Kate Chapman and the Living Legacy of El Zaguán

by Mulham Alkharboutli (2025 Faith and John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Intern)

When I first began learning about Kate Chapman, what struck me wasn’t just her long connection to adobe or the drawings and photos tucked into archives, it was how much of her story is still embedded in the walls and spaces of El Zaguán. This is more than a house. It’s a lived record of care, adaptation, and belief in the value of the everyday material world.

Kate arrived in Santa Fe in the early 20th century with artistic training and a developing interest in archaeology. She studied at Loretto Academy and later took part in field schools under Edgar L. Hewett, whose work helped shape early preservation policy in the region. During that time, she worked alongside Pueblo artists like Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso, experiences that would anchor her understanding of cultural continuity and vernacular knowledge. These relationships informs how she saw architecture as something more than form. It was about use, memory, and climate.

Kate Chapman with Julian Martinez during an archaeological field session on the Pajarito Plateau, circa 1910. This early collaboration foreshadowed her lasting connection to New Mexico’s cultural and material traditions. Photograph courtesy of the School for Advanced Research. Published in Catherine Colby, Kate Chapman: Adobe Builder in 1930s Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2012, p. 12.

By the 1920s, Kate Chapman was actively involved in modifying and designing the adobe compound at 545 Canyon Road, which would come to be known as El Zaguán. El Zaguán, meaning “the passage” in Spanish, aligns with the home’s traditional layout, featuring a long entry corridor common in Spanish-Mexican and Pueblo-style architecture.

What makes her work stand out, especially in the context of Santa Fe’s development in the 1920s and ’30s, is how it resisted the trends of the time. Adobe was often dismissed by new arrivals as outdated or unsightly, and many people were eager to modernize with cement, straight lines, and imported styles. Kate did the opposite. She embraced the irregularity of adobe and its relationship to sun and soil. Her approach wasn’t about nostalgia but function and respect. She re-mudded walls, reused salvaged wood, added portals, and made new spaces that responded to light, garden courtyards, and airflow. Between 1912 and the late 1920s, she drew plans for small but meaningful expansions, always respecting the building’s original proportions and site rhythm.

Beyond the technical skill, she refused to see preservation as freezing something in time. She wasn’t trying to turn El Zaguán into a museum. She preserved adobe not by resisting change, but by guiding it. That kind of intuition by balancing authenticity and evolution is something we still struggle with in preservation work today.

Kate Chapman standing beside her newly built retaining wall at El Zaguán, with the arbor, horno, and garage (mechanical building) visible in the background. Photograph courtesy of the School for Advanced Research (SAR ACo2_818.16b).

Published in Catherine Colby, Kate Chapman: Adobe Builder in 1930s Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2012.

It’s also worth naming how unusual her position was. In a time when architectural and construction work was dominated by men and long before historic preservation became an organized profession, Kate was doing the work with her own hands. She wasn’t hired as a consultant or protected by a grant. She just cared, observed, and studied buildings. She documented and maintained them. And through that steady persistent labor, she preserved something much more than form. She preserved a way of relating to buildings that saw them as extensions of culture, time, and land.

As Santa Fe’s image began to solidify into what we now call the “Santa Fe Style,” Kate’s work offered a grounding counterweight. While others stylized adobe for tourism or visual effect, she stayed true to the material itself. Her repairs and additions responded to adobe’s properties rather than flattening them into image. That’s part of what continues to set her apart not because she resisted change, but because she insisted on thoughtful, context-driven transformation.

El Zaguán became a shared space for writers, artists, archaeologists, and a home that nurtured reflection and creation. That same spirit continues today through the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, which maintains the house as both a historic landmark and an active cultural space.

Map showing the preexisting house and outbuildings on the El Zaguán property, with shaded areas indicating architectural additions made by Kate Chapman after 1925. These included the arbor, retaining wall, and other modest but intentional expansions.

Based on a plat courtesy of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation.

Published in Catherine Colby, Kate Chapman: Adobe Builder in 1930s Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2012, p. 42.

Beside El Zaguán, Kate Chapman left her mark on several adobe houses across Santa Fe. At Plaza Balentine, she designed compounds of linked adobe units around a shared courtyard, blending vernacular irregularity with Territorial-style proportions. In the Garcia–Stevenson House on Acequia Madre, she broke through thick walls to expand rooms and added a portal opening to the orchard, turning older structures into more livable homes. At the Delgado Lane House, she introduced new windows and arches that brought light into heavy adobe walls while preserving their mass. The Paul House on Canyon Road shows her ability to unify scattered rooms into a coherent whole through portals and rooflines, while at the Borrego House she stabilized fragile walls, added garden enclosures, and sensitively reworked façades without sacrificing the handmade character of adobe. These projects reveal Chapman’s practical approach by reshaping historic homes while keeping their earthen texture and proportions intact.

Garcia–Stevenson House. Photograph by Vincent Foster, circa 1991. Historic Santa Fe Foundation Collection.

In 1950, Kate published Adobe Notes: How to Keep the Weather Out with Just Plain Mud, a short but practical guide for adobe maintenance. She outlines why cement is damaging to earthen walls, how to manage moisture, and how to approach repairs as seasonal and ongoing. It’s a reflection of how she lived: quietly committed, materially grounded, and aware that longevity comes not from perfection, but from attention.

Cover page of “Adobe Notes or How to Keep the Weather Out with Just Plain Mud,” written by Kate Chapman (then credited as Kate & D.N.S.) and printed by SPUD. Originally published in 1950 by The Laughing Horse Press in Taos, New Mexico, Source: Reproduced in Catherine Colby, Kate Chapman: Adobe Builder in 1930s Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2012, p. 57.

Walking through El Zaguán now, you can still feel her presence—not in a romantic way, but in the structure itself and the quiet logic of circulation. She left behind more than a restored building. She left behind a way of working—one that values care over spectacle, and continuity over performance.

Preservation, at its best, isn’t about stopping time. It’s about choosing what to carry forward. Kate Chapman understood that. And she taught it, not through slogans or lectures, but by simply doing the work. She preserved adobe not by locking it away, but by helping it breathe again and again, through every season.

To find out more about Kate Chapman, check out SAR’s recently digitized collection of buildings Chapman built or restored houses between 1920-1940. Link to digital archive