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| An Early Photo of the New Mexico Museum of Art, c. 1917 |
The image above was featured on the cover of the January, 1918 issue of Art and Archeology Magazine, and it's one of the first widely distributed pictures of the New Mexico Museum of Art, a building which appears to be nearly identical today.
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| Recent picture of NMMOA (from WikiMedia) |
Part of the ethos of Santa Fe Style seems to be to preserve things "as they are"
forever, which is a curious ethos when you think about it, especially in this land of mud and wind and endless sunshine. The Museum is consciously built in Santa Fe's New/Old Style. It's not built of adobe but of burnt brick and concrete with a cement stucco coating. It's a near duplication of the New Mexico Pavilion at the Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915 in San Diego, California, which in turn was styled after the Acoma Pueblo Mission Church originally built in the 1600's -- with a few other elements thrown in for variety. (Specifically, the second floor balcony on the facade of the St. Francis Auditorium is taken from features found on a number of other Pueblo mission churches.)
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| Acoma Mission Church, c. 1914 |
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| New Mexico Building, Panama Pacific Exhibition, San Diego, 1915 |
The New Mexico Building in San Diego's Balboa Park still exists (
as the Balboa Park Club), though it has been expanded and remodeled over the years.
