By: E&P Staff Next Tuesday, the Santa Fe Historic Design Board will consider The New Mexican's remodeling plans for its 63-year-old downtown building.
The proposed work would reflect the town's Spanish-Pueblo architectural style, according to a report last week in the paper by Paul Weideman. Aluminum-trim doors and windows will go. The original carved-wood entrance will be uncovered.
Another area for work is the building's long west side, where most of the windows are in two rows of eight narrow panes above a single large pane.
Other architectural features to be added, Weideman reported, include "a raised 'monitor' in the center of the building's rear portion," where it would "admit diffused sunlight to work stations in a new mezzanine level and then through an opening in the center of the mezzanine floor to a newsroom below."
Making use of the vacant pressroom and mailroom will increase usable space while slightly decreasing the building's footprint. The paper no longer would have to rent space in an adjoining building.
Because the building will be reduced to a shell before new heating, air conditioning and electrical service are installed, according to Eric Enfield of Architectural Alliance Inc., business and editorial offices would be temporarily relocated.
In a brief history accompanying Weideman's story, New Mexican President Stephen E. Watkins noted that the current quarters were built with the only available materials when the federal government took over the paper's earlier location for the Manhattan Project.
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