Decoding old Santa Fe
May 12—It started as an offhand suggestion and turned into a passion project that consumed Audra Bellmore's attention for nearly four years.
Bellmore, the John Gaw Meem Curator at the University of New Mexico, was visiting the 19th century El Zaguán, home to the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, and she was handed an old copy of Old Santa Fe Today, a survey of the homes and properties that make up the local historic register. The professor noticed that several homes had been added to the registry since the last edition's 1991 publication date, and she suggested that the foundation update it.
Bellmore, by dint of her vocation and ambition, immediately became the perfect candidate to do exactly that. But it wasn't easy.
"I had to pull together a puzzle from a lot of different sources," she says of the publication of the fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2022). "Most of what I had to do was walk around Santa Fe. I went to look at all of them."
That was only the start of her journey.
Bellmore says previous editions of the tome had no bibliography and no footnotes. She discovered that she could not verify a lot of the book's information, which meant she basically had to start from scratch. And she had to do that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lots of doors — both public and private — were required to be closed.
"All of the archives were shut, and all of the libraries were shut during most of the research period," she says. "I happen to work at UNM. I'm faculty there, so I had some access to some archives that maybe most people wouldn't have at that time. But it was rough."
Over time, Bellmore was able to reconstruct a detailed history of each of the 96 properties in the book. In previous editions, she says, the homes were grouped by year of addition to the registry. Bellmore scrapped that organizational approach and decided to bunch each of the properties into bite-sized geographic sectors that could easily be walked.
The resulting format is eight different sections — the Barrio de Analco/Capitol Complex, the Barrio de Guadalupe/Railyard, Canyon Road/Camino del Monte Sol, Don Gaspar/Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe Plaza/Downtown, Rosario/Northwest, Upper Canyon Road/Foothills and Santa Fe Environs — that collectively tell the story of the development of life in The City Different.
"The context of the neighborhood they are in is a big part of the story and the streetscape and the cultural landscape," Bellmore says. "Is it part of the railroad part of town or is it a part of the artist colony part of town? You see that chronology of the development of the different neighborhoods and what was there at the time and what got added and why."
Living in history
What's it like to live in a home built in 1785?
For Karl and Susan Horn, it's pretty normal.
The Horns live in the Lobato-Morley House, which holds a commanding view of the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Center from across Bishops Lodge Road.
The home is a one-story, U-shaped Spanish Colonial adobe building, and over time, it's had its property shaped by the roads that now frame it.
"Paseo de Peralta is a loop put in made of several different streets," Karl Horn says. "This house, the address was originally on Hillside [Avenue]; Hillside is still up the street, but this segment of it turned into Paseo de Peralta. When they did that, they took part of the hillside, and when they cut into it, they had to put retaining walls there. Then they put the other wall around the property. It went from this real open place to this very closed place."
The 18th century home was purchased and substantially renovated by archaeologist Sylvanus Griswold Morley between 1910 and 1912, and it was chosen to be part of the inaugural Historic Santa Fe Foundation register in 1964. The Horns bought the property in 2004, and as they decided how they wanted to renovate it, they discovered an interesting technicality.
The Lobato-Morley House had actually been de-listed from the historic register in 1978 due to a modification that altered the original front portal to make room for an interior entry hall. That meant that they could carry out any renovation they wanted. But the Horns wanted to respect the tradition of the property without making it less of a home.
They rented it out for a few years and then began to renovate it in 2007. They chose to restore it as close as they could to the way it may have appeared during the Morley period, which meant erasing some of the personal touches from owners in the intervening decades.
"When Karl wanted to buy this house, it obviously needed a lot of work," says Susan Horn. "He's more artistic and aesthetic-oriented, and I'm more practical. I said, 'Look, I am not living in a museum. I want lots of light and brightness in here.' If you're too pure, you can get a dark adobe house. This house is huge in its original footprint, and I knew we would use the whole house. I feel we accomplished it well because we live all over the house, and we enjoy it."
The Horns took out Saltillo tile, blue-painted cabinets, and coyote decorations, and they consulted preservationist architect Craig Hoopes on how to best renovate the property. They found that they were not restricted from making most of the changes they wanted to make, and in 2020, the Lobato-Morley House was re-admitted to the local register.
"When we did the renovation, we thought there'd be horrible things to run into, and nothing like that happened," says Karl Horn of the process.
"It seemed like the house liked what we were doing," adds Susan Horn. "We didn't run into dead ends where somebody said, 'You can't do this.' It was always, 'You can.' I think as far as the historic board, because of where we're located — it's so private up here — I don't really think we were on their radar as much as properties where you can just look in the windows."
Right for the registry
Bellmore, who helped the Horns write the nomination that landed it back on the registry, says that accounting for the way Santa Fe developed will yield precious dividends in the future.
Already, she says, the homes offer a more detailed picture of all the different time periods and styles. Sure, there are lots of Spanish Pueblo homes in Santa Fe. But there are also bungalows and Victorian houses, as well as homes with distinctive French Mansard roofs. More properties have been added to the register since the fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today was published, and Bellmore hopes a greater variety of buildings will be added in the future.
"We come up with ideas of types of properties that maybe are not represented or types of people that are not highly represented in the register," she says. "We try to get them on so they get some recognition and significance; and then that recognition and knowledge also helps for preserving the properties because it raises awareness. People are often going to pay more attention and more care to properties if they understand the stories behind them."
And when they add new properties, says Bellmore, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation is not looking to penalize the homeowners for adding some creature comforts. The process, which can take up to a year, involves a pre-application that will be reviewed by the foundation's education and research committee. Then it goes to the property committee, which conducts a site visit, and if it's eligible, the home can proceed to the final nomination process.
The local register is important, Bellmore says, because it can be very expensive to get on the national register. It's more affordable to be recognized locally, and the register ultimately enhances the experience for residents and gawkers alike. The downtown core of Santa Fe is inherently walkable, Bellmore says, and there are countless details to savor and appreciate.
And while it can be hard to get your arms around the centuries of development that have taken place here, Bellmore hopes that Old Santa Fe Today will provide a literal and figurative road map to its readers.
"Santa Fe is like a keystone for the state," she says. "It has all these converging histories and stories, and it's ancient. It's endless.
"You could live here the rest of your life and you'd probably never understand or know it all. It's a very interesting place."
