Furnishing the
Santa Fe Style
An Investigation in Two Parts
Part 1: The Unexpected Designer
Jesse L. Nusbaum, 1887-1975
B y P e n e lop e H u n t er - S t i eb el
R
32 E l P a l a c i o
esearch so often starts with serendipity. My study of the historic
furniture made for the New Mexico Museum of Art began
quite by accident. Director Mary Kershaw asked me to do
an audioguide on the building, originally called the Art
Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico. This required
major research, as, though I had done a number of
audioguides, they were always on projects that I had
initiated, and hence knew from the ground up.
With this project I had to dig in to learn the
museum’s history, going beyond secondary accounts to find original records.
The Women’s Board Room
of the New Mexico Museum
of Art. Photographer unknown,
ca. 1920. Courtesy Palace of
the Governors Photo Archives
(NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 016777.
El Palacio
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1930. A self-taught photographer, he created an extraordinary
body of documentation. Prints from his glass plates ranging
from observations of daily life on the dirt streets of Santa Fe to
records of far-flung sites of antiquity are as familiar to readers
of El Palacio as to archaeological researchers.
Manual Arts in Las Vegas
With his freshly-minted degree in pedagogy from Colorado
Teachers College, Nusbaum was hired to teach science and
manual arts at the State Normal School (now Highlands
University) in Las Vegas, New Mexico. His photographs of
furniture made by his manual arts class in 1908 show simple
constructions of straight, quartersawed wood in the style of the
international Arts and Crafts Movement. The Arts and Crafts
style is best known today in the furniture of Gustav Stickley,
but the new look was incorporated in the mass production
lines of the furniture industry centered in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. Several companies in the United States marketed
manufactures of this type as “mission” style in advertisements
and widely distributed sales catalogs. The straight lines and
clean look made a bold modernist statement in contrast to the
Victorian historic revivals that were still popular in turn-ofthe-century America.
In this 1908 photograph by Jesse Nusbaum, furniture made by Nusbaum’s
manual arts class shows a simplified Arts and Crafts style. Courtesy Palace of the
Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 139034.
Beginning in the museum itself and its library, I kept running across unusual pieces of furniture, in use in galleries, or
tucked away in basement nooks and crannies or storerooms,
and I became intrigued. Archival photographs made it easy
enough to identify the original furniture made in 1917 for the
Women’s Board Room, but only further archival research lead
me to its author in the unlikely person of Jesse L. Nusbaum.
Nusbaum, a recognized pioneer of archaeology of the
Americas who excavated ruins in the Southwest, Mexico,
and Central America and even braved rumored cannibals to
explore the Mayan Yucatán, was as well an influential interior
designer and furniture maker. This forgotten aspect of the talents of a latter-day renaissance man lives on within the walls
of the New Mexico Museum of Art.
As the first archaeologist hired by the National Park Service
in 1921, he was superintendent of its first cultural park at
Mesa Verde, and, at the behest of John D. Rockefeller, became
the founding director of the Laboratory of Anthropology in
34 E l P a l a c i o
To Santa Fe
During school vacations Nusbaum worked on archaeological
digs and was recruited for the excavations by Edgar Lee Hewett,
the founding director of the Santa Fe School of American
Archeaology, later called School of American Research (now
School for Advanced Research). When Hewett established the
Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, Nusbaum was one of his
first hires. Between continued archaeological projects he led
the restoration of the museum’s home in the colonial Palace of
the Governors and became deeply involved in the effort to rescue the identity of Santa Fe. In the decades after the arrival of
the railroad the town experienced an Anglo-Americanization.
With the razing of adobe homes for brick business blocks and
bungalows, the historic Hispanic town was coming to resemble Anytown USA. Statehood having been won in 1912, Santa
Fe’s mayor Arthur Seligman convened a group, led by Hewett,
to address a means of reviving the economy and restoring
the identity of the capital. They came up with a program for
developing a signature style of architecture that they called the
New-Old Santa Fe Style. It would combine regional Hispanic
and Southwest Native American traditions with the necessities
of twentieth-century life.
The first step in the rebranding of Santa Fe had been taken
in 1909, when Hewett rescued the Palace of the Governors
from delapidation to house the Museum of New Mexico. He
turned the renovation over to Nusbaum, capitalizing on the
young man’s familiarity with industrial arts and with building techniques, learned from his father, a contractor who
owned a brickyard in Greeley, Colorado. Along with Kenneth
Chapman and Sylvanus Morley, Nusbaum completed the
renovation in 1913 with a creative make-over of the portal,
façade, and interior that replaced the brick and classical elements added in the 1870s with Hispanic and Pueblo Indian
design references into its present world-famous form.
Nusbaum’s contribution was quite different from the betterknown achievements of Mary Colter, designer of interiors for
the hotels run by The Fred Harvey Company along railroad
lines that extended from Kansas to California. Colter’s romantic interiors ranged in style from California Mission to Spanish
Colonial to Native American depending on the location. She
mixed Indian artifacts and Spanish and Mexican antiques
with contemporary Native American crafts executed in on-site
workshops with the purpose of evoking a mythical Old West
that would lure and enchant tourists.
The team assembled by Edgar Lee Hewett was also concerned with building tourism as an economic driver, but they
focused on Santa Fe, reviving and adapting a cultural identity
that was fast disappearing. Nusbaum drew on his archaeological research and photographic documentation to incorporate
authentic design elements in architecture and furnishings that
would realistically serve modern-day use. The ultimate goal
was to assert a regional identity that would foster civic pride
in the capital city of the new state of New Mexico.
The promoters of the New-Old Santa Fe Style used the
1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego to advance
the program with a New Mexico state building by the architectural firm of Rapp and Rapp. With façades evoking the
adobe mission churches of Acoma and Laguna, the building
stood out from the “California mission style” of the rest of the
fair. Nusbaum claimed that the uncredited architect, Arthur
Hendrickson, employed by the Rapp firm, was responsible
for the successful pastiche of façades that would serve as
the model for the Art Gallery that Hewett aimed to build.1
Nusbaum himself was engaged by the Santa Fe Railroad to
build and program an ethnographic exhibit that proved one
of the most popular attractions of the fair. Called “The Painted
Desert Pueblo,” it was constructed with traditional pueblo
techniques using Nusbaum’s documentary photos and the
Jesse Nusbaum poses for a self-portrait. In the days when motor vehicles were
few and far between in New Mexico, the high-spirited Nusbaum was an easily recognizable sight, traversing the region on his motorcycle. Jesse Nusbaum, ca. 1917.
Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 158088.
assistance of his friends from San Idelfonso. Among those
who stayed to “inhabit” the building were potters Julian and
Maria Martinez.
Frank Springer, Hewett’s primary financial backer in creating the envisioned Art Gallery, was so impressed by the
Painted Desert Pueblo that he asked Nusbaum to work on
architectural features that would transform the design of the
New Mexico building in San Diego into the larger and more
complex building that is today the New Mexico Museum of
Art. Although it was fully a year before his appointment as
superintendent of construction, Nusbaum complied, undertaking a series of what he called “reconnaissances” through
New Mexico to photograph details of woodwork in old
churches and ruins.
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The form is clearly derived from pulpits with spiral bases in
northern New Mexico churches photographed by Nusbaum
on exactly those “reconnaissances” Springer had requested.
Although originally intended for a different purpose, the lectern that serves speakers in the St. Francis Auditorium is one
piece of furniture that we can be certain was designed and
made by Jesse Nusbaum.
The Art Gallery of
the Museum of New Mexico
The architects for the Art Gallery, again Rapp and Rapp,
along with Director Hewett, were set on building a fireproof
structure with interiors of concrete. Nusbaum, with Springer’s
support, held out for woodwork detailed to recall regional traditions. He based the vigas and corbels of the auditorium, the
ceiling of the foyer, and the woodwork decoration throughout
the building on that of the Pecos mission ruin, where he had
recently recorded designs and colors of architectural elements
that disintegrated soon after they were uncovered.
Creating The Women’s Board Room
This lectern, still in use in the St. Francis Auditorium, was made by Jesse
Nusbaum to hold notes for Frank Springer’s inaugural address in 1917. Photograph
by Blair Clark. All furniture made for the Museum of Art pictured here and throughout is shown courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Art.
The Lectern
A long-overlooked product of Nusbaum’s research into traditional design is the lectern that continues in use on the stage
of the St. Francis Auditorium of the New Mexico Museum of
Art. At the building’s opening on November 24, 1917, it was
reported in El Palacio that “Twelve hundred people who had
crowded into the St. Francis auditorium of the new Museum
… rose to their feet and applauded as Hon. Frank Springer
stepped to the reading desk to deliver the dedication address.”
In an interview late in his life Nusbaum revealed the origin
of the “reading desk.” 2 He had made it to display the miniatures painted by Springer’s daughter, but her father, at the last
minute before the Art Gallery inauguration, requisitioned it to
hold the notes for his speech. In this unique design a tray with
raised edges is supported by a single spiral Solomonic column.
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As Santa Fe’s Art Gallery building was intended as a model for
re-casting the architecture of the city, the spacious Women’s
Board Room, with vigas, a kiva fireplace, and a furniture
ensemble designed for social entertaining, provided the illustration of how the new style could be applied in domestic
interiors. The room conformed to the notion of a gesamptkunstwerk, or total aesthetic environment. One of its early
expressions is the James MacNeill Whistler Peacock Room
(1877), now in the Freer Gallery of Washington, but the concept soon characterized the work of architects like Antonio
Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright.
A large part of the upstairs space in the new Art Gallery
was allocated to the museum’s board, comprised of influential
ladies hand-picked by Hewett to garner support for him in the
broader community. Extant copies of the Rapp architectural
plans do not correspond to the room as built, suggesting that
the superintendent (Nusbaum) had a great deal of license in
the final form.
Years later Nusbaum reminisced, “When we got to this
room, I thought it should be something other than just plain
concrete slabs.... I worked out a very fine design of an elaborate ceiling, vigas, carving, color, the whole thing.… I even
designed and made some furniture.”3 Hewett was absent from
Santa Fe when the room was in construction and flew into
a rage with Nusbaum on his return. Most of all he objected
JESSE NUSBAUM
since their early days when both were recruited for summer
work on Hewett’s archeaological digs. In setting up the staff
for his new museum, Hewett recruited Chapman in the role
of illustrative artist and secretary, requiring him to assume
administrative duties that Hewett attempted to micromanage by mail during frequent absences from Santa Fe. Among
the “odd jobs” Chapman complained of were “designing and
supervising the construction of grills and other features of
the [Art Gallery] interior, and the furniture of the Women’s
Committee rooms.” 4 Hewett expected Chapman, known as
the most even-tempered and affable member of the museum
staff, to satisfy the concerns of the Women’s Board when it
came to their new quarters: “The Plan for the women’s rooms,”
wrote Hewett, “is so perfectly in the spirit of all that we are
trying to do in Santa Fe that it seems to me beyond criticism,
and I feel sure that we can trust our house committee to carry
it out in fine taste. No one is better prepared to do this designing than Chapman. When it comes to the actual making of the
furniture that will be a question to seriously consider.”5
Chapman’s artistic forte, however, was careful watercolor
renderings of subjects ranging from Springer’s crinoid fossil
collection to his later work classifying the design motifs of
Pueblo pottery. It seems blatant politics that while Nusbaum
was rarely mentioned in contemporary El Palacio accounts,
Nusbaum drew design ideas from his photographic documentation of the
region, as in his photograph of the pulpit at Las Trampas, ca. 1912. Courtesy
Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 014166.
to the color scheme of burnt orange and two shades of blue
painted in the recesses of the carving. The renowned painter
Robert Henri was called down from Taos to rectify the color
scheme. Declaring he could not improve on Nusbaum’s color
selection, he suggested that the ladies further extend it in
curtains and cushions, thus placating Hewett and saving
Nusbaum’s job. Over the decades, fading and repainting have
taken place, but a scientific conservation study could bring
the original colors to light so that the original harmony could
be restored.
Disputed Authorship
The Women’s Board Room was surely Nusbaum’s definitive
stylistic statement, although Kenneth Chapman has often been
credited with the furniture. The two were friendly colleagues
Nusbaum’s documentation of a traditional chest he photographed at
Ranchos de Taos was published in El Palacio 3 (2), January 1916.
El Palacio
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JESSE NUSBAUM
The Women’s Board Room
sideboard was a prerequisite for
the entertaining of legislators,
politicians. and distinguished
visitors to the state capital
undertaken by the ladies of the
board acting as social
ambassadors for the museum.
This heavily hand-worked
low chest by Nusbaum is the
key to the design scheme he
developed for the entire furniture
ensemble, adapted from a type
of chest made by carpenters of
New Mexico’s Velarde Valley from
the eighteenth century onwards.
Photographs by Blair Clark.
38 E l P a l a c i o
JESSE NUSBAUM
The pair of hieratic armchairs from the Women’s
Board Room were inspired by the traditional “priest’s chair”
of New Mexico churches. Photograph by Blair Clark.
El Palacio
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JESSE NUSBAUM
Chapman was regularly credited with “design,” even in
write-ups of the the Painted Desert Pueblo. In this case
Nusbaum’s photographs prove his authorship, documenting
every stage of the design development from his own drawings
through his three-dimensional models. Although Nusbaum
never referenced design assistance, perhaps Chapman did
sketches, adapting Nusbaum’s photographic documentation
to the Women’s Board furniture decoration, just as he had
done watercolor renderings for Nusbaum’s Painted Desert
Pueblo to present for client approval.6 There is no evidence
that Chapman had researched regional furniture, did any
woodworking, or had experience in furniture design or construction. Nusbaum, on the other hand, went on to design
and make furniture for his Santa Fe home as well as for
the Mesa Verde Park headquarters and his residence when
he became superintendent there in 1921. For the museum
projects Nusbaum did have assistance in the person of Sam
Hudelson, whom he acknowledged as a valued collaborator
on the woodwork of the Art Gallery and who continued making furniture when he succeeded Nusbaum in the position of
superintendent (see Part II, page 42).
The Women’s Board
Room Furniture
The original seven-piece furniture ensemble, completed and
photographed before the official opening, comprised a long
table, a tall sideboard, two armchairs, two benches, and a
small low chest. All survive structurally intact, but with the
expected signs of over a century of hard use. By the time of
the opening these pieces were supplemented by a number of
simpler side chairs.
The key piece in the
development of the furniture design scheme is the
small low chest. The form
and decoration relate to
a group of eighteenthand nineteenth-century
chests probably made by
the Valdez family in the
Velarde Valley (between
Española and Taos). It
bears direct comparison
to a piece photographed
by Nusbaum at Ranchos
Benches from the Women’s Board Room
echo regional tradition. Photograph by P.H-S. de Taos and published
40 E l P a l a c i o
in El Palacio in January 1916. Without directly copying,
Nusbaum adopted the design vocabulary and the traditional
techniques of uneven surfaces hand-worked with an adze as
well as chip carving. But he has added elements all his own
with the application of paint in recesses and the sophisticated
decorative use of projecting tenons, their ends cut in zigzags
to achieve an effect similar to that of the braces attached to the
sides of the Ranchos de Taos chest.
The highly worked small chest established the decorative
vocabulary for the tall sideboard, a totally Anglo form without which no respectable American dining room would have
been considered complete. Regional character was imposed
on the conventional form by repeating the projecting joinery
and decorative carving scheme of the ensemble and adding
and fastening the doors with iron latches crafted in the local
blacksmithing tradition.
The two armchairs are inspired by the traditional “priest’s
chair” found in New Mexican churches, with wooden seats
having a wide rail and the legs braced with wide stretchers.
The step carving of the tops of the back uprights is associated
with furniture found at Cochiti and at Zia Pueblo, but here it
is also used on the arm rests. Nusbaum exaggerated a rigid
four-square structure, eschewing the usual slant of the back.
Further he emphasized the joinery, with all the tenons projecting, a device used only for occasional emphasis in contemporary Anglo “mission” furniture. As it happened examples
were close at hand. At the close of the Panama-California
Exposition Hewett had purchased furniture “built in heavy
Mission style” that had been made for the Salt Lake Railway
pavilion, deeming it a bargain and “a great snap for furnishings for our large front rooms in the new building.”7 Period
photos of the new Art Gallery entry/library room show several
Mission-style tables with projecting tenons.
The two Women’s Board Room benches derive from traditional regional benches, one of which was originally in
the room (now in the Museum of International Folk Art).
Nusbaum’s benches featured the stepped endings to the
uprights and armrests, and the projecting joinery found on the
armchairs, but the painted carving differs. The lines of bulletshaped gouges conform to those on the vigas and window surrounds of the room. These were elements Nusbaum derived
from the Pecos ruins rather than the angled chips on the other
pieces of the set drawn from Velarde furniture.
The table that was the centerpiece of the room is a masterful invention combining the dimension of an Anglo banquet
table with massive Solomonic columns like those Nusbaum
This table, now in the museum entrance hall, was the centerpiece
of the Women’s Board Room. In a design tour de force, Nusbaum
supported the grand dimension of an Anglo banquet table with
massive spiral columns he had observed supporting the pulpits of
New Mexican churches. Photograph by Blair Clark.
observed supporting the pulpits in New Mexican churches.
Circles of painted chip carving punctuate the sturdy blocks at
each end of the columns, emphatically terminating the long
run of the stretchers and apron. The incredible durability of
this historic table has been continuously tested since its relocation to the Museum of Art lobby, where it is put to use on
a regular basis.
Notes
1. Letter dated September 20, 1943, to Dr. Laurence Vail Coleman,
director American Association of Museums, and Nusbaum’s undated handwritten account titled “Background Data on New Mexico Bldg,” Laboratory of Anthropology Archives, Nusbaum Papers: 89.NPO.013
and 93NP2.028.
2. Manuscript transcription, Laboratory of Anthropology Archives, The Women’s Board Room
and Santa Fe Style
The Women’s Board Room became the social hub of the capital, presided over by the leading lights of local society who
regularly entertained there members of the state legislature as
well as every notable who passed through Santa Fe. Nusbaum’s
showcase was pivotal in weaning Anglo taste from East Coast
fashions and Grand Rapids mass production, in favor of a proud
regionalism, as the New-Old Santa Fe style entered the home. n
Penelope Hunter-Stiebel is an independent curator living in Santa Fe. She
began her curatorial career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she worked
on the historical collection of decorative arts and developed the field of modern
Nusbaum Papers: 93.NP2.028.
3. Rosemary Nusbaum, Tierra Dulce, Reminiscences from the Jesse Nusbaum Papers. (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1980), 63]
4. Marit K. Munson, ed., Kenneth Chapman’s Santa Fe: Artists and Archaeologists, 1907–1931 (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 2007), 64.
5. Letter from Hewett to then assistant director Paul Walter, April 20, 1917, Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Edgar L. Hewett Collection, AD 105, Box 3, Folder 1.
6. Munson, op. cit., 60.
7. Letter from Hewett to Paul Walter, April 4, 1917, Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Edgar L. Hewett Collection AC105, Box 3, Folder 1.
and contemporary design.
El Palacio
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