New Park Unit in Santa Fe?

Historic National Park Service Santa Fe Building; Tony Bonanno photo.

History, once dismantled, cannot be accurately reconstructed. Recreations can appear original, but they still lack the original craftsman’s skills, mindset, and commitment.

Between 1937 and 1939, the Santa Fe Trail Building was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps to serve as the National Park Service’s regional office. Into the building designed by Park Service architect Cecil Doty went furniture, artworks, and other furnishings made or acquired by the Work Projects Administration. Care was painstakingly taken to ensure that these furnishings, some of which were constructed within the building, blended perfectly with the adobe structure.

While the Park Service moved the regional office to Denver in 1995, it still maintained the Santa Fe Trail Building as an adjunct office building and National Historic Landmark. But late in 2007 the integrity of the building, the world’s largest adobe office building, seemed threatened by none other than the agency it long served and which has been charged with its caretaking – the National Park Service. At issue was the agency’s plan to reconfigure the structure for a greater number of NPS employees. There was talk of removing the historic furnishings from the Santa Fe Trail Building, of reconfiguring its interior walls.

Rising to defend the Santa Fe Trail Building was the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.
"These plans … have created a wave of outrage throughout the Coalition membership and into the preservation community beyond," Bill Wade, who chairs the group’s executive council, wrote Park Service Director Mary Bomar. "The National Trust for Historic Preservation is ready to take up the cause, together with many other preservation, environmental, and political groups. All judge the plans as the destruction of a National Historic Landmark by the very agency most vitally charged with its preservation."

Opposition to this plan by the Coalition, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, and members of the public has led the Park Service to reverse course. Now Director Bomar says there will be no structural changes to the building, and that cultural objects will be removed only if preservation requires it.

Moving forward, designation of the building as a national monument or national historic site would best ensure its protection.