Two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen with “range, ice, and dinette,” living room, a few closets, a one-car garage, portal— BAM!—the complete and compact dream house of 1938 New Mexico. The one-bedroom model could save you a bundle, and you had a choice between hollow tile or adobe for the construction. Best of all, there was money to borrow so contractors, banks, and suppliers could blissfully advertise: “Build now . . . the Federal Housing Act makes it possible. Live in a home that is modern and convenient. Do not deny yourself and your family the satisfaction, comfort, and happiness that come of living in your own home.” New Mexico had never benefited from mass housing trends, such as the mail order madness of Sears and Roebuck homes that could be unloaded piece by (thousands of ) piece off a rail car. The state was finally poised to have affordable housing for a citizenry that had long relied on owner-built homes.

More than 20 years earlier, architects and planners laid the foundation for New Mexico to have its own style of housing. City-sponsored competitions hoped to head off the deplorable effects of brick and stick bungalows and other equally insidious invasions. Sylvanus Morley, best known as the father of Mayan archaeology, wrote a prescient article in 1915 that spelled out in detail architectural history and influences, suggested corbel designs, illustrated winning home models, proposed the phrase “Santa Fe style,” showed before and after “Santa Fe treatment” photographs of the Palace of the Governors, and scolded those who attempted to bring non-New Mexican influences into the City Different: “However appropriate California Mission Architecture might be for California, it was hardly the ‘correct thing’ for New Mexico. . . .” As early as 1912, the stage was being set for a New Mexican city’s transformation from Anytown U.S.A. to a destination, romantic, tourist town. As part of this effort, streets were renamed from such prosaic monikers as Telegraph Road to Camino del Monte Sol, or Manhattan Avenue to Acequia Madre. My own neighborhood was scheduled to go from small farming to quaint lanes with small adobe homes, a fate that succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of the plan's framers. Public buildings and spaces were particularly targeted in this process of transformation as domestic architecture was taken in hand by individuals, especially artists. While individual homes were set forth as showplaces of the Santa Fe style or given the Santa Fe treatment, it was hardly the transformation or development of entire communities and neighborhoods that would occur later.

To read the complete story, please find Su Casa at your local newsstand or order it online here or by phone at 505-344-1783 or toll-free 866-256-4925.