical,” or “European,” or “organic”
or “quaint” or “exotic”—onto our city’s buildings.

A recent New York Times article by local writer Henry Shukman, “Is Santa Fe Ready for a Makeover?” painted a particularly romantic portrait of the city: “ A crowd of well-dressed people is spilling out of St. Francis Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown Santa Fe, a grand adobe building some 90 years old, with monolithic mud towers and tender curvaceous walls connecting them. The late sun doesn’t just gleam on the old adobe edifice. It’s deeper than that. The red and orange that lights up the walls, over the heads of the exiting crowd, seems to come from deep within them.”

Lovely, yes. But the St. Francis Auditorium is made of brick, and those towers are covered with concrete stucco, not mud—the same materials used just about everywhere. Faux-dobe, wags call it. But in just the right light, it, and so many other buildings here, seem to summon visions of a magical city, unique and precious. And that may be as much a reflection of the people who live in Santa Fe’s buildings as it is of the buildings themselves.

“Santa Fe has a very strong sense of identity,” Wilson says. “I think of it like a medieval city-state—a world apart, with its own history and distinctive character, which live on in the vitality of the artistic and intellectual and social activist community.”Even those who complain about the ways the H-Board functions must admit that the ordinances have preserved some of our charm. If there’s no place on earth like Santa Fe, it’s in large part because there is no ordinance quite like the Historic Districts Ordinance—which, in fact,
predates our country’s national preservation act.

“Virtually anywhere else in the country, it’s okay to tear down the old and put up the new,” says Woods. “And it’s not like we’ve just preserved a piece. The Historic Districts Ordinance covers a significant chunk of our community. That means people live with the historicity every day. They appreciate it. This architecture brings tremendous comfort to people. It’s part of why many of us want to be here.”


Remembering When
Irene von Horvath moved to Santa Fe in 1954, and since then has gone to great efforts to preserve the city’s charms. In 1957, with Oliver La Farge, she drafted what is today known as the Historic Districts Ordinance, which dictates construction in the city’s older neighborhoods. Von Horvath has fought for natural treasures, too, helping protect Atalaya Mountain from development. Almost 90, the retired architect and painter remains an influential presence.

Your first trip to Santa Fe was in the early 1940s. What were your impressions?
It was just before Christmas, and I was waiting for the bus at Highway 66 in Moriarty. Finally, an army bus of some kind showed up and we headed north. Boy, when we got to Galisteo, it was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. We got to the outskirts of Santa Fe, and in those years everybody was burning piñon wood in those lovely houses. Somehow it was just a different world. And I thought, isn’t it marvelous that there is something like this in the United States? I wept when I left. It took me 11 years to save up enough money to move, but I did.

Was there already a lot of debate about historic preservation then?
No. What was happening was a lot of wealthy elderly ladies were buying up large tracts of land—everything along Canyon Road. Little by little, they had acquired a lot of very important real estate. I don’t think they realized how valuable a thing they were doing.

You eventually joined the planning commission.
The League of Women Voters needed somebody to report on the planning commission, so I went to meetings and sat quietly and took notes. I hadn’t met any of the commission members, but when they needed a replacement, someone said, “Why don’t we ask her? She’s a registered Republican.” They were all Democrats, and they thought they needed a token Republican. They put me on the planning commission without even finding out what I did. They were surprised that I was an architect. Then came a request from [Mayor Leo Murphy]. He said, “I want the planning commission to come up with historic-style zoning.” Our chairman, Kenneth Clarke, looked around at us—all kinds of businessmen and real estate operators and top-level politicians. Then there was Oliver La Farge, the writer, and myself. So he nominated the two of us—just because he didn’t know what to do with us two. Oliver and I did a lot of research. There were only one or two other historic-style ordinances in the country [Charleston’s was created in 1931] . We read them and tried to apply them here.

Was it a contentious process?
Step by step, we went through various [elements] we wanted to control—appearance, color, size, whatever. And each one of those things was battled quite thoroughly, especially by the real estate agents, who said they would lose their clientele if they had to follow these guidelines. Almost all of the architects were against the zoning. They said, “An architect is trained to know what is right, to do what is right by the city, to appreciate what we’ve got here. We don’t want any kind of law.” It was very difficult to accomplish.

John Gaw Meem helped?
Meem was a very important person in this. He’d been living here a number of years, and all his friends were saying that without the ordinance, we’d lose our beautiful city. Architects told him, “Oh no, we won’t, we know better.” The more he thought about it, the more it became clear to him that you can’t just hope for the best. … He finally went to the right side.

By October 1957, you had built public support for the ordinance.
There were a lot of people for it, and a lot of people who’d been talked into being against it. One lady said, “How dull would it be if every tree in the forest were the same?” How stupid would it be to haveevery tree completely different?

Was there anything you didn’t accomplish?
Height limitations. We said we didn’t need a height limitation because zoning would take care of it. But it wasn’t enough.—Jason Silverman