Features

Turn of the Century

Ashleigh Morris
Looking back at how the City Different redefined itself 100 years ago
The dawn of the 20th century was a peculiar period in American history. It was a time of turmoil—of social ills and major innovation—although it’s one often overlooked by the history books. “I have always had the suspicion that the 1900s, that is, the decade from 1900 to 1910, is a vastly understudied period,” writes historian Bob Batchelor in his book The 1900s, arguing that this so-called “quiet decade” was anything but. Indeed, the early 1900s were America’s—and similarly, Santa Fe’s—coming of age.

Generally, this period, known as the Progressive era, started in the late 1890s and lasted until the end of World War I (1918). Theodore Roosevelt, vaulted from the position of vice president after the 1901 assassination of William McKinley, would transform a struggling United States into a world leader by ushering in an age of reform and large-scale projects, from the creation of national forests to the digging of the Panama Canal, the breaking up of business monopolies, and the establishment of consumer protection laws.

It wasn’t an easy time. The country was plagued by huge waves of immigration that pushed cities beyond capacity as well as a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots. Yet the early 1900s were also an age of innovation: The dawn of the 20th century was riding the wave of the industrial revolution. Founded in 1903, Ford Motor Company would soon adopt assembly-line production for its revolutionary automobiles. Orville and Wilbur Wright were taking to the skies. Upton Sinclair released his scathing exposé, The Jungle (1906). And a host of technological marvels—from crayons to popsicles, Hershey’s Kisses to Kodak’s $1 Brownie cameras—were born in the early days of this new era.

American culture was coming into its own, too. The struggle, led by labor unions, to shorten the workday (from 12 hours to 8) resulted in more leisure time for average citizens, and with it, a host of new hobbies. Baseball was becoming our national pastime, with the first World Series played in 1903. Corsets and bustle skirts were giving way to less restrictive fashions (easier for bicycling and climbing into horseless carriages), with bowler hats a must for men. We were a nation on the move, although not necessarily cognizant of where we might be going. And in the sleepy Southwestern town of Santa Fe, a city was succeeding in spite of itself.

“What we tend to know about Santa Fe history is the coming of the railroad and the artist-colony years, and the rest in between is just a blur,” says Tomas Jaehn, curator of the Fray Angelico Chavez History Library at the Palace of the Governors. “Yet the early 1900s were a staging ground for making Santa Fe different.”

With the nation’s population passing the 75 million mark at the turn of the century, Santa Fe County’s population was hovering around 14,000. (Some historians cite roughly 10,000 for the city.) “Everyone knew everybody,” says Jaehn. “You could send a letter just by writing the name and the word city—no street address needed.”

The railroad was already a fixture in town, with AT&SF trains chugging in from Lamy since 1880. The Chile Line, a spur of the Denver & Rio Grande, was hauling agricultural goods from its brick depot in the Railyard (now Tomasita’s Restaurant), running north along Guadalupe in front of the Santuario de Guadalupe as it made its way across the state line to Alamosa. Electrical lights ran along many downtown streets. Some homes may have had telephones. And a few automobiles navigated the city’s rut-filled, dusty streets.

Yet the city was suffering. Bypassed by the railroad’s main line, Santa Fe was losing business to Albuquerque and Las Vegas. The era of traders and trappers was long gone, the Santa Fe Trail having closed with the coming of the railroad. (A marker commemorating its run, from 1821 to 1880, was installed on the Plaza by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1907.) A 1905 New Mexican editorial pleaded: “Large numbers of people from the Duke City are coming here with a baseball excursion and Santa Fe should be clean and pretty.” But the city did have one saving grace: politics.

“Santa Fe was still a mud-huddled capital of New Mexico,” says historian Thomas Chavez about those Territorial years when the region was no longer under Spanish rule but awaiting acceptance into the U.S. That battle would drag on for 64 years—due to a backlash against our large Hispanic and Native American populations, many argue—until January 6, 1912, when New Mexico was finally admitted to the Union. “It was a period of transition,” says Chavez. “Santa Fe wasn’t the biggest city in the state anymore, nor the most important. Las Vegas was that, because of the railroad and Highlands University [then the New Mexico Normal School]. They were getting more Victorian houses. In fact, they still have more.”

Instead, Santa Fe was looking to somehow reinvigorate itself. With its artist-colony days still years in the future, what it had at the turn of the century was a collection of enterprising homesteaders, astute businessmen, politicians, and city supporters who cherished this Western outpost and hoped to capitalize on its unique geography and fascinating blend of cultures. “Being the capital kept it going,” says Chavez. “If [that] had moved out, the town might have died. But it kept enough people here, with civic pride to lead it back to prominence.”

Physically, Santa Fe in the early 1900s was another world. “It was dirty and muddy. There were no paved streets. People still used horses and buggies,” says Chavez. “All the foothills were denuded of trees because they were still harvesting wood to keep warm and to cook. They used burros that smelled and left droppings. It couldn’t have been a pleasure to walk around.” Water Street was basically an open ditch, cradling a natural spring that was also used as a sewer. Beyond it, to the south of the Santa Fe River—which was known to flood the town in spring—houses of prostitution were clustered among the side streets, alleyways, and low-lying buildings. Miguel Antonio Otero, Jr., of the influential Otero family, served as New Mexico’s territorial governor from 1897 to 1906, and still-familiar family names like Delgado, Ortiz, Catron, Springer, Spiegelberg, and Spitz held prominence.

A few local landmarks already dotted the landscape. Thanks to the railroad, many were fashioned to reflect the Victorian influences of the day, including the home at 122 Grant (the Grant Corner Inn, in recent times), built in 1905 and one of the best remaining examples of outside architectural influences during the era. Other buildings included the First Presbyterian Church, still standing at the corner of Griffin and Grant, though now with a new facade; the two-story Catron Block building on the Plaza, built for the Catron & Catron law firm; and the Old Curio Shop on West San Francisco Street, with its famous cart resting on top even then. Numerous hotels were in operation, among them the Montezuma Hotel on Water Street (now Doodlet’s), the Palace Hotel (which became the Hotel DeVargas, now Hotel St. Francis), and the Claire Hotel (home of the Ore House restaurant). The Staab house, today enclosed within La Posada Resort, was a single-family residence. The Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, built in the early 1910s, was one of the first attempts to create a unique Santa Fe–specific architecture, relying heavily on Moorish designs.

While artists such as Carlos Vierra and Sheldon Parsons came here in the early 1900s for health reasons—Santa Fe’s Sunmount Sanatorium was a well-regarded healing institute for tuberculosis patients—the city was trailing Taos as an artists colony. (Burt Phillips’s and Ernest Blumenschien’s wagon wheel broke further north in 1898). “We were shifting from being an important political and economic hub into an important political, social, and health hub,” explains Jaehn.

The city was willing to try anything, including ridding the city of its mud huts and narrow portals. “One line of booster rhetoric even turned economic stagnation into an advantage,” writes Chris Wilson in his book The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition. “Compared to those boisterous adolescents Albuquerque and Las Vegas, this argument went, Santa Fe offered the quiet, repose, and refinement, complemented by its beautiful location and climate. … All that was needed to make the city into a leading health resort and upper-class enclave were a few more shade trees, clean streets kept wetted down in the dusty season and lighted at night, an improved plaza park, and a few historical markers.”

Not all of its citizens agreed that modernity was the answer. Edgar Lee Hewett, an innovative teacher and amateur archaeologist, was initially drawn to the region as the first president of Las Vegas’s New Mexico Normal School. After Governor Otero blocked his contract renewal in 1903, Hewett delved into other passions. He teamed up with fellow archaeology enthusiasts Frank Springer, Sylvanus Morley, and Jesse Nusbaum to promote the study of the region’s prehistory, resulting in the founding, in 1909, of both the Museum of New Mexico and the School of American Archaeology (still operating, now as the School of Advanced Research). Instead of looking to the future, these preservationists turned toward our rich past, from invigorating local artistic traditions at the pueblos to a revival of Spanish Colonial art.

This preservationist group’s impact didn’t stop there. “In the spring of 1912,” and on the heels of official statehood, writes Wilson, “Mayor Arthur Seligman appointed Hewett and Morley to the newly formed Santa Fe City Planning Board and charged them with finding a way to stem the city’s 30-year economic decline.” The result: adoption of the national City Beautiful movement, meant to capitalize on civic improvements and thus lure tourists. The board’s recommendations included “laying out parks and boulevards … and the bringing about of some architectural homogeneity.” The end result was a conscientious decision to promote Santa Fe’s unique Pueblo Revival architecture, transforming the city from simply a “City Beautiful” to the “City Different.”

Planners ended the trend of naming streets after distant politicians and places (Grant, Griffin, Manhattan, San Francisco) and looked to local history instead: Calle Analco, Armijo, and Don Gaspar among them. A spate of new construction soon followed. Nusbaum led the redesign of the Palace of the Governors, drawing upon the building’s pre-1850 history, before its 18th- century Spanish portals were replaced with Greek Revival columns and balustrades.

By decade’s end, Santa Fe would see the successes of its marketing campaign. With a growing reputation as a unique locale, leagues of creative types—including writers Willa Cather and Mary Austin and artists Georgia O’Keeffe, Randall Davey, and John Sloan—would trek to the City Different by the late 1910s. “Once statehood was achieved and Santa Fe resolved its contending identities,” writes Wilson, “the romantic image of the city became the central vehicle for economic resurgence.” As America moved forward, Santa Fe found its direction in the past—and the city’s never been the same since.