Recent U.S. Census Bureau information shows that the southwest holds incredible gravitational pull for a great number of Americans, more and more of whom are moving to live among the deserts, plateaus, distinctive mountains, and glorious red and orange sunsets that only the west can provide.
Americans have been hungering for the wide-open skies of the west since the early days of this country and out of their continuing migration has sprung Santa Fe, which continues to grow in importance, in meaning, and in influence.
Santa Fe's popularity is immense. The "Santa Fe style" can now be found all over the country, manifested in clothes, furniture and furnishings, and interior design. Santa Fe: Houses and Gardens, with its sumptuous photography and lucid prose, makes clear that this popularity is well-founded.
Santa-Fe: Houses and Gardens presents the most significant and influential houses of the region, including Mabel Dodge's house of 1918, with its hand-painted windows by D. H. Lawrence; the house of Randall Davey, an artist who was influential in the movement to revive traditional adobe building techniques; and the Myrtle Stedman house, built following her injunction that it be "stretched out like a lizard in the sun." This book does not limit itself to traditional historic adobe houses, but covers many of the region's most important private homes and museum houses with their gardens.