New Mexico New Deal Sites June 2019 - Photo #161 - Santa Fe: New Mexico School for the Deaf

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The New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sunday 23 June 2019 (the campus is closed Sundays so I photographed what I could see from the street).

Founded in 1885, NMSD moved to its current site about 1891. About 1916 the school administration decided that the entire campus would be converted to Spanish-Pueblo Revival style; Cartwright (1916) and Connor (1928) Halls were the first two Pueblo-style buildings. A major building program funded by the US Public Works Administration (PWA) ran from 1935 to 1938, resulting in six new buildings in the Pueblo style — the Dining Hall, the Vocational Building, the Maintenance Barn, the Administration and Classroom Building, the Hospital, and the Laundry — and the renovation of a 7th, the Superintendent's Residence[8]. Plus (apparently) some cattle[9].

References
  1. 50 Communities Benefit from PWA Costing Nearly 18 Million Dollars, Albuquerque Journal, 12 September 1937, p.4: "Towns which have benefitted from Public Works Projects [long list] ... Santa Fe--Municipal Building, $130,000. State Supreme Court building, $306,000. State School for the Deaf administration building, $218,177. School for Deaf hospital and alterations, $72,727. School for Deaf dining hall and barn, $107,000."
  2. New Hospital Is Completed at Deaf School, The Santa Fe New Mexican, 29 October 1937, p.1: "The new 32-bed hospital for the New Mexico School for Deaf has just been completed and turned over to the institution, it was announced today by State PWA Administrator E.H. Oakley. The building, constructed as a federal project cost $72,000 with the PWA contributing $32,000 in the form of an outright grant."
  3. School for the Deaf Receives Approval For $55,000 Laundry, Albuquerque Journal, 12 October 1938, p.8: "...to issue bonds totaling $30,000 for construction under a PWA project of a modern laundry building. The school ... has already received approval of a PWA grant of $25,000."
  4. Kathryn A. Flynn, Public Art and Architecture in New Mexico 1933-1943: A guide to the New Deal Legacy, Sunstone Press (2012), p.115: "In the 1930s, six buildings were built at the New Mexico School for the Deaf utilizing PWA resources. The Hospital building is on the State Register SRCP 1472 [and] was completed in 1937 and is still in use today [it was demolished after 2012]. It is a single-story Spanish Pueblo Revival building. The School Building #2 is also on the State Register SRCP 1469, and on the National Register and is an excellent example of Spanish-Pueblo Revival style, with its stepped profile and projecting vigas." She also notes that most of the school's New Deal art collection is in the Superintendent's Home.
  5. New Mexico School for the Deaf – Santa Fe NM, Living New Deal website, accessed 12 July 2019: "Constructed in 1935, after a design by Santa Fe architect Gordon F. Street, the Old Laundry and Health Center buildings were part of a campus expansion during the New Deal financed by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Public Works Administration programs. When completed in 1937, at cost of approximately $400,000, the six new buildings expanding the New Mexico School Deaf campus were considered masterworks of Spanish-Pueblo Revival architecture."
  6. New Mexico School for the Deaf website, accessed 18 July 2019.
  7. Graphic Building Chronology, 1885-2005, New Mexico School for the Deaf (PDF).
  8. Marian Meyer, A Century of Progress, A History of the New Mexico School for the Deaf, NMSD (1989), pp.12,31,50-51,59-60.
  9. ibid., p.60: "With the new buildings came an expansion of industrial training. The school's orchard, the gardens, dairy, bakery and beauty/barber shop gave the students added vocational experience. After the dairy barn was completed in 1935, help in animal husbandry came from an unexpected source. The board minutes reveal that in 1935, thirteen cows and one bull came to the school — a gift from the Relief Administration."