Santa Fe Architectural Style

What does New Mexico Architectural Style mean? The early settlers in New Mexico came from Mexico and Spain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Don Juan de Onate colonized the area above Espanola in 1598, one hundred eight years after Columbus came to the Americas. The early settlers of New Mexico were completely familiar with adobe construction methods, which had been developed six to eight thousand years by Moors, who came to Spain in the fifth century and brought the system with them from Egypt and the Middle East.
According to nineteenth-century descriptions Hispanic New Mexican houses are very similar in character to the Mediterranean house. All the rooms opened into the court, and there was a porch or portal running around all four- court walls.
The “Spanish-pueblo” (1920s and 1930s) is the earliest form and prevalent in Spain at the time of settlement of New Mexico. This is a style where the walls are in adobe from two feet thick to thirty or thir...