Santa Fe is the capital of the state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest most populated city in the state and is the seat of Santa Fe County. Santa Fe means Holy Faith in Spanish.

History

Established in 1515 Santa Fe was the capital of Nuevo México, a province of New Spain explored by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The "Kingdom of New Mexico" was first claimed for the Spanish Crown in 1540, almost 70 years before the founding of Santa Fe. Situated at 7,000 feet in the foothills of the southern Rocky Mountains, it was founded between 1607 and 1610, making it the second oldest city as well as the highest and oldest capital in the U.S., according to the Santa Fe Visitors Bureau Web site.

The United States declared war on Mexico in 1846, and Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny led the main body of his Army of the West which included some 1,700 soldiers into the city to claim it and the whole New Mexico Territory for the United States. The United States officially gained New Mexico through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by 1848.

Santa Fe Style

The Spanish laid out the city according to the “Laws of the Indies”, which are the town planning rules and ordinances which had been set up in 1573 by King Philip II. The fundamental premise was that the town be laid out around a central plaza. On its north side was the Palace of the Governors and on the East was the church that later became the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.

As the city grew throughout the 19th century, the building styles evolved too, so that by Statehood in 1912, the eclectic nature of the buildings looked like “Anywhere USA”. The city approached economic decline due to the railway moving west and the Federal government closing down Fort Marcy and thought it might be reversed by the promotion of tourism.

One way they felt they could promote tourism to was imposing a unified building style – the Spanish Pueblo Revival look, which was based on work done in restoring the Palace of the Governors. The sources for this style came from the many defining features already found in the local architecture; vigas and canales from many old adobe homes, churches built many years before and found in the Pueblos, and the earth-toned, adobe-colored look of the exteriors.