Museum of New Mexico

Museum of New Mexico
Museum of Fine Arts
Santa Fe, New Mexico 1917

 
The success of Rapp's Panama-California Exposition building further entrenched the stylistic standards set by the architectural and artistic communities of New Mexico for buildings of the stature of the Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts.  Rapp's inspiration for the design of the Musuem was again the Acoma religious complex, with additional picturesque features selected from the Hispanic mission churches at San Felipe, Cochiti, Laguna, Santa Ana, and Pecos.  These missions provided the model for the twinned towers with bell lofts united by a curving pedimented gable.  Rapp embellished the twin towers with pinnacles and low-domed projections, replicating his 1915 exposition building. None of the above mentioned mission churches were adorned with these tower projections.  This building represents the imposed stylistic uniformity of Southwest regional architecture up to Rapp's commissioning for the design of La Fonda (hotel) in Santa Fe in 1920.  Native Americans and Hispanics were not consulted in the process of identification and selection of these stylistic elements of Santa Fe style which became formalized at this time.  The prominent portales are an important contribution to Santa Fe style from Spanish peninsular antecedents.  Mather and Woods (1986) identify portales as the Southwest's most profound contribution to architecture.  The adjacent Plaza is dominated by portales on the three sides facing the Palace of the Governors. The peeled pine logs of the portales were incorporated in Spanish colonial design from native American building techniques.  The ornamental corbels for the lintels over the log columns were one of the few decorated surfaces in Spanish colonial architecture in New Mexico.  Corbels were commonly carved in volute shapes and decorated with chiselled notches which were painted in a variety of bright colors. Key visual elements of Santa Fe style as conceived by Rapp and the New Mexico artistic community have been incorporated in the redevelopment of Mission Park Shopping Center in Kelowna, British Columbia (Figure 9).

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