## THEN — PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS,
ca. 1868 (inset ca. 1881)

The Palace of the Governors was originally constructed between 1610-1612 under the first governor of Santa Fe, Don Pedro de Peralta. It has undergone continuous renovation and repair since that time. The reason was its adobe construction. Adobe is a fragile building material subject to weathering. Without a protective outer surface, it gradually disintegrates into mud, whether it is adobe bricks such as the Spanish introduced or "puddled" walls (successive hand-formed layers) such as the Pueblo Indians built.

The Palace was never a palace. The very name

dictions throughout New Mexico's history. It was called "Casa Real" or Royal House because it was the seat of government and the governor's residence. In the 1600s and 1700s it was part of the Spanish Presidio, which included several other buildings and cultivated fields. It was originally larger than it is today, having a chapel on the east end and dungeons on the west end. Descriptions given in early manuscripts indicated the doors were small and low and there were few windows. The roof was made of peeled logs (vigas) placed side by side with a layer of brush and hard-packed earth on top. Until 1877, when a tin roof was added, the Palace roof always leaked in a rain-storm. The only solution, one visitor noted, was

Jesse L. Nastbaum, Museum of New Mexico, N.M. No. 60254

1915 - The New Mexico Building at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, designed by Rapp, was a sensation. So was the Painted Desert Exhibit—five acres of cliff ruins, Navaho hogans, and pueblos—assembled by Edgar Hewett's New Mexico Museum, which was learning ever more about attracting and educating tourists. (San Diegans liked Rapp's stucco-on-wood-frame building so much that they kept it, and it is there still, much remodeled.)

### IMITATION RESHAPES ORIGINAL.
The massive adobe Spanish mission church (1630s) at Acoma Pueblo is a true Spanish-Indian hybrid and one of the most impressive buildings in the Southwest (left). By the late 19th century, the bell towers were so eroded that no one knew how they originally looked. One architect (Rapp) guessed at their appearance in a series of Santa Fe style imitations of the building (above). Then another architect (Meem) restored the original church so that it matched Rapp's imitations.

San Esteban was a prodigious 17th century undertaking. The largest of all Spanish mission churches in the region, it served the most remote population—a village on top of a sheer-sided 400-foot mesa. There is no water, no trees, no dirt. The church is 150 feet long inside, 33 feet wide, 50 feet high, with walls 10 feet thick. Its estimated 20,000 tons of adobe and stone (not counting the necessary water) had to be carried up the mesa on a steep trail. The 40-foot roof beams, tradition insists, were borne by hand from mountains 20 miles away. Indians were never good slaves. It must have been either faith or the joy of doing something really impossible and spectacular.

Museum of New Mexico, N.M. No. 28661

ca. 1919 - Of course Rapp got the commission to build the Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico (1916) in Santa Fe. It is a beautifully designed building, inside and out—its details an encyclopedia of contemporary research on Spanish and pueblo buildings. Santa Fe style had arrived. A complete exemplar was in place. Rapp had refined his bell towers through three iterations. Ten years later John Gaw Meem would add one more back at Acoma.

13 March 1991; Brand.

1991 - Rapp's third copy of the Acoma church is safe from demolition or remodeling. Like the Palace of the Governors *portal* across the street on Santa Fe's plaza, the Fine Arts Museum is built of brick and stucco and is so revered only a terrorist would dare change it.

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