Raton Downtown Historic District - Raton, New Mexico - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

Developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Raton Downtown Historic District contains fine examples of the Romanesque Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne styles, as well as the later Decorative Brick Commercial and Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival styles of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. The majority of commercial buildings in the district were built between 1880 and the mid-1960s.

The current nomination is a boundary increase and update to the original Raton Downtown Historic District, which was listed in the National Register in 1977 (NR#373085). The boundary increase is comprised of four separate areas referred to as Areas A, B, C, and D. The new boundary for the district is irregular in shape, roughly bound by Parsons Avenue on the north, Apache Avenue on the south, the railroad right-of-way on the east, and the east side of 3rd Street on the west. The new boundary includes parts of the Original Townsite, platted in 1880, and Maxwell North Addition, platted between 1882 and 1887 (Figure 1). The boundary increase adds approximately 17 acres to the original 20-acre district. Of the 105 resources within the district, 75 buildings are contributing today, 54 of those were previously listed in the National Register. In addition, stamped sidewalks and the town plan are counted as two contributing structures. Today, there are a total of 27 non-contributing resources. Overall, 75% of the resources contribute to the district.

The boundary increase includes four blocks to the north – Blocks 1, 2, and 8, as well as a section of 7 in the Maxwell North Addition. The increase also includes portions of Blocks 10 and 18 in the Original Townsite Addition to the south. It also adds a .43-acre parcel to the south end of the district along the railroad tracks (Area D). These areas were omitted from the original nomination, likely due to the age of the resources. In 1977, the fifty-year mark would have been 1927. The majority of buildings in the boundary increase were constructed between the late 1920s and 1960; they are part of the commercial downtown core – both from an architectural and historical standpoint – and should be included within the commercial historic district.