La Fonda Hotel, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1923
Unknown Photographer
offset lithographed postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (8.9 x 14 cm)
John Gaw Meem built many important buildings in the Pueblo Spanish Revival style including the renovation of La Fonda, Cristo Rey Church and the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, and Zimmerman library on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Meem appreciated the spiritual value of ancient forms, and he designed curves and battered walls similar to ancient buildings and the Southwestern landscape. He sought to evoke a mood that referred to the surrounding place. He also believed that ancient native shapes were functional and therefore modern, and that ancient forms could be combined with modernist ideas and materials.