The office of John Gaw Meem, architect of the expansion and remodeling of the famed La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a key figure in the popularization of the Pueblo Revival style, was designated on the National Register of Historic Places.
The John Gaw Meem Architects Office at 1101 Camino De Cruz Blanca in Santa Fe was named to the National Register effective June 6, according to an email Friday from the National Park Service. It’s hard to envision so-called Santa Fe architecture without him.
The current La Fonda was built in 1922 on the site of previous inns in downtown Santa Fe a stone’s throw from the earliest alignment of Route 66.
Meem also designed dozens of other buildings in New Mexico, including Maisel’s Indian Trading Post in 1939 in downtown Albuquerque, also along Route 66. A comprehensive list of Meem projects may be seen here.
The John Gaw Meem Office was placed on the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties in April.
In an earlier story by the Santa Fe New Mexican about the Meem Office’s nomination to the National Register, the newspaper reported the building was built by Meem in 1930 as his business office and “bachelor pad,” and it continued to be Meem’s design studio until he retired in 1959.
It eventually was donated to Santa Fe Preparatory School and serves as the school’s art building.
More from the article:
A section about the building’s integrity begins, “The John Gaw Meem Office retains a high degree of historic integrity across its principal west elevation. This elevation, which became the public façade in 1933, has maintained its historic design, fenestration, and materials of the period. Secondary elevations, including the exterior north and courtyard south, changed as the office expanded in the 1940s and ‘50s, well within the period of significance (1930-1967).
“The largest alteration is the two 1996 additions which bridge off the original footprint at the south elevation and northeast corner. Including the new south portal, these additions increased the building’s footprint by 2,510 square feet.”
The building may look like an adobe, but it is not. Meem is known not only as the innovative and prolific designer of Spanish Pueblo Revival and Territorial Revival (collectively known as “Santa Fe Style”) buildings, but for his evolution into pentile (hollow-tile blocks that were produced by the state penitentiary) and other materials that were more permanent and required less maintenance than adobe.
Meem died at age 88 in Phoenix in 1983. The University of New Mexico maintains an archive of his papers and other collections.
(Image of John Gaw Meem Office in Santa Fe via Santa Fe Prep website)