In the early 19th century, churches at Ranchos de Taos (1805-1815[52]; Figure 9g), Chimayo (about 1810; Figure 9h), and Córdova (after 1830; Figure 9i) continued to employ the trapezoidal sanctuary form. By midcentury, penitente brotherhoods are known to have been active in these villages, and the local ecclesiastic structures could have acted as an influence in the design of the penitente moradas at Abiquiú.
In summary, the moradas at Abiquiú are traditional regional buildings in material and in basic form. The pointed west end of each building, however, is an ecclesiastic innovation in an otherwise typical domestic design. These moradas provide a significant design variant in the history of Spanish-American architecture in New Mexico.
[44] The "Hall of Everyday Life in the American Past" in the Museum of History and Technology (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) displays an interior typical of a Spanish-New Mexican adobe house of about 1800.
[45] George Kubler, The Religious Architecture of New Mexico (Colorado Springs, 1940), p. viii.
[46] Bainbridge Bunting, Taos Adobes (Santa Fe, 1964), P. 54.
[47] L-plan moradas are pictured by Woodward [see ftn. 13] in a 1925 photograph at San Mateo, a different morada from that illustrated in Charles F. Lummis, Land of Poco Tiempo (New York, 1897), as well as in another Woodward photograph [see ftn. 13] taken on the road to Chimayo. L. B. Prince, Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico (Cedar Rapids, 1915), shows an L-plan morada near Las Vegas. Was the L-plan house an unconscious recall of the more secure structure that completely enclosed a placita?
[48] Bunting, p. 56. After 1960 the Arroyo Hondo morada became the private residence of Larry Franks.
[49] AASF, Loose Documents, Mission, 1829 (May 27).
[50] Kubler, Religious Architecture, p. 103.
[51] George Kubler and Martin Soria, The Art and Architecture of Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500 to 1800 (Baltimore, 1959), pp. 3, 64, 74.