In 1982, the City officially established Santa Fe’s five Historic Districts. Covering approximately eighteen percent of the City’s physical area, they encompass over six thousand sites, buildings, structures and objects.

Historic Eastside and Downtown

The oldest and most diverse of the five districts, this area is comprised of the city’s commercial center, the Barrio de Analco and the historic neighborhoods that developed as the eastside shifted from a primarily agriculture to residential area. Although the downtown area contains a wide variety of historic architectural styles, the Pueblo-Spanish and Territorial influences predominate. Several of the oldest buildings in the city are located in this area, while others represent recent efforts to maintain the “Santa Fe Style”.

Many of the so called “Santa Fe Style” buildings downtown are railroad-era edifices that were remodeled in the twentieth century to appear Pueblo-Spanish Revival or Territorial Revival. Conducive in size for pedestrian exploration, the downtown area, with notable exceptions, maintains a uniformity of height, scale and massing that imbue it with a smooth street rhythm
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The eastside portion of the district is primarily residential in character consisting of narrow streets and lanes, many unpaved, whose alignments reflect the earlier patterns created by historic field systems. Buildings are low, flat roofed and wall dominated. Many properties contain walled compounds while others retain remnants of orchards, in some instance still irrigated by the Acequia Madre.

Historic Transition District

The Historic Transition District is adjacent to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe rail yard. It consists of a grid based subdivision platted in 1880 to accommodate anticipated growth that would come with the railway. The eclectic variety of building styles in this small district is suggestive of the area’s sporadic development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recently the area has shifted from residential to commercial uses. At its eastern boundary, Cerrillos Road, the major highway entering Santa Fe from the south, is still lined with some buildings associated with automobile services during the first half of the twentieth century.



Don Gaspar Area Historic District

The area now included in the Don Gaspar district was platted as a suburb on the southern most edge of the city at the turn of the twentieth century. While some examples of earlier Pueblo-Spanish and Territorial period houses remain, most of the architecture in the district dates from the area’s significant growth from the 1890s through the 1920s. Reflecting the sensibilities of the residents of Santa Fe’s early middle class enclave, they encompass the new building materials and designs that were popular in other New Mexico towns during the late territorial and early statehood period. Generally platted in a rough grid with setbacks and tree-lined front yards characteristic of early twentieth century suburban streetscapes elsewhere, the district offers the most eclectic range of residential building styles found in Santa Fe, including examples of the Italianate, Mansard and Queen Anne styles. The district is significant as an example of an early suburb that largely predated the city’s efforts to encourage a regionally inspired architectural style.

Westside-Guadalupe District

The Westside-Guadalupe Historic District illustrates the continuation of New Mexico’s vernacular building practices in Santa Fe. Located along the irrigated fields that originally surrounded the colonial Plaza this area initially developed in the late eighteenth century as an agricultural community. The early houses were located near El Camino Real, the acequia lined road leading to the nearby village of Agua Fria or along a second acequia aligned along present day Alto Street. IN the 1930s when the city’s growth resulted in families subdividing their small agricultural plots to accommodate more housing, the area became increasingly residential with the platting of additional narrow side streets and the informal development of lanes leading to family and plaza compounds. The construction during this period continued the vernacular building tradition of the area’s residents. Interspersed among these often low walled or fenced properties are modest examples of owner built bungalows and hipped-roof cottages fronted by shallow yard setbacks.

Historic Review District

Bordering the southern edge of the Downtown and Eastside historic districts, the Historic Review district was sparsely settled until the 1950s but included several historical buildings such as the Sunmount Sanatorium, the early museums now a part of Museum Hill area and the National Park Service Building, constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938. Roadways consisted of streets extending southward from historic eastside neighborhoods and newly cut lanes, their alignments reflecting the contours of the area’s low foothills and arroyos. While the preservation of historic resources is a primary goal in the other districts, design review in the Historical Review District seek to provide visual continuity linking this suburban periphery with nearby cultural institutions as well as the adjacent Downtown and Eastside Historic Districts. As a result, the district offers many good recent examples of Pueblo-Spanish and Territorial Revival architecture. Low walls are apparent but infrequent, especially along the lanes, creating a seemingly rural streetscape that persists even along the district’s paved roads.

Santa Fe’s Historical District Ordinance

Today, Santa Fe is governed by building regulations in its five historic districts, which seek to preserve its historical character. Any exterior work in the districts (including changes to existing buildings, structures or objects, additions or new construction) is required to be reviewed by the City’s Historic Section. These regulations are codified in the Historic Districts Ordinance which was first adopted by Santa Fe’s City Council in 1957.

In reality, building regulation dates to the City’s founding in 1610 when Governor Peralta organized the colonial capital according to the Laws of the Indies, which prescribed a plaza-based settlement pattern with key institutional buildings facing onto the plaza. In the almost three centuries that followed, Santa Fe’s growth was largely an organic extension of the architectural settlement around the Plaza in which the availability of water for irrigation dictated where people settled and vernacular building traditions determined the homes they built.

In 1912, the city created the Santa Fe City Planning Board with board member and archaeologist Sylvanus Morley responsible for developing details for a ‘local style’ of architecture. This style was to be distinct from the California Mission style, then popular in many New Mexico buildings including the Santa Fe Railroad’s building and Fred Harvey Hotels. Morley’s recommendations included renaming streets to evoke the city’s colonial history, the restoration of important historical buildings and the advocacy of a building style that was ‘long and low rather than high and narrow’ and that embraced key elements of Pueblo-Spanish architecture. Essential elements included natural colored adobe walls and buttresses, recessed portals, flat roofs and parapets with projecting beams or vigas and roof drains or canales. The plan of 1912 encouraged and popularized the revival of the earlier Pueblo-Spanish and Territorial architecture that collectively became known as the ‘Santa Fe Style’.

By the late 1940s, a Comprehensive City Plan prepared for the City Planning Commission recognized Santa Fe’s unique character among American cities, attributing its distinctiveness to Santa Fe’s history, architecture, winding streetscapes, natural setting, pleasant and leisurely lifestyle. Identifying areas with concentrations of buildings reflecting the Santa Fe Style, it urged that these areas be protected; their boundaries extended and that an ordinance be enacted to oversee the building permit process.

This recommendation was finally enacted in 1957 with the passage of the Historic Styles Ordinance, which designated the downtown and eastside neighborhoods as a district in which a Historic Review Board would regulate new construction, additions, renovations and demolition of buildings. Identifying the characteristics of historic regional building styles and grouping them as the Old Santa Fe Style, the ordinance also recognized that new materials and building needs might be adapted in ways compatible to the older buildings and could co-exist as the Recent Santa Fe Style. In the ensuing decades, the passage of the ordinance contributed to the remodeling of buildings around the Plaza in 1967 to which Santa Fe Style details were applied to eclectically styled facades. A 1983 amendment created four additional Historic Review Districts in which the Historic Review Board would also evaluate proposed changes.