Santa Fe Houses

Exploring beautiful homes in the southwest and drawing up on the traditional elements of Native America - fire, earth, air and water. This books highlights the distinctive details particular to every home that is visited.

Insiders' Guide to Santa Fe is the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information to this beautiful New Mexico city. Written by a local (and true insider), it offers a personal and practical perspective of Sante Fe and its surrounding environs.

Debunks the great tourist myth, and explains how the Santa Fe architectural and design style, so popular with millions of visitors today, was consciously created by Anglos in the early 20th century.

Now in paperback comes an exploration of the origins and current manifestations of style in Santa Fe, from the ancient inspiration of the Canyon de Chelly to the architectural innovations of Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. 450 illustrations, 220 in color.

The Essence of Santa Fe: From a Way of Life to a Style traces the developments that took a unique and sustainable way of life and turned it into style. Through a rich blend of historic and contemporary photographs, the book unveils the undeniable magic of this charming city that still can be found if one knows where to look.

First survey of modernist and contemporary architecture and interiors in the richly layered architectural history of Santa Fe Santa Fe Modern reveals the high desert landscape as an ideal setting for bold, abstracted forms of modernist houses. Wide swaths of glass, deep-set portals, long porches, and courtyards allow vistas, color, and light to become integral parts of the very being of a house, emboldening a way to experience a personal connection to the desert landscape. The architects featured draw from the New Mexican architectural heritage--they use ancient materials such as adobe in combination with steel and glass, and they apply this language to the proportions and demands exacted by today's world. The houses they have designed are confident examples of architecture that is particular to the New Mexico landscape and climate, and yet simultaneously evoke the rigorous expressions of modernism. The vigor and the allure of modern art and architecture hearten each other in a way that is visible and exciting, and this book demonstrates the synergistic relationship between art, architecture, and the land.

For the first two centuries of Santa Fe's history, weary wayfarers were out of luck. Not only did the Spanish authorities enforce a strict travel ban on foreign visitors, but there was also no place to stay in the territorial capital. That all changed in the 1820s. When Mexico gained independence, a flood of traffic cascaded down the Santa Fe Trail, and the Plaza became a hub of hospitality and trade. From the Exchange Hotel to La Fonda, the inn on the corner of San Francisco Street represented one of the most welcome landmarks in the West. Author Allen Steele recounts stories of trailblazing pioneers and the lodging on which their daring depended.