HSFF RENAMES A.M. BERGERE HOUSE TO OTERO-BERGERE HOUSE

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, Exterior, 2014-2015. Photography by InSight Foto Inc. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Historic Santa Fe Foundation works with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s staff
to recognize Bergere and Otero families’ relationship to this historic building
by Pete Warzel

Cody Hartley, the Director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, during an introductory meeting of our two organizations, brought up research that his staff was doing on the history of the A.M. Bergere House, the building that houses the O’Keeffe offices at 135 Grant Avenue. This property was added to the Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation on May 29, 1974, and was named after the second husband of Eloisa Luna Otero, Alfred Maurice Bergere, who was granted occupancy of the house by Governor Miguel A. Otero. The property was actually owned by the U.S. Interior Department after Fort Marcy disbanded operations in Santa Fe – the house originally one of the officer’s quarters. A.M. Bergere was at that time the district court clerk of the first judicial district, New Mexico (1901).

Eloisa purchased the property in 1905 from the City of Santa Fe, following yet another transfer from the Interior Department. The property was a bouncing ball of ownership since its construction in the early 1870s, although with this purchase it firmly remained as the home of the Otero and Bergere families, and a center of historic events and people in the city. The research presented by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum focused on the significance of the Otero family, predominantly the women of the clan, as yet another permutation of women making history and preserving important properties in Santa Fe during the early 1900’s. The family called 135 Grant “La Casa Grande.”

Eloisa was a force in Santa Fe due to her family connections, wealth, and charitable work. She served as chair of the Santa Fe Board of Education and her home was gathering place for the discussion of local politics. The Santa Fe New Mexican, September 3, 1914, in her obituary stated that “She was ever the soul of hospitality marked by all the charms of the Spanish traditions.”

The home had been put in trust and conveyed to her children in succession from 1912 to 1976. Nina Otero Warren took possession in 1963, but was a significant presence at the home from her return to Santa Fe in 1914. In this centennial year of the New Mexico passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote, it is important to note that Otero Warren was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the state, and a political mover in the Republican Party, running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, the first woman in New Mexico to run for “high office”.

Anita Bergere, Nina’s sister from the Bergere marriage to Eloisa, took possession of the home following in 1965, but she too had been there from 1914 on, and also was involved in the suffrage movement, and followed her sister as Superintendent of Santa Fe County public schools.

The history of the house and its inhabitants and owners is a fascinating look at the Otero and Bergere families, and their interaction, influence, and importance to the history of Santa Fe. Dr, Hartley and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum intend to expand the narrative of their office property, beginning with a more appropriate name. In the new edition of Old Santa Fe Today, currently in process with photography and narrative for each entry, you will see the Otero-Bergere House, newly named and approved by the HSFF Board of Directors on February 27, 2020.

 Link to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum research on the property below.