It takes a village to
raise a child and it takes
a community like Santa Fe
to launch an adult.
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It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a community like Santa Fe to launch an adult.
Retire to Santa Fe and you join other émigrés, many of them adventurous optimists who have
honed their talents in other places.
Retire to Santa Fe and become a volunteer. Just show up and bring a good attitude along with your
experience. Opportunities for becoming involved abound with over 600 non-profits eager for bodies,
minds and money. A great deal of community effort is focused on preserving what we have and
supporting the future at the same time. The Railyard development project is a good example of
how the community works. After years of kicking around plans and preventing outsiders from
leveling the historic buildings to pave way for generic urban development, the City of Santa
Fe, along with the help of the Trust for Public Land, purchased the 50+acres of Railyard property.
The city gave an open invitation to the citizenry to determine the type of development they wanted.
10 years and countless community meetings later, development is underway that focuses on local
business and live/work spaces aimed at keeping the “rugged, gritty” look of the Railyard, and the
energetic mix that appeals to retirees.
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To understand our community it helps to have a sense of the history that shaped contemporary Santa Fe.
Santa Fe has always been a ‘capitol’. Governments have come and gone but each wave of cultural infusion
has left its mark on the values, art and architecture that define the City Different. With the freedom
of retirement you’ll have the opportunity to educate yourself in the history of this remarkable place.
The community credits the neighboring Pueblo Indians’ adobe buildings as the foundation of Santa Fe’s
different look. Spanish colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries used the same native materials. It
was a tried and true architecture that suited the climate and geography of the high desert. The simplicity
and human scale of the design, the texture and color of materials, and the soft cornered buildings set a
precedent for harmony between the high desert landscape and the manmade environment. Families and neighbors
relied upon each other. Retirement was unheard of. Land was divided among family members in narrow parcels
with access to water. The winding streets were animal paths and the irrigated fields off the Acequia Madre
grew food that fed the townspeople living near the protected capitol offices around the plaza.
The ‘pueblo’ style architecture became more embellished once New Mexico became part of United States
Territory in the mid 19th century. Manufactured building materials pored into the area on their way
west. Pitched tin roofs and door and window trim appeared along with a more rectilinear design known
as Territorial style. By the 20th century, the 3 legs of the tri-cultural history -Pueblo Indian,
Hispanic and Anglo –were evident in the architecture that distinguishes Santa Fe from other cities.
If you are looking at real estate in Santa Fe,
it helps to know these two architectural styles, as
both can be found in all ends of the housing market. Retiring to Santa Fe assures you will not be
bored by generic housing developments. A classic example of Pueblo revival style is the Museum of
Fine Arts. To see an example of 20th century Territorial building- check out the Capitol complex
just east of the round Capitol building (the Roundhouse).
Protecting the ‘look’ of Santa Fe goes on today, as it did throughout the 20th century when Historic
Design ordinances recognized Pueblo Revival and Territorial as the two accepted styles for the
historic zone. Rather than retire the past in favor of the new, the Historic Design Review Board
monitors all construction in the designated downtown historic area to see that it complies with
historic record. Step outside the historic zone and you’ll see indications of other waves of
influence, including the gilded ‘stupa; the Buddhist shrine, on Airport Road. Santa Fe’s tri-cultural
roots have split into multicultural strands that include a growing community of Tibetans and East
Indians. Retire to Santa Fe and be part of the wave of expanding cultural influences. Enjoy the new
cuisine, plenty of sushi and great East Indian food, although the red and green chile ‘Christmas’
enchiladas are still Santa Fe’s claim to food fame.
As for the creative vigor of Santa Fe, for that we credit the ingenuity required to live here. Necessity
truly was and continues to be the mother of invention in Santa Fe. Living simply, due to scarcity of
resources, established an appreciation for the land that was the livelihood for early Santa Feans and
their Pueblo neighbors. When artists migrated west in the 1920’s hearing rumors about the painterly
‘light’ in Santa Fe, they reinforced the land-art-spirit story through their paintings. Retire and
reinvent – living in Santa Fe makes you part of the collective myth that hangs around it.
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