Book presents New Mexico’s historic churches — ranging from humble to grand
New Mexico’s historic churches sprout from its villages and cities, as integral to the cultural landscape as green chile in the fall. From the Gothic grandeur of the state’s cathedrals to the charm of its roadside chapels, each marks a chapter in the history of New Mexico.
Two years ago, author Annie Lux spent a summer driving across the state, scouting everything from 400-year-old pueblo structures to Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy’s “Frenchified” bell towers, collecting legends and lore, patron saints and local heroes. The Santa Fe resident will speak about her book “Historic New Mexico Churches” (Gibbs Smith, $29.95) at the Borders at Sanbusco Center, 500 Montezuma St., at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. More than 100 color photographs by Daniel Nadelbach illustrate its 33 churches.
Lux, who has written for the stage, screen and magazines, had been searching for an illustrated volume of the state’s historic houses of worship when she conceived the idea for the book.
“I was looking into the history of the stations of the cross,” she said in a telephone interview from Steamboat Springs, Colo., where she was attending a conference. “I had been looking for a book that had a lot of pictures and stories, and I couldn’t find it.
Lux’s book focuses primarily on church exteriors because of a request by the Catholic Church regarding the priceless artwork inside the smaller chapels.
“The Archdiocese (of Santa Fe) asked me not to identify the exteriors with the interiors,” Lux said. “Certainly, I didn’t want to produce a guidebook for thieves.”
The simple ones
While it may be easy to become awestruck by the sweeping drama of Santa Fe’s St. Francis Cathedral or the Romanesque bell towers rising from Albuquerque’s San Felipe de Neri, Lux found her heart in the community chapels, particularly along the High Road to Taos and the back roads near Mora.
Completed in 1776, San José de Gracia de Las Trampas (The Traps) stands as a beautiful example of Spanish Colonial architecture. Its adobe walls rise in a cruciform shape, crowned by double bell towers with wooden belfries hugging an exterior choir balcony.
“It’s almost always locked,” Lux said. “The colors of the altar screen are so bright. There are these bright turquoises and red, which is astounding, because the rest (of the church) is so drab and brown.”
Built in the 1880s, Nuestra Señora de la Luz (Our Lady of Light) in Cañoncito rises near the side of Interstate 25, its white, lime plaster walls concealing the original adobe beneath a red, pitched roof. Located 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe, the tiny hamlet first gained fame as the final station on the Santa Fe Trail. The area is rich in history; the red rock walls of Glorieta Pass loom just five miles away, gateway to the eastern plains and the site of a Civil War battle. Today, community members tend the old cemetery, its stone walls framing the church.
San Juan Nepomuceno, Llano San Juan, another charmer built in 1832, sits a short distance off the High Road in the tiny farming hamlet of Llano San Juan.
“When you’re driving on that road, you’re going by all these fields and fences and broken-down adobes, then in the middle of nowhere is this little church,” Lux said.
Santa Cruz de la Cañada rises 25 miles north of Santa Fe in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Construction started on the present building in 1733, one of the most well-preserved churches in New Mexico. Crosses top the double bell towers; a third perches at the peak of the pitched roof, which was added in the early 1900s to protect the magnificent artwork from the rain and melting snow. Inside, oil paintings sent by the Spanish crown share space with bultos (statues), reredos (altar screens) and retablos (paintings on wood) by New Mexico santeros dating to the 1700s.
One bulto (statue) of Jesus of Nazareth inspired a legend. A great storm drove the Santa Cruz River over its banks, endangering the town, as well as the church. Someone cut a finger from the wooden statue and tossed it into the river. Miraculously, the storm stopped, and the town was saved. A few years later, the piece lost another finger during a smallpox outbreak. Someone burned the wooden digit, mixing the ashes with those from the Ash Wednesday service. The people anointed with the ashes remained healthy.
Great artists
Then there are the muscular marquee churches immortalized by everyone from Georgia O’Keeffe to Ansel Adams. St. Francis de Asís at Rancho de Taos graces the book’s cover. Completed in 1810, with an enormous cruciform-plan adobe and double bell towers, it is perhaps the most photographed church in the world, Lux said. Its graceful adobe buttresses arc at the back and sides, luring shadow play in the afternoon light.
Rising from the 357-foot mesa at Acoma Pueblo, San Esteban del Rey likely ranks as the state’s most unusual church, if only because of its location. Work started on the 21,000-square-foot building in 1629, and it was completed in 1640. The mammoth structure is the only existing pueblo church to have survived the 1680 Pueblo Revolt unscathed. In some spots, its walls are 9 feet thick.
“It’s bigger than most of the other pueblo churches,” Lux said. “Every single thing they needed had to be brought up to the top from the ground.”
The Acoma people carried the Ponderosa pines that form the vigas from the forests of Mount Taylor, 40 miles away.
“They never let them touch the ground,” Lux said. “Even the dirt and the water (for the adobe bricks) had to be brought up from below.”
The native people provided the labor — not always willingly — at most of New Mexico’s churches. But the pueblo people contributed more than muscle. They brought centuries-old knowledge of how to create buildings using available material. The ruins at the Salinas pueblos at the Estancia Basin northeast of Socorro show intricate rock work similar to that at Chaco Canyon centuries before any Europeans arrived on the continent.
Lux is already pondering another book about the churches that got away. Santa Clara Pueblo turned her down; Santo Domingo and Santa Ana pueblo officials never returned her calls. She wants to produce whole sections about the churches in and around Mora and in the Española Valley.
“There are plenty of churches for several more books,” she said.
“With all of them, there is a sense of awe and respect.”
If You Go
WHAT: “Historic New Mexico Churches” talk and slide show by Annie Lux
WHEN: 3:30 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Borders at the Sanbusco Center, 500 Montezuma Ave.
CONTACT: 231-4774
