Architect, John Gaw Meem and the Spanish-Pueblo Revival Style in New Mexico
John Gaw Meem (1894-1983) became an influential historic architect, known for popularizing the Spanish Pueblo Revival Style in New Mexico. Meem combined many of the significant features of traditional Pueblo and Spanish colonial architecture with modern construction materials creating contemporary buildings that reflect the spirit of the ancient forms and historic architecture of the region. Meem’s design for the Director’s Residence is an exemplar of his residential style and one of the few of his domestic designs open to the public.
Like many of the prominent settlers who helped develop New Mexico during the 20th century, Meem came to the region as a patient at a tuberculosis sanatorium. Raised in Brazil by missionary parents and trained as a structural engineer at the Virginia Military Institute, Meem was infected with T.B. while serving as a soldier during World War I. On the advice of a doctor in New York, Meem traveled to Santa Fe in 1920 to recover at Sunmount Sanatorium. While there, Meem explored the area and was captivated by the local environment and ancient buildings of Native and Spanish origin. At Sunmount, Meem socialized with a like-minded group of patients and early artists in Santa Fe inspired by the regional buildings and local landscape. When Meem sufficiently recovered from his illness, he left the sanatorium to study architecture at the Atelier des Beaux-Arts in Denver, Colorado, a distance-education program where practicing architects instructed pupils in the principles of classical design seen in early Greek and Roman architecture, emphasizing symmetry and formality. Meem also completed an apprenticeship at the Denver architectural firm of Fisher and Fisher, where he focused on the residential design of small houses and was a member of the Progressive association, the Small House Service Bureau. The two stimuli later influenced his signature style for classical massing and division of public and private spaces, while maintaining practical human scale, comfort and intimacy in his residential commissions.
After a relapse of his tuberculosis, Meem returned to Sunmount where he opened an architectural practice on the sanatorium grounds in 1924, at the encouragement of director and lifelong friend Dr. Frank Mera. Here, in a small cottage, Meem and early partner Cassius McCormick, began working in the Santa Fe regional style, which became the popular choice for local houses and public buildings. By the 1920s, with the publicity surrounding the restoration of the region’s oldest building, the Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe style evolved to incorporate both Spanish Colonial and Pueblo traditional architectural forms including, flat-roofs, adobe construction, portals with carved brackets, posts and corbels, wooden casement windows with large wooden lintels, and vigas which extended out from the porches and roofs.