This is the only type of architecture that can be referred to as truly "American," saving perhaps the unenvied skyscraper of the East. This latter, however, belongs to no school and knows no creed; it is not indigenous to the soil or produced by environment, native material, or climate. Instead, it defiles the heavens and cuts the landscape into futuristic nightmares of edge and angle.
By far the choicest flower of this renaissance style is the New Art Museum at Santa Fé. Recently completed, it is admired by all, architects and laymen alike. It embodies the designs of six of the ancient Spanish Missions, three centuries old, some of which have now disappeared. The others are fast decaying with the ravages of time. The outlines of the Museum are plastic, smooth, and flowing, rising in curves and terraces, without stiffness, sharpness, or repetition. There is a noticeable lack of symmetry, contrasting so much with the style of the Californian Missions. Consequently, there is a different composition and an added charm with every new position or change of aspect. Inside are paintings and sketches of Indian, Mexican, and desert life and scenes, specimens of native handiwork, and an exhaustive library.
Across the road, on the opposite corner, is the Governor's Palace, the oldest governmental building in the States. Its appearance would in modern eyes hardly justify the term "Palace." It is a very unimposing building of native architecture but contains relics, trophies, and works of art brought from all corners of the Western world. Within its adobe walls are housed prehistoric remains of the extinct civilization that thousands of years ago thrived in Western America.
The Art Museum at Santa Fé.
The Oldest House in America, at Santa Fé.
But not only the public buildings of Santa Fé are of Pueblo construction. Many of the latest private edifices, both residential and commercial, are of this strange architecture. The offices and works of the "Santa Fé Water and Light Company" give one the impression of its unique application to business buildings. But for sheer delight give me the private dwellings. It is beyond my power to convey an adequate impression of the soft beauty of one of these exquisitely-designed houses, with its smooth-flowing profiles, its shady "patio," open-air bathing pools and well-planned garden. One must go and see to understand and feel the charm of it all.