Inn · Taos, New Mexico · Built houses before 1895–1908; joined as an inn 1934–1936
Historic Taos Inn
Listed on the National Register as Taos Inn
Four nineteenth-century adobe houses a block north of the Taos Plaza, including the home of the town doctor 'Doc' Martin, joined in the 1930s into a Santa Fe Style hotel around a lobby under a pyramidal ceiling and cupola.
History
Thomas Paul Martin came to Taos from Pennsylvania in 1895 and bought an adobe house on the road north of the Plaza. For forty years he was the town's only doctor, known for long rides to house calls across the valley, and his house was a landmark. In 1915 it hosted the meeting at which the painters of the Taos Society of Artists organized. Martin and his first wife acquired the neighboring Tarleton house, a U-shaped adobe recorded as early as 1881, which went to her in their divorce; he and his second wife, Helen, bought it back in 1928.
Taos in the 1930s drew artists, writers and tourists, attracted by the art colony, Mabel Dodge Luhan's circle and D. H. Lawrence's brief stay, and the Columbian Hotel had burned in 1928. The Martins began turning the two houses into a hotel in 1934: they built a new U-shaped block of guest rooms behind the doctor's house, gave the Tarleton house a second story, and roofed its open patio to make a lobby. Doc Martin died in 1935, and Helen opened the Hotel Martin in June 1936. It quickly became a gathering place for townspeople, visitors and artists. She ran it until 1946; later owners renamed it the Taos Inn, absorbed the Sandoval house in 1954 and the Hinde house, long the telephone office, in 1955, and added a pool in 1960. A kitchen fire in 1978 was repaired, and the inn was listed on the National Register in 1982.
“For many years the Taos Inn was the social gathering place for locals and tourists.”
Architecture
The inn is a cluster of one-story stuccoed adobes with flat roofs, joined along Paseo del Pueblo Norte into a single irregular front. The Martin house section has crenellated parapets flanking an espadaña, a bell-gable with a triangular niche more usual on churches than houses, plus projecting viga ends and a window with a crude broken-scroll pediment. The set-back lobby entrance is round-arched. Inside, the former patio of the Tarleton house is the two-story lobby: three log posts carry a pyramidal ceiling of vigas and latillas up to a skylit cupola, with a curved balcony and a mezzanine, round-arched window niches, and old exterior windows still facing in. A mural by Ila McAfee of 1935 runs across the top of the front wall.
What to look for
- The espadaña and crenellated parapet on the Martin house front
- Lobby cupola over a pyramidal viga-and-latilla ceiling
- Three log posts at the center of the lobby
- Ila McAfee's 1935 mural
- Patio portal behind the Martin house
Setting
The inn stands on Paseo del Pueblo Norte, the main road through Taos, a block north of the Plaza and its principal intersection. Barela Lane runs behind it. The galleries and old houses of the town center surround it, Taos Pueblo lies about three miles north, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rise to the east.
Timeline
- 1895Dr. T. P. Martin buys the house north of the Plaza
- 1915Taos Society of Artists organized at the Martin house
- 1928Martins reacquire the neighboring Tarleton house
- 1934Conversion to a hotel begins
- 1936Hotel Martin opens in June
- 1954–1955Sandoval and Hinde houses added
- 1982Listed on the National Register
Where sources differ
- The nomination says Dr. and Mrs. Martin created the inn in 1934 and that Helen Martin ran it from 1934; Wikipedia says Helen converted the houses after his death and opened the Hotel Martin on June 7, 1936.
- The nomination calls the style Santa Fe Style (Spanish Pueblo Revival); the pueblo-revival key is used here.
- The muralist's name is spelled 'Ila MacAffee' in the nomination; she is usually known as Ila McAfee.
