Sunmount Sanatorium - A History and Case for Preservation

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Recent publicity, including an article in last Friday’s Pasatiempo, has accompanied a sale of the historic Sunmount Sanatorium property off of Camino del Monte Sol. Now known as the Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat Center, the property is being pursued by two potential buyers with divergent uses proposed.

Given the potential re-utilization of the property we thought it necessary to here emphasize the historic importance of the property, its residents, and its architecture, in the hope that whoever buyer surfaces, the historic fabric of the built environment will take precedence in their plans.

Below, Nancy Owen Lewis, Board Director at HSFF and an expert on the history of the property through her extensive research for her book Chasing the Cure in New Mexico: Tuberculosis and the Quest for Health, gives us a short history of the importance of this place.  — Pete Warzel

Patients at Sunmount Sanatorium "chase the cure" on the breezeway of this Spanish Pueblo revival-style building constructed in 1914 by Rapp & Rapp. (Photos is from the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, John Gaw Meem Photograph Collection, image no. 23523).

Patients at Sunmount Sanatorium "chase the cure" on the breezeway of this Spanish Pueblo revival-style building constructed in 1914 by Rapp & Rapp. (Photos is from the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, John Gaw Meem Photograph Collection, image no. 23523).

The Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat and Conference Center, currently on the market by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, contains the former Sunmount Sanatorium, which operated from 1906-1937. More specifically, the sale includes the Santa Maria building, which was constructed in 1920. Although not part of the sale, the building next door, now a Carmelite monastery, was built in 1914. TB sanatoriums were once a major industry in NM, with 70 in operation during the course of its history. TB was the major cause of death and before the discovery of streptomycin in the 1940s, there was no known cure, but a high and dry climate was considered healing.

Not only is Sunmount the most intact historic sanatorium in New Mexico, complete with sleeping porches, a dining room, and living room little changed from the original, it is one of the earliest examples of Pueblo Revival style architecture in New Mexico. Dr. Frank Mera, director, advertised it as “The Sanatorium Different,” it attracted numerous artists, writers, and other luminaries, who would change the cultural landscape of Santa Fe. They included

1)    Writers: Alice Corbin Henderson (poet); Janet Lewis, Yvor Winters
2)    Lynn Riggs, Oklahoma playwright, who wrote “Green Grow the Lilacs” while at Sunmount (it became the basis of the musical “Oklahoma.”)
3)    Artists Arthur Musgrave and Datus Myers
4)     Silversmith Frank Patania
5)    Dorothy McKibbin (gatekeeper Manhattan project)
6)    Katherine Stinson (aviator)
7)    John Gaw Meem.  Fascinated by the Franciscan missions he saw on sanatorium field trips, he decided to give up engineering and become an architect.  Using a cottage at Sunmount as his first studio, he would change the face of New Mexico architecture.

Sunmount Salon
Fresh air, rest, nourishing food, and maintaining a positive attitude were the cornerstone of treatment. To foster the latter, Sunmount sponsored lectures by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley; poetry readings by Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, and Witter Bynner; and concerts.  Others would be invited to attend. This mingling of “artistically-minded patients, local residents and visiting writers became known as the “Sunmount Salon.”  During the 1920s, Sunmount, in many respects, became the cultural hub of Santa Fe.

Recommendation:  That this historic building, as described above, and its surrounding landscape be preserved.

Written by Nancy Owen Lewis