Barrio de Analco Historic District, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Postcard of Historic Plaza, painted sometime between 1930 and 1945

Original art by Southwest Arts & Crafts, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Quick Facts

Location:

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Designation:

National Historic Landmark

The National Historic Landmark Barrio de Analco Historic District in Santa Fe, New Mexico is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods of European origin in the United States. Originally settled in 1620 by the Spanish, Barrio (or District) de Analco suffered major destruction during the 1680 Great Pueblo Revolt. The Spanish rebuilt Analco beginning in 1692 during their recolonization of New Mexico. The buildings of Analco are in the Spanish Pueblo and Territorial styles that reflect the merger of Spanish, Indian, and eventually American building techniques. In the seven adobe brick buildings that make up the Barrio de Analco Historic District visitors can see how working-class Spanish colonists, Tlascalan people, and other Native Americans lived in Santa Fe during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

The Spanish first settled Santa Fe during the winter of 1609-1610 as they sought to “civilize” the North American continent and to expand their New World empire. Mirroring other Spanish colonial settlements of the era, the colony in Santa Fe was a defensible fort and village set around a central plaza. The Santa Fe Plaza became the commercial, social, and political center of the community. Fearing attacks from the local Pueblos, many high-ranking Spanish officials and citizens built their homes around the plaza because it was a central defendable area.

As Santa Fe prospered, the original settlement expanded to include growing neighborhoods on the opposite side of the Santa Fe River from the plaza. By 1620, the newly constructed Chapel of San Miguel was in place and a suburb, the Barrio de Analco, began to grow. The Tlascalan word, “Analco,” means “the other side of the river,” which distinguished this barrio from the neighborhood on the plaza side of the Santa Fe River where government officials and other prominent citizens resided and attended mass. The Chapel of San Miguel provided laborers and artisans with a place to worship in the growing suburb.

Analco and Santa Fe suddenly stopped growing when the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 erupted. After years of enduring Spain’s encomienda system of forced labor and the insistence of Catholic conversion, the Puebloan People revolted against Spanish rule. During the revolt, Analco was the first Santa Fe neighborhood the Puebloans destroyed, including partially burning down the Chapel of San Miguel. The Spanish colonists and most of their Tlascalan servants fled from Santa Fe to El Paso. The Puebloans held Santa Fe for 12 years. In 1692, led by Diego de Vargas, the Spanish returned to re-occupy Santa Fe. After regaining control, the Spanish began rebuilding Santa Fe and the Barrio de Analco.

As Analco residents rebuilt the neighborhood throughout the 1700s and 1800s, it became the chosen suburb for Santa Fe’s married enlisted men, servants, merchants, non-Puebloan Native Americans who served the Spanish (known as Genizaros), and skilled artisans (including, shoemakers, tailors, musicians, silversmiths, blacksmiths, masons, adobe makers, bricklayers, and carpenters). Analco’s one-story Spanish Pueblo homes were constructed using adobe bricks. Before the Spanish introduced forming the adobe into bricks, Native Americans used a “puddle” or hand-formed technique to shape the adobe and had flat roofs with tamped earth and vigas (poles). The tamped or packed earth acted as insulation and assisted in keeping the homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

By the late 1840s, when Santa Fe became part of the United States, American settlers began to remodel the Spanish Pueblo style buildings. The Spanish Pueblo architectural style evolved into the Territorial style. American settlers introduced stucco adobe and capping the walls with fired brick to help prevent erosion. For better insulation, the Americans added milled wooden doors and window frames, and inserted glass in the windows. The seven adobe brick buildings that make up the Barrio de Analco Historic District provide visitors with a glimpse of old Santa Fe and of the Spanish Pueblo and Territorial architectural styles reflected in the buildings in the neighborhood.

Dating from the early 19th century, the Roque Tudesqui House is an example of the Spanish Pueblo and Territorial styles. Tudesqui, an Italian trader in Santa Fe who purchased the building in 1841, owned many properties and businesses. The long one-story house has three-foot adobe thick walls, brick coping, and deeply inset windows. One of the walls was made using the “puddle” adobe technique, which indicates the Indigenous influence in the construction of the house.

Across the street from the Roque Tudesqui House at 132 East De Vargas Street is the Gregoria Crespin House. In 1693, a Tlascala Native American received a grant for the land on which the Gregoria Crespin House sits. Tree-ring samples obtained from the vigas in the house indicate a cutting date for the tree of between 1720 and 1750, while the first existing title transfer on the house was filed in 1747. Originally of Spanish Pueblo design, this one-story house with its thick adobe walls, five rooms, a covered veranda, and a patio, later had Territorial embellishments added to its trim along the roofline.

The Oldest House is an excellent example of Spanish Pueblo architecture. Tree-ring samples obtained from this house indicate a cutting date between 1740 and 1767. The western portion of the house has thick adobe walls, dirt floors, low ceilings, a corner fireplace, and no Territorial embellishments.

Across the street from The Oldest House is the Chapel of San Miguel (Mission of San Miguel). Originally constructed in 1620 and partially destroyed during the Great Pueblo Revolt in 1680, the Chapel of San Miguel is one of the oldest churches in the United States. Demolishing the first church, the Spanish rebuilt an adobe chapel on the same site in 1710 in the Romanesque fortress church style. For the next 50 years, it served as the chapel for the presidio of Santa Fe’s Spanish soldiers and later as a parish church. In 1881, the Christian Brothers of the Catholic Church purchased the Chapel, which they continue to operate and maintain. While the church has had numerous repairs over the years, it still has its original adobe walls. The altar screen inside the Chapel dates from 1798 and is the oldest wooden altar screen in New Mexico. The carved gilded and painted wood statue of St. Michael the Archangel inside the Chapel dates from around 1709.

Just south of the Chapel of San Miguel on Old Santa Fe Trail is St. Michael’s Dormitory (today known as the Lamy Building). Constructed in 1878 by the Christian Brothers to use as the main building of St. Michael’s College for Boys, this adobe Territorial style building was originally three stories high and had a tower, porticos, galleries, and a mansard roof. A destructive fire reduced the building to two stories in 1926, diminishing what had been described as one of the stateliest buildings in Santa Fe.

The Boyle House at 327 East De Vargas Street was in place as early as 1766-68. This one story adobe house has walls four feet thick, a flat roof, and supposedly had at one time 37 rooms. Territorial embellishments, including squared off ceiling beams, a long rear portico, mantel fireplaces, and a bay window are later additions to the house.

Just down the street from the Boyle House is the Adolph Bandelier House. This large adobe house is an excellent example of a Territorial residence and was the home of the famous archeologist, Adolph Bandelier, from 1882 until 1892. Bandelier studied the ancestral Puebloan homelands in what would become the nearby Bandelier National Monument.