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Sun and clouds mixed. High 42F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..
Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 16F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: January 12, 2023 @ 1:54 pm
Nathan Burton/Taos News Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager shines a light inside of the historical jail cell inside the historic Taos County Courthouse on Monday (Jan. 9).
Nathan Burton/Taos News Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager stands in the alley that will allow pedestrian traffic on either side of the historic Taos County Courthouse Monday (Jan. 9).
Nathan Burton/Taos News A new walkway will soon allow pedestrians to navigate around the under-construction historic Taos County Courthouse.
Nathan Burton/Taos News The 1932 historical drawings of the Taos County Courthouse located on the plaza show different offices occupied by different departments such as the commissioner, treasurer and jail.
Nathan Burton/Taos News Monday (Jan. 9). Demolition on the west side of the historic Taos County courthouse revealed period-correct windows and a door that confirm there was an alley where Dean Johnson’s Smoke Signals once stood.
Nathan Burton/Taos News Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager shines a light inside of the historical jail cell inside the historic Taos County Courthouse on Monday (Jan. 9).
Nathan Burton/Taos News Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager stands in the alley that will allow pedestrian traffic on either side of the historic Taos County Courthouse Monday (Jan. 9).
Nathan Burton/Taos News A new walkway will soon allow pedestrians to navigate around the under-construction historic Taos County Courthouse.
Nathan Burton/Taos News The 1932 historical drawings of the Taos County Courthouse located on the plaza show different offices occupied by different departments such as the commissioner, treasurer and jail.
Nathan Burton/Taos News Monday (Jan. 9). Demolition on the west side of the historic Taos County courthouse revealed period-correct windows and a door that confirm there was an alley where Dean Johnson’s Smoke Signals once stood.
Currently undergoing major renovations a decade in the making, Taos County’s historic courthouse on Taos Plaza is beginning to return to its original state, complete with an architecturally-correct torreón on each side of its facade and an interior more or less true to its original plans.
Using historical architectural drawings from September 1932, workers are restoring the building to an approximation of its original floor plan and exterior, including an east-side alleyway with gates that will close it to the public after hours, according to Taos County Project Manager Richard Sanchez, who said the courthouse will likely reopen within 18 months.
On the building’s west side — where some community members protested the demolition of a space that last housed Dean Johnson’s Smoke Signals — an elevator will be installed around the midpoint of the courthouse. The elevator represents the impetus for the courthouse renovation: compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
Decades ago, «There was a Department of Justice investigation into ADA accessibility, and the county came to terms with the Department of Justice that they would bring things into compliance» across county properties, Sanchez said. «And there were a lot of things with the 1969 complex that were not in compliance.»
Taos County had moved into new digs at the corner of Albright Street and Paseo del Pueblo del Sur in the 1970s, but those structures were also not compliant with federal disabilities law. After a few decades the county was forced to build its current, fully modern complex, which «took care of a bunch» of the county’s non-compliance woes, said Sanchez, who originally took on the role of county project manger to oversee the last, 2009 county complex project.
Several plaza shop owners and other community members also protested the outside location of the elevator, as well as the overall plan to remove the structures on both sides of the old courthouse building, but the county insisted that the state Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs would not allow the restoration to proceed without the demolition.
Sanchez took the Taos News on a tour of the courthouse restoration this week. He pointed to the lower outside west wall of the courthouse that had been revealed by the demolition. «This is exactly as it was built,» Sanchez said, standing in what will soon be part elevator shaft, part landscaped outdoor space. He noted the new appearance of several period-correct former windows and a sealed doorway on the west wall. «You could walk out that door, and there was a walkway to the plaza. It was built open and slowly got infilled in the late ’30s and ’40s.»
Laurie Gonzales, manager of Taos Trading Company to the east of the courthouse, said the construction has disrupted parking and pedestrian traffic, but «customers still find their way to us.»
Gonzales said she’d have preferred the building remain as it was, with shop space on either side of it, but was pleased to hear that the old jail and other historic features would be preserved. «That’s very, very historic,» she said. «A lot of people like to view that.»
The early-1930s vintage courtroom is plastered with sometimes darkly-themed depictions by Taos artists of the trials and tribulations of those who came before the judges who sat at a bench overshadowed by a giant depiction of «Moses the Lawgiver» handing down the Ten Commandments. Many generations of Taoseños are familiar with the distinctive beauty of the large second floor space at the back of the building, where community meetings have taken place in the decades since the building was decommissioned as a courthouse in the 1970s.
According to John Sherman’s «Taos: A Pictorial History,» Bert Phillips refused to sign his mural work as a protest against «aspects of the federal government program that made these murals possible.»
Below the courtroom, almost directly below the judge’s bench and the cause of the low promontory at the rear of the building, lies the 1930s-era county lockup, complete with a functioning jail cell mechanism. There’s no visible imprimatur’s mark on the iron-lined cell, gaps in which reveal the building’s adobe construction; it’s a tight fit, at around 15 feet by 7 feet, with four bunks with no plumbed latrine or water.
Sanchez suggested the county could set up the 1950s-era cell it has from the building, along with a few photos of the county’s current, ballistics-glass-adorned detention center, and create a basic historical timeline of Taos holding cells.
«Hang ‘em in the 1800s, lock ‘em up in the 1930s and later 1950s,» he said.
Capital punishment was repealed in the United States in 1972 and reinstated in 1976. Terry Clark, who was executed by lethal injection in 2001, was the last person executed in New Mexico since 1960. Hispanics currently make up more than half of the state’s current prison population, according to a December 2021 report by the New Mexico Sentencing Commission.
The Old Taos County Courthouse wasn’t just the seat of justice in Taos County, however. The original architectural plans indicate that ground floor space was reserved for the usual elected county offices of the clerk and treasurer — each of which had access to individual, cement-lined vaults — and an assessor, as well as the sheriff, who warranted his own «private» enclosure, and a justice of the peace. The county commission was also housed on the ground floor, under the courtroom and adjacent to the jail.
The county agricultural agent and the superintendent of schools — who enjoyed a particularly choice, large front-corner office — had more ample space upstairs. A jury room was located directly beside the courtroom on the second floor, with an exclusive narrow hall leading past it that the judge could use to access his two-room chambers with a view of the Plaza.
The restoration of the portal on the front of the building won’t include access to its roof, Sanchez said, acknowledging that there are photos of folks congregating there during Fiestas and other Plaza events.
But an old iron gate at the end of the hall on the second floor substantiates rumors that a certain Taos banker leased the building for a couple of decades after Taos County moved its courthouse and administration offices to a short-lived and since-demolished group of buildings on the site of the county’s current complex: There’s a large dollar sign worked into the iron gate that’s worthy of Scrooge McDuck.
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