Camino del Monte Sol Historic District

About this property

The Camino del Monte Sol Historic District, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a 52.1 acres (21.1 ha) historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The listing included 106 contributing buildings. It includes some works by architect John Gaw Meem, and works by notable artists if not certified architects. The district is in the southeast corner of Santa Fe, to the south of the Santa Fe River, and extends south of the Acequia Madre (Mother Ditch). It consists mostly of north-south streets. It adjoins the National Register-listed Santa Fe Historic District to the north and west. It is roughly bounded by the Acequia Madre, Camino del Monte Sol, El Caminito, and Garcia St. Its significance was described in its 1987 National Register nomination:Beginning in the years following New Mexican statehood in 1912, and continuing until World War II, this district was the center of a nationally known colony of artists, a remarkable group of multi-talented, creative people, many of whom had national reputations before settling in a remote and little known region of the country. These artists made important contributions not only to their own fields, primarily literature and painting, but also to the community to the extent that they can be considered in large part responsible for the unique milieu of Santa Fe today. Although no longer functioning as a colony, many creative people continue to live in Santa Fe and contribute to its character. The city depends heavily on tourists who are drawn not only by its 150 galleries many of which specialize in Indian and Spanish artists and regional art, and by its yearly markets and traditions like the annual Fiesta, but also by the special environment created by its architecture. The artists who founded Santa Fe's original art colony were drawn to the region by its pre-American cultures and were instrumental in efforts to preserve and revive the fine arts, crafts, customs, and architecture of those cultures. The artists* colony had perhaps its most widely felt impact in the field of architecture. Although the movement to preserve and recreate the city's historic adobe architecture was already under way when the colony began to come together on the Camino del Monte Sol, the artists joined it with vigor, leading efforts to preserve historic architecture and building their own Pueblo Revival adobe houses. The district also contains some of the first houses designed by John Gaw Meem, the premier professional architect of the Revival styles. It has remained a residential neighborhood, unlike Canyon Road, a street north of the boundary of this district and included in the Santa Fe Historic District, where artists lived which has become predominantly commercial. The artists' homes on the Camino del Monte Sol and adjoining streets are a unique grouping of Pueblo Revival and, to a much lesser extent, Territorial Revival dwellings, built by the group who played a significant role in the conversion of Santa Fe into a city which is dominated by historic styles.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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