The Roots of Museum Hill

National Park Service Southwest Regional Office-Where art and gardens meet.

1100 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM

East of the Museum Hill complex on the Old Santa Fe Trail, the National Park Service (NPS) constructed a regional headquarters in the 1930s to manage the increasing number of Southwest parks in New Mexico and Arizona, including the Grand Canyon system. The NPS regional architect Cecil J. Doty, based in Oklahoma, designed a sprawling 24,000 square foot Spanish Pueblo Revival Style building, arranged around a magnificent central courtyard garden with funding from the New Deal.

In 1937, NPS Region III director Herbert Maier relocated the district office from Oklahoma City to temporary space in the Federal Courthouse in Santa Fe. After acquiring eight acres of land from the Laboratory of Anthropology for a $1 donation with the stipulation that the land be used for NPS activity, Maier and architect Doty devised what is believed to be the largest office building in the country constructed of adobe bricks. Over 280,000 adobe bricks hand mixed from soil on-site and dried in wooden forms were prepared for the massive project. Construction took place between 1937-39, funded by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA), which financed large-scale public building projects across the United States. Workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp #833, based in Santa Fe, erected the building and hand-crafted much of the interior furnishings and decorative art.

The design represents the National Park Service’s use of regional styles across the country emphasizing local culture and architectural traditions. The Spanish Pueblo Revival Style, initiated in Santa Fe around 1912, blends elements of the Native pueblos and the Spanish settlers. The style also highlights the NPS’s signature “rustic style” often colloquially called “parkitecture,” featuring local materials that complement the natural landscape. Here, immense two-to-five-foot-thick, battered and buttressed adobe walls blend the structure with the ground surrounding it. Local peeled pine logs from the Santa Fe National Forest, capped with massive carved corbels, support the roof and the portals. Flagstones from a ranch near Pecos were used to finish the stairway and the floors of the portals, lobby and conference room.              

Fine art and decorative art were commissioned with funding from the New Deal’s Federal Arts Program. Exceptional examples of Pueblo pottery from Maria and Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo, Lela Gutierrez and Eulogia Naranjo of Santa Clara Pueblo, and Agapita Quintana of Cochiti Pueblo, as well as 47 Navajo rugs and blankets, adorn the rooms. The local artist colony in Santa Fe and Taos provided 14 oil and watercolor paintings, including three lithographs by B.J.O. Nordfeldt; five etchings by Gene Kloss; 12 ink and pencil drawings by Cecil J. Doty, Joe Garcia, C. Salvados, N. Salcido, and Samuel R. Romero; and 10 block prints by Ruth Connelly for the building. Santa Fe-based Hungarian artist Oden Hullenkramer created the largest of the oil paintings, portraying Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the National Park Service. Other painters included E. Boyd, Victor Higgins, Chris Jorgensen, Joe Garcia, Lawrence Cata, Joseph Fleck, Milton Swatek, and N. Salcido. Locally-crafted decorative art includes pierced and hammered tin light fixtures and hand-carved, Spanish Colonial Style movable and built-in furniture, designed by architect Doty and crafted by local artisans.            

The oversize central courtyard encircled by portals is the focal point of the structure and is meant to echo the historic compounds of the Spanish missions developed in the 17^th and 18^th century. Offices open on to the portals in the traditional manner of rooms in a hacienda. The courtyard is lush with native and exotic plantings, interspersed with flagstone pathways. Originally designed by NPS landscape architects Harvey Cornell and John Kell, the courtyard was laid out to emulate the traditions of the Spanish Plaza and Mexican plazuela with “oasis” style trees, shrubs, flowers, and a lawn which evolved over the years. (Fig. , photograph of courtyard). In the 1970s, roses were introduced and in the 1990s the Santa Fe Garden Club updated the style evolved over the years from naturalized and exotic ornamental plantings, emulating historic courtyards, to slightly more drought-tolerant vegetation. A fishpond edged with traditional built-in adobe bancos is the highlight of the open space. Bancos also border the built-in planters found in the northwest and southwest corners of the courtyard. Several smaller peripheral patios are found throughout the building, emphasizing the indoor-outdoor appeal of the property.

Vignette essay-Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

The National Park Service Southwest Regional Office is a tribute to the hard work of the hundreds of young men,17-23 years old and mostly from local Hispanic families, who built it. The CCC was one of many New Deal programs intended to stimulate the U.S. economy by providing jobs for the unemployed. Utilizing the expertise of the departments of Labor, War, Agriculture, and Interior, young men were trained at military bases and then housed at camps around the country. Each camp housed about 200 workers. The Departments of Agriculture and Interior provided planning and technical support for public works projects. New Mexico hosted about 102 CCC camps and an unusually large number of projects because the federal government owned 33% of the state’s land.    

The CCC boys that worked on the NPS Southwest Regional Office lived at a camp in Hyde Memorial State Park, which they also built, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  They earned $30 per month, including their room and board, and $22 of that was sent home to their families, a welcome income during the Great Depression. The boys learned construction and carpentry skills and, in this case, traditional adobe-making. The work of the CCC is related to the design philosophy set forth by the National Park Service and the New Deal promoting architecture that emphasized local materials that blended with the surrounding natural landscape.

Vignette Essay- “Parkitecture”

Nicknamed “parkitecture,” large and small structures in parks across the country were fashioned in rustic regional styles and patterns by the CCC. Rather than employ a universal formula for buildings, decorative art and landscape features of parks, reflected the vernaular architectural heritage common to their areas. According to a manual published by the National Park Service in 1938, “Structures derived from the log and stone cabins of the pioneer, from the Spanish, Pueblo, and several manifestations of the Colonial, and from many other traditional structural expressions born of history, local materials, and climate.”[i] Log cabin style, local stone constructions, simple board and batten buildings were popular in National Parks and National Forests throughout the country. The buildings blended rather than detracted from their locales. Types of park buildings included, administrative units, staff quarters, maintenance buildings, bathrooms and bath houses, boat houses, and picnic shelters. National parks also began to offer overnight facilities for campers including lodges, inns, cabins, wash houses, laundries, shared kitchens. Cultural fascilities included museums, shrines historical markers, theaters, lecture and community rooms. Buildings were designed by architects working directly for the US Department of the Interior who endeavored to maintain local flavor.  

            Parkitecture was not limited to buildings but included a varying array of related dependencies and infrastructure. Quaint complements to primary park structures included outdoor fireplaces, drinking fountains, campstoves, signage, telephone booths, waste receptacles, and benches. Trailside seats offered a view of the landscape for weary hikers and often formed the core of scenic overlooks, reached by marked footpaths. Related infrastructure included bridges, gates, dams, fences, and walls. Organization and grouping played a large part in pulling the built elements together in a cohesive and attractive composition. In particular, cabin arrangement for visitors established a new form which departed from the myth of the lone cabin in the woods. Groups of cabins situated around a common core, featuring a fire pit, a bath house, or even a common kitchen became popular.           

Park buildings were designed to harmonize with the natural landscapes of the parks by utilizing local materials. Structures were made from the very trees cut on-site, rocks collected from the park properties themselves, or slate and flagstone cut from the surrounding hills . In New Mexico, park buildings constructed by the CCC were often rendered in adobe bricks. As local boys typically made up the workforce, many had experience making and laying adobe. In Bandelier National Park, adobe buildings included a main lodge, staff quarters, cabins, and administrative offices.