literary Santa Fe a dedicated walking tour reveals a rich writerly past Early Last century, a group of writers—including Willa Cather and D. H. Lawrence—trekked to Santa Fe to form a literary colony, which, during its heyday from the 1920s to the 1940s, produced best-selling books and hundreds of articles, essays, and poems that helped promote Santa Fe as a popular tourist destination. Many of the sites where these writers once lived and gathered still stand as testaments to this remarkable literary era. A tour of “Literary Santa Fe” takes you to those homes and hangouts, revealing the rich legacy of Santa Fe’s golden literary era. Begin your tour at the Palace of the Governors (100 Palace). According to legend, Lew Wallace, who served as territorial governor of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881, wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ while living there, and his chair and writing table are still on view. Just a few steps away you’ll come to Sena Plaza, a courtyard located off Palace Avenue. This was once the home of the Villagra Book Shop, which opened in 1927. (Today the shop houses Gusterman Silversmiths.) The Villagra was a famous gathering spot for local and visiting writers, who often stopped by for tea, martinis, and gossip. The Plaza was the setting for Dorothy Hughes’s popular 1946 mystery Ride the Pink Horse, while La Fonda on the Plaza, across the street from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, lodged many famous visitors including Cather, who came up with the idea to write Death Comes for the Archbishop while she was a guest there. Walk a few blocks north of the Plaza to 342 Buena Vista, the home of poet Witter Bynner and currently the Inn of the Turquoise Bear. Bynner moved to Santa Fe in 1922 and expanded his property over the course of four decades. He even added a second-story addition called “The O. Henry Story,” which he financed by selling manuscripts written by the namesake author. Bynner was also well-known for his legendary parties, which drew the likes of Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, and Thornton Wilder. One final stop should be The Fray Angélico Chávez History Library (120 Washington), which contains copies of conquistador Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s 1610 epic poem Historia de la Nueva México as well as notebooks and papers of anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, namesake of Bandelier National Monument.
Make the O Keeffe part of your Santa Fe experience VISIT THE GEORGIA O’KEEFFE HOME & STUDIO The Georgia O’Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiu offers a variety of tours of the property that O’Keeffe lived in for 35 years. To the extent possible, the house remains as she left it in 1984, when she moved to Santa Fe. The house and surrounding views were a great source of inspiration to her. She produced iconic works featuring the patio and black door, the cottonwood trees along the Chama River, the White Place, and the Road to Santa Fe. Tours require a reservation: 5O5.685.4539 or okeeffemuseum.org
Adapted with permission from text provided by the Santa Fe Convention & Visitors Bureau. For more information and more Santa Fe history, visit santafe.org. “Overt cultural diversity is a concept that’s been flogged almost to death, but it still bears repeating. Native Americans sell art and crafts at the Palace of the Governors, which is a Spanish Colonial building located a hundred feet from a ridiculous miniature Washington Monument look-alike in the center of the Plaza. Who won? Who cares? It’s still just plain fun to wear your boots and a nice piece of Zuni turquoise and imagine what it was like to crave a whiskey and a bath (among other indulgences) at the end of a long dusty cattle drive, and then wonder why there’s accordion music stuck in your head.” —David Coulson, general manager, Cafe Pasqual’s
ON VIEW IN SANTA FE THROUGH SEPTEMBER 14 GEORGIA O’KEEFFE AND ANSEL ADAMS: THE HAWAI‘I PICTURES ABIQUIU VIEWS
217 JOHNSON STREET, SANTA FE, NM 5O5.946.1OOO OKEEFFEMUSEUM.ORG