Building Your Own Home?

If building is in your future, you'd be pressed to find more interesting and diversified architectural styles. I work with many clients on site selection, contractor and architect referral and remain involved in the design process. Having designed and built approximately 20 homes over my real estate career, this is a passion for me. I can help arrange the construction process from the very beginning, assisting in finding the best construction financing, making sure the home is resalable on the market should you decide to sell (primarily design and view orientation), and seeing the project through to completion. Many times I must be the eyes for my clients as they often live out of town.

Santa Fe is known for its many architectural styles and materials. Among the favorites are adobe, rastra (pumice), concrete block, frame and more recently, strawbale. Frame and strawbale are probably the least expensive materials to build with, unless one decides to double frame, giving the walls a big, wide appearance. Concrete block will exceed single, frame slightly (approx. 10%), and adobe and rastra will exceed single frame by approximately 20%. Most of the higher end homes use adobe, rastra, concrete block (AAC) or double frame.

Keep in mind that the cost to build is also largely dependent upon the lot selected, including the topography (slope) and the density of the ground (rock). In certain areas within the city limits one must assume an additional $50,000 in expense for earthwork, jack-hammering up rock. Also wells and septics add additional expense for those properties without city utilities. So essentially you may be looking at another $100,000 in building expense depending upon the lot you choose!

Building & Architecture of Santa Fe

Santa Fe’s homebuilding traditions have made “Santa Fe Style” famous—and the city’s architectural legacy remains much more than a trendy moniker; it combines ancient Pueblo masonry with clustered adobe houses, Spanish techniques with Moorish influences, and Anglo styles adapted from Victorian and neo-Grecian trends.  The mix and melding of these styles make Santa Fe’s residential and commercial buildings unique, continuing to provid important links to the area’s geographical and cultural histories.

Traditional Building Materials

Through centuries of settlement, both Native American and Hispanic cultures established important traditions of using building materials that drew from their immediate natural environments.

The ancestors of today’s Pueblo people looked to the land for their building materials, constructing clustered cliff dwellings from native sandstone and surface houses with a sun-hardened mixture of clay and grasses laid with mud mortar. Roofing poles—precursors of today’s vigas—were laid horizontally to support smaller, stripped branches and often other brush and mud. These smaller branches led to the latillas found in many traditional New Mexican homes. Soft, rounded corners, flat roofs and the distinctive rounded kiva fireplaces made of plastered adobe-brick were also adapted from Pueblo architecture.

Spanish settlers recognized the thermal and acoustic benefits of natural materials such as adobe and adopted them, introducing the method of forming the clay adobe into bricks. Local woods like aspen, pine and cedar were used for ceiling beams, doors and other features. Adobe homes are still found and built in Santa Fe today, although newer homes are more often wood-framed and then stuccoed.  Stone, plaster, wood posts and beams, and vigas and latillas remain common features of homes in northern New Mexico. More recent homebuilding materials include straw bales, concrete and pumice-crete—and even old tires, rammed earth, glass bottles and aluminum cans.

Predominant Architectural Styles

The Pueblo architectural style features muted coloring, clustered massing, rounded corners and textural depth. To this architecture of tranquil stability, the Spanish brought enclosed patios and courtyards, portals running the length of homes that provided shaded outdoor living space, details of elaborately carved wood beam-supports, or corbels, heavy wooden doors and built-in benches or bancos. Other architectural styles on display in Santa Fe include the French Romanesque St Francis Cathedral and the Spanish Mission style railroad station. Drawing on architectural and decorative influences of Santa Fe’s multiple cultures, many of the interiors of buildings and homes in Santa Fe feature brick or Saltillo tile floors, flagstone patios, decorative painted tiles, archways, rounded kiva fireplaces, brightly painted trim, wood planking and nichos, or small shelves hollowed and rounded out from thick walls.

The Colonial Hacienda style is a further Spanish adaptation of the Pueblo style. These homes’ windows and most doors face inward toward a central courtyard, often featuring many rooms that are added over a period of several years.

When the Santa Fe Trail and the railroad brought greater numbers of Anglo settlers to Santa Fe in the early-mid 1800s, it also ushered in new architectural influences.  Features borrowed from then-popular Victorian and neo-Grecian styles were incorporated into Santa Fe architecture, and the Territorial style was born.  These buildings may have brick facades or stucco exteriors with brick coping and parapets. Sharper edges, wood trim, double-hung windows, balconies, wood porches and Victorian detailing distinguish this style.

Pitched-roof homes are an adaptation of Pueblo and Western ranch-style homes by early settlers to New Mexico.  Built largely to shed snow, the pitched-roof style is most common in northern New Mexico villages, although the style has gained some popularity in areas with milder winters.  Today, these homes often feature metal propanel roofing.

Historic Neighborhoods

Santa Fe’s historic neighborhoods were built on small, winding streets with simple, low-profile, hand-crafted homes and family compounds, and five Historic Districts were officially established in 1982: Historic Eastside, Santa Fe Rail Yard area, Don Gaspar Area Historic District, Westside-Guadalupe District, Historic Review District.

Downtown Santa Fe and the Historic Eastside include the city’s central Plaza, surrounding commercial area, and the residential neighborhoods to the east.  Pueblo-Spanish and Territorial styles dominate this area, although a variety of architectural styles can be found. The Santa Fe Rail Yard area, otherwise known as the Historic Transition District, was platted in 1880 in anticipation of the rail road and now includes an interesting and eclectic mix of homes and commercial buildings. South of downtown lies the Don Gaspar Area Historic District, named for its central street.  Home to examples of architectural styles ranging form Pueblo-Spanish to Queen Anne, this area’s development predated the city’s embrace of a regional architectural style. The Westside-Guadalupe District extends west of downtown where agricultural plots once thrived. Now, narrow side streets and lanes are set with low-walled homes and family compounds and early-mid 1900s cottage architecture adapted to the Santa Fe architectural vernacular. Southeast of downtown is the Historic Review District, which is now home to Museum Hill.  Homes and buildings are set into the foothills here, and the area conveys a more rural sense.

New Growth

Some newer subdivisions and developments have tried to mirror the quiet “community feeling” fostered by residential layouts in Santa Fe’s historic districts, while others have responded more rapidly to the needs of Santa Fe’s fast growing population. 

Santa Fe’s south side is a growing residential, institutional and commercial area featuring mid-century neighborhoods flowing into more recent village-concept developments. North of town, homes are built into the foothills leading up Old Taos Highway, and to Santa Fe ski Area. To the northwest, larger developments range from innovative condominium communities, to the Aldea de Santa Fe village, to the more conservative demographic of Las Campanas’ community.

Land, homesiting and homebuilding opportunities abound in Santa Fe –with the traditions of handcrafted artistry, and “community feeling” unique to building in this area. Perhaps nowhere else in the country is the commitment to environmental and cultural legacies in ancient, to modern homebuilding and architecture, as apparent as it is in Santa Fe.