Spanish Times and Boom Times: Toward An Architectural History of Socorro, New Mexico (review)

Reviews 309 a num ber o f W estern authors excluded from the pages o f the Companion, but very few o f its one thousand capsule summaries o f novels deal with Western fiction — for exam ple, none o f the novels o f H. L. Davis, Wallace Stegner, or Frank Waters are so summarized (Waters is not even listed). We could use an O xford Com panion to W estern American literature, or at least som ething similar. We could also use a Literary History of the Western United States along the lines o f the LHUS by Spiller et al. Alm ost a quarter o f a century has passed since that monum ental collaboration, and we can now see that it gave impetus to the nascent study o f American letters. A similar study o f the W est could help us to digest in som e coherent fashion the mass o f inform ation that Etulain shows us has been accumulating. A LHW US could also result in the recognition, both in the region and outside it, that there is a significant body o f W estern literature worthy o f notice. Eastern publishers might be persuaded to keep more good Western literature in print. Etulain’s book will help to achieve such ends, and it will certainly be an indispensable research tool. JAMES H. MAGUIRE, Boise State College Spanish Times and Boom Times: Toward An Architectural History of Socorro, New Mexico. (Socorro: Socorro County Historical Society, 1972. 100 pages, $3.00.) In Mary Austin’s Starry Adventure, the hero is an architect and this fact leads the author to write the developm ent o f the native dwelling in New Mexico, from Pit-House to Small House and Community House to the Spanish Hacienda. Colonial buildings during the Spanish period adapted Indian traditions to Euro­ pean styles and domestic needs. N o brick kilns or tile ovens were available to the colonists, nor were sawmills or lathes in the villages. T he workmen had only hand tools, such as the adze, chisel, and draw knife. Yet the memory o f habitations and public buildings in Mexico and Spain remained in their minds, so that a building like the Palace o f the Governors in Santa Fe or the San M iguel Mission in Socorro had corbels, moldings, pillars, and porches that were as dignified and decorative as local materials and tools could make them. T he study o f designs and methods presented in this m onograph are from the honors thesis o f Charles L. Neim an, a graduate study at the University o f New Mexico. T hey appear in a volume published by the Socorro County Historical Society, with drawings and pictures chiefly from homes, churches, and commercial buildings com pleted in the nineteenth century. However, som e preserve the patterns introduced by missionaries and settlers a hundred years earlier, showing walls o f adobe around a patio; wooden beams supporting flat roofs; colum ns placed on stones. T he houses had doors that opened either outside or into a center hallway. Large habitations made use o f a zaguan which could be covered as a vestibule or left open as an entry to house or courtyard. T he flat roofs o f poles and boards, paper sealed by m ud, were com m on in 310 Western American Literature the earliest period. Pitched roofs came at a later date with metal roofing and required more elaborate construction. A brick plant arrived in Socorro after 1890 and public as well as domestic buildings imitated structures in the United States. Territorial New Mexico simply extended the schemes o f m iddle America, as the wagon trains and later the railroad conveyed hardware and millwork from Kansas and Missouri into New Mexico. Socorro is not remarkable in its exam ples o f this period. What fascinates the reader o f this m onograph is the occasional trace o f European splendor in a carved design or an ornamental m otif seen in a church pulpit or altar and preserved in the panel o f a door. This booklet will serve as a m...