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Architextures

Mediterranean Revival

Mediterranean Revival Styles

Pueblo Revival

Pueblo Revival Style originated in the early 1900s in New Mexico. It is based on the indigenous regional vernacular achitecture of the pueblos and missions of New Mexico. It is sometimes called Santa Fe Style. Architect John Gaw Meem, active in Santa Fe from 1924 through 1959, was instrumental in the development and popularization of the style.

Thousands of tourists flocked to New Mexico in the early 1900s to see the ancient pueblos of the Native Americans. It was only natural for New Mexican architects to look for ways to incorporate the stylistic characteristics of primitive adobe structures into modern homes. Pueblo Revival quickly became a regional favorite of the Land of Enchantment and continues still to convey a strong identity to the state.

Although Pueblo Revival homes are similar in some ways to Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival homes, several distinctive features make Pueblo Revival easily to identify. Ancient pueblos were constructed from adobe rather than the plastered stucco used in Mission and Spanish Colonial. Unlike stucco, adobe was soft and amorphous making the arcaded forms found in Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival impossible to construct. Consequently, the larger openings of Pueblo Revival structures often feature lintels supported on corbelled haunches. This produces the "flat arch" doors and windows typical of the Pueblo style.

Whereas Mission and Spanish Colonial structures rely on a red, clay-tiled roof for the Spanish motif, Pueblo Style structures feature a flat roof shielded by a parapet constructed from adobe. The roof was (or at least appeared to be) framed with roughly cut logs that protrude through the adobe parapet. All of these characteristics are derived from the primitive adobe structures of the 17th century, although they are strictly stylistic and ornamental in Pueblo Revival structures.

A typical Pueblo Style house incorporates most of these elements:

• Massive, round-edged walls which appear to be made with adobe (though the exterior is typically rough stucco applied to a conventional frame structure)
• Walls that extend past the roof, topped by rounded parapets
• An (apparently) flat roof with no overhang
• Spouts in the parapet to direct rainwater off the roof
• The appearance of heavy timbers extending through walls below the parapets (giving the impression that you are seeing the ends of actual roof support beams)
• Deep window and door openings
• Heavy wood timbers used as lintels above doors and windows
• Simple windows and heavy wooden doors
• Elaborate corbels (a corbel is an architectural bracket or block projecting from a wall and supporting (or appearing to support) beam
• Porches held up with heavy timber posts
• Enclosed patios

Pueblo Revival homes were never widely popular in Dallas. Most folks would agree they look a bid odd when they are separated from the desert landscape, plopped down in the middle of a green lawn, and shaded by towering pecan trees. But you'll see a pueblo-inspired home from time to time as you drive around the M-Street area.