Architecture
of New
Mexico
MUSEUM
LESSONS
What is Architecture?
– The art and science of designing and constructing
buildings.
– Architecture attains both a practical and
expressive achievement and thus serves both
functional and artistic ends.
Architecture of New Mexico
• Casa San Ysidro is an adobe home that was originally
built by the Gutiérrez family in 1875.
• Life was a little different back then, but many buildings
in New Mexico that are standing today were built
during that time.
• Adobe is strong and built to last.
Adobe
– Adobe is way of
making buildings out
of mud.
– Adobes are sun dried
bricks made from a
mixture of wet mud,
clay, and straw.
– Adobe is one the
earliest forms of
building materials
and is used all over
the world.
Adobe Architecture
• Architecture in New Mexico has
primarily been constructed
using adobe brick.
• These bricks are great at helping
keep the temperature inside
buildings cool during hot days
and warm during freezing
nights.
• Mixing mud and forming adobe
bricks brought many people
together.
Styles of Architecture
• Casa San Ysidro’s
architecture is influenced
from a few different styles
of architecture.
– Pueblo
– Spanish
– Territorial
Pueblos
• Pueblo people used adobe bricks to build their homes.
• A Pueblo has many rooms close together and has multiple layers.
Pueblo Architecture
– Traditional pueblo construction used limestone blocks and / or large adobe bricks. In a typical
pueblo building, adobe blocks form the walls of each room as well as a central courtyard.
These buildings can be up to five stories tall. Movement between stories was traditionally
accomplished by the use of wooden ladders. Pueblos were also traditionally entered through
rooftop openings as ground floor rooms didn’t have doors.
Spanish Architecture
– Spanish people organized their homes with family rooms tied onto a shared outdoor space.
– Spanish mission churches demonstrate the period when New Mexico was under Spanish rule.
– Spanish settlers were cut off from trade with others in North America.
– Supplies, technology, and ideas had to come from Spain.
– Spain was far away so local materials and ideas were used: flat roofs, earthen floors, mud plaster, wooden
bars on windows, and vigas and latillas for the ceiling.
– Communities formed around a central plaza for defense.
Rancho
– Casa San Ysidro is also a Spanish-style Rancho
– A Rancho was a Spanish ranch that was owned by a family who supervised workers
and vaqueros (cowboys).
– During the Spanish Colonial period a rancho was typically a place for raising cattle.
– To encourage agricultural development, the New Mexican government distributed
land grants to wealthy families.
– These well-connected families could secure grants for each of their family members,
which created an elite class of rancheros who controlled thousands of acres of land.
Territorial period
– Before Casa San Ysidro was built,
New Mexico was a part of Spain.
– When the house was built by the
Gutiérrez family in 1875, New
Mexico was no longer a part of
Spain and had become a territory
of the United States.
– As people across the U.S. entered
the territory so did ideas about
architecture during the Territorial
period.
• Territorial Period (1849-1912):
– New Mexico is ceded into the U.S. as a
territory; however it takes 64 years
before it becomes a state.
Territorial Architecture
• During the Territorial Period, New Mexican architecture barrowed ideas from
architecture that was popular in the eastern United States at the time.
• With the arrival of Anglo-Americans in New Mexico, brick kilns and wood mills
were built and established.
• Bricks were still too expensive to build entire houses with, however they were
incorporated into adobe architecture.
• American military forts that utilized milled wooden beams were built along the
Santa Fe Trail.
Machine made woodwork like painted trim
around doors and windows and triangular lintels
above door and window frames
Kiln-fired bricks at the tops of walls
and machine made woodwork
Casa San Ysidro
– Casa San Ysidro’s architecture
exemplifies the tension
between tradition and
change that New Mexicans
have lived with for centuries.
– The property barrows styles of
architecture that are from
Pueblo, Spanish, and
Territorial architecture.
– These buildings are mixed to
evoke early adobe tradition.
– Some components of Casa’s
architecture consist of….
Vigas:
– Long wood poles used to
support the roof of an adobe
house.
– The end of vigas can often be
seen sticking out of the wall.
– Some vigas had to be brought
great distances.
– These building techniques date
back to the Ancestral Puebloan
peoples, and vigas are visible in
many of their surviving
buildings.
Latillas:
– Latillas are narrow strips of wood or branches
used to fill in between the vigas to hold up the
roofing materials.
– Latillas are often left exposed.
Corbels:
– A corbel is a carved beam
that is used on top of posts
or pillars to support beams
and vigas.
– It helps spread the weight
of the roof and serves as an
ornamental element.
– Corbels are often shaped to
resemble apple or
pomegranate trees.
Canales:
– Canales are wooden water
spouts which allow rain to
drain away from the roof
of an adobe building
without causing harm to
the building.
– Because adobe buildings
have flat roofs there is a
need to drain rain.
– Some canals have metal
lined to help water flow.
Parapet:
– A parapet is a low protective wall along the edge of an
adobe roof.
– They are used to protect people from falling off of the
roof.
Portale:
– Portales are porches found on many adobe buildings.
– Roofs are often supported by posts made from whole tree
trunks.
Corrales:
– This is an enclosed space used to house animals
and farm equipment.
– Animals need protection from the weather and
from other animals.
Plazuela:
• A plazuela is a courtyard or plaza typically surrounded by walls.
• This was an open area where families could do daily chores.
Zaguan:
– A zaguan is a passageway that leads from a front entrance to a
patio or a courtyard.
– It is also an area where animals and shipments of goods would
have come into a house or rancho.
– This area might have a big gate (portone) to let people and
animals through.
• The architectural aspects of the Casa San Ysidro reflect all three contexts.
• Representative of the 20
th
century interpretation of history and the revitalization and recreation of
history.
• One of the challenges is to understand the distillation of Spanish Colonial and Territorial Era New Mexico.
• Organizations around the extended family.
• Spanish Colonials introduced an interest in rationality and geometric forms.
• Early Spanish/Mexican traditional floor planning and the organization of space reflected individual
family rooms of linear forms tied onto a shared outdoor space.
• Greek revitalization is geometric and angular using Greek temple architecture (pillars and triangular
pediments)
• The early accounts of Anglo and Santa Fe trail travelers encountering Mexican culture had difficulty
discerning adobe buildings from landscape buildings because they didn’t have pitched roofs.
• Anglo cultures were fond of building log cabins
• The organization of social life around a single great room was a place where families could entertain
• Chests / Trunks were the primary furniture
• No metal tools in NM
• All metals were brought in
The Cultural and Historical Period Contexts of Architecture in:
Spanish Colonial and Territorial Era (Mexican Era)
Anglo American Neoclassism (Revival of Classical Style)
20
th
Century Romantic Anglo Transplants (Minge)
• Cultural and ethnic identity in the 20
th
century – not all aspects of culture became signs of ethnic identity
• The architecture embraced through Hispano - Anglo houses
• There were no saw mills so Territorial era carpenters detailed and assembled things by hand
• In the 1870’s large glass panes became prevalent
• NM embraces the variation that the 1880 railroad brings ethnic - mutual consciousness
• The Santa Fe fiesta national pioneer days
• Historic Preservation
• The crystallization of NM architecture comes from Santa Fe
• The buildings are mixed to evoke early adobe tradition
• Casa San Ysidro is the result of four historical periods
• Corrales was an area where people with an interest in history moved within Albuquerque
• Alan’s design sensibility really makes Casa a memorable house (something overlooked)
• Romantic revision and revitalization finds continuity in the changing world.
Casa is not a pueblo, there is a tendency to confuse pueblo with Spanish Colonial style
because the Spanish pueblo revival style fused the two cultures together.
A pueblo has many rooms massed together and is multilayered.
Casa and Territorial Spanish architecture was built at a very integrated and
communitarian level.
