ART OF SPACE.

Byline: PAUL WEIDEMAN

A passion for preservation

In her new book, The Santa Fe House: Historic Residences, Enchanting Adobes, and Romantic Revivals, Margaret Moore Booker does not (thankfully) confine herself to Santa Fe Style. Her treatment of the subject is quite comprehensive -- included, for example, is a 24-page chapter on bungalows. She signs and discusses the book at Collected Works Bookstore (202 Galisteo St., 988-4226) from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 23.

Santa Fe has dozens of fine examples of the American Craftsman bungalow, a house style that evolved out of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century and was popular into the 1930s. "They're my favorite houses," Booker said in a recent interview. "There are pockets of them all around the downtown area. They were economical to build, and the design is just wonderful. I have all Arts and Crafts furniture in my office. It's the closest thing I can have right now to actually living in a bungalow." The chapter is titled "Bungalow Fever: Residences and Retreats for Health Seekers." Booker said that the healthy-living movement that was going on a hundred years ago emphasized that people get plenty of fresh air, even at night. The prominent porches of the Craftsman bungalow fit right into that recipe for living -- homeowners could sleep on their porches.

Booker, who mentioned that she was sad that a bungalow was recently razed to make way for the new district courthouse in Santa Fe,

has a passion for historic preservation. "I had two goals in the book," she said. "One was to cover all of the architectural styles from the 1600s through 1940 in Santa Fe; and the second relates to historic preservation. I don't want to sound pompous, but I really feel the first step in this is education. If you teach people about their architectural treasures, my hope is that they're less likely to severely alter or, heaven forbid, to tear them down. I was in Nantucket for 10 years before I came to Santa Fe

in 2004, and I was a founding board member of the Nantucket Preservation Alliance. We started it because a wonderful old storefront was being torn down. Some friends and I wrapped ourselves around the building to try to stop it. They said it was going to fall down, but then it took them most of the day to destroy it, because

it was so well built."

Booker was born in Chicago and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. She earned her bachelor's degree at Boston College and her master's degree in art history at George Washington University. She has worked as a museum curator, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She collaborated on

the 2003 book Sea Captains' Houses and Rose-Covered Cottages:

The Architectural Heritage of Nantucket Island. Another of her books

is a biography of a Nantucket woman who, in 1847, discovered a comet: Among the Stars: The Life of Maria Mitchell.

Researching and writing The Santa Fe House took three years. The 246-page book has hundreds of illustrations, with lots of new color photographs by Steve Larese. "As I was writing, I tried to think what would be a great illustration for that topic. Or sometimes it was the opposite -- I'd find a great HABS [Historic American Buildings Survey] drawing, and that would guide my writing," Booker said. Many of the book's photos came from the archives at the Palace of the Governors. Others she found at New Mexico's State Historic Preservation Division, at archives in Colorado and California, and from private individuals associated with the homes she featured. Examples of the last are a couple of family photos from a descendant of the owners of the 1888 Phillip and Catherine Hesch House on Read Street and a series of photographs taken during the construction of the 1936 Dorothy S. McKibben House on Old Santa Fe Trail.

In the introduction, Booker repeats the old observation that, at first glance, all Santa Fe's houses look similar: brown and flat-roofed. "It's the same in Nantucket," she said. "That island is called Gray Lady because it has all those gray-shingled houses, but the more you look, the more you wander in neighborhoods, the more you find charming Victorian clapboard houses, and there's even a stucco Arts and Crafts bungalow." The majority of bungalows on Nantucket are sided with wood shingles.

Her book offers great detail on more than two dozen houses. Among them are the "Oldest House" and the Gregorio Crespin House from the 18th century and 13 homes from the 1800s, including the Donaciano Vigil House, the Jose and Isabel Sena House and Plaza,

the James and Maria Johnson House (now El Zaguan) and the neighboring Juan Jose Prada-Margretta Dietrich House, the Abraham and Julia Staab House (now La Posada de Santa Fe), and three of Santa Fe's treasured oddities: the aforementioned mansard-roofed Hesch House, the Queen Anne-style George and Margaret Preston House on Faithway Street, and the Oliver and Isabel Hovey House

on Griffin Street. The Hovey house, which is owned by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, boasts an exterior of faux-painted bricks. "That's also sometimes done back East," Booker said, "but mostly there it's done with scoring, and it's mostly quoins."

Booker abhors people in the past yielding to the fad that everything in town had to have a Santa Fe Style appearance. "The whole stuccoing over of the Victorian stuff makes me crazy," she said. One example in the book is the 1916 remodel of the Fort Marcy Officers' Quarters from around 1880 on Lincoln Avenue.

Booker's presentation in the book is chronological. She sets the stage with the story of Santa Fe's early history, focusing on American Indian pit houses, adobe architecture, and the Spanish Colonial Palace of the Governors. Moving to the Mexican period, from 1821 to 1846, she features three extant houses from the time. Her research uncovered a statement from the 1845 town code: "The council ordered the alcaldes [heads of the neighborhoods] and the citizens of each barrio to keep the streets clean and in a state of good repair; plant trees whenever possible; repair or tear down dilapidated structures; and discontinue the practice of tying up pack mules and saddle horses to the columns supporting the portales around the plaza" because it was causing

roofs to sag.

How did she choose a relatively few houses to represent four centuries of home building? "It was very hard," Booker said. "In general, I tried to choose buildings that were very little changed, but it's difficult because houses are living, breathing things that over time reflect the tastes and desires of their owners. I also chose homes for the interesting people who built them, and I talked to people like Elaine Bergman at the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, asking what do I absolutely have to include in a survey of historic homes. And others volunteered.

"One of the things that excited me was how many women were involved in architecture in the early 20th century. They included the aviator Katherine Stinson Otero [who designed the McKibben home] and Kate Chapman, and there were also the expert mud plasterers from the pueblos that were hired by John Gaw Meem and others." Meem, the archetypal Santa Fe Style architect from the mid-1920s to the 1960s, is represented in the book as the designer of the glorious Laboratory of Anthropology Director's Residence (1930), which now houses the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

Booker is currently writing entries for the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art and thinking about possible subjects for her next book. You may see her strolling through town, looking at buildings and taking notes; chances are her next project will be about Santa Fe's built environment. <