By Rick Smith and John Cook
Former Park Service Officials
The National Park Service's regional director in Denver is threatening a piece of New Mexico heritage, the Old Santa Fe Trail building located in our capital. What he intends is no less than vandalism of a National Historic Landmark.
Both of us were privileged to work in that building; we are heartsick at what is being proposed.
Built by the CCC in the late 1930s specifically as headquarters for the National Park Service regional office, the Old Santa Fe Trail building rests on property donated by Santa Fe philanthropists to whose estate it will revert if the Park Service abandons it.
It is the largest adobe office building in the world and was conceived and designed as an architectural entity— that is, the interior and exterior inseparable as a single artistic creation. Thus, aside from its high distinction nationwide as an architectural treasure, it is of great significance in the history of the National Park Service, having served as a regional office from 1939 until the reorganization that abolished the Southwest Region in 1995.
The plan calls for moving 90 employees from offices in another building to the Old Santa Fe Trail building. To accommodate so many people, the entire interior will be reconfigured, including replacing old walls with many new ones, and perhaps compromising the carrying capacity of the sixty-eight-year-old building.
Most distressing, many of the present furnishings would have to be removed. This includes the artwork, furniture, craftwork, and artifacts uniquely designed for this structure by Hispanic and American Indian artisans in 1937-38, all elements that led to National Landmark designation. So directly linked are these to national significance that some were created in the building, for the building, and have been never been anywhere else.
Under the new plan, these works of art would be moved out of the building and out of New Mexico to the Western Archeological Center in Arizona under the guise of preservation.
The regional director's plan also calls for the installation of gates to keep out the public. The building can be utilized by the National Park Service in a way that is consistent with its mission in historic preservation yet still allows all peoples, foreign, American, or New Mexican, to enjoy that heritage. The government should not wall out the governed.
If you care about New Mexico's heritage and care about the contributions that the distinct cultures of New Mexico have made to our state, you should care about this building. It represents the physical blending of Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo cultures in an enriching, enlivening, and colorful combination, grounded in the massive adobe structure and its carefully chosen and arranged esthetics.
We can't afford to be careless with such a priceless treasure.
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