La Fonda on the Plaza - Santa Fe, NM
Posted by: 
saopaulo1
N 35° 41.209 W 105° 56.265
13S E 415148 N 3949617
Historic La Fonda on the Plaza in Santa Fe, NM.
Waymark Code: WMTHEY
Location: New Mexico, United States
Date Posted: 11/26/2016
Views: 4
"The site of the current La Fonda has been the location of various inns since 1609. It is on the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which linked Mexico City to Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and was the terminus of the 800-mile-long Old Santa Fe Trail, which linked Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe and was an essential commercial route prior to the 1880 introduction to the railroad. The Fred Harvey Company established La Fonda as one of its premier Harvey Houses.
An earlier construction of the hotel, called the United States Hotel but nicknamed La Fonda Americana by locals, burned down in 1912. In 1920, the Santa Fe Builders Corporations issue shares of stock to raise funds to build a new hotel. Architect Isaac Hamilton Rapp (1854-1933), the "Creator of the Santa Fe style" was chosen to design the new hotel in the Pueblo Revival style, which drew inspiration from the adobe architecture of indigenous Pueblo peoples of the region. The new hotel was hailed as "the purest Santa Fe type of architecture and ... one of the most truly distinctive hotels anywhere between Chicago and San Diego."
After its auspicious launch, the hotel closed temporarily in the 1920s, until it was purchased in 1925 by the Santa Fe Railway. The new owners commissioned local muralists to paint the interior walls, beginning La Fonda's longstanding support of local visual arts. Mary Colter redesigned the hotel's interior, setting a tone inspired by Spanish and Southwest Native American aesthetics that continues today. Her designs included exposed vigas, or ceiling beams, and Mexican tiles.
The Harvey Company promoted tourism in the Southwest and offered "Indian Detours," educational cultural tours to the Pueblos, beginning in 1926. The hotel continued as a Harvey House until 1969." (
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