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Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager, shines a light inside of the historical jail cell in the historic Taos County Courthouse.
Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager, looks toward the western wall of the historic Taos County Courthouse. Restoration work has begun.
Demolition on the west side of the historic Taos County Courthouse revealed period windows and a door that confirms there was an alley where Dean Johnson’s Smoke Signals once stood.
Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager, shines a light inside of the historical jail cell in the historic Taos County Courthouse.
Richard Sanchez, Taos County project manager, looks toward the western wall of the historic Taos County Courthouse. Restoration work has begun.
Demolition on the west side of the historic Taos County Courthouse revealed period windows and a door that confirms there was an alley where Dean Johnson’s Smoke Signals once stood.
TAOS — As it undergoes major renovations a decade in the making, Taos County’s historic courthouse on Taos Plaza is beginning to return to its original state, with an architecturally correct torreón on each side of its facade and an interior more or less true to original plans.
Using 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, said Taos County Project Manager Richard Sanchez.
He estimated the overhauled courthouse will 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, Sanchez said, the county faced a Department of Justice investigation into ADA accessibility and had to bring properties in compliance. “And there were a lot of things with the 1969 complex that were not in compliance,” he said.
The courthouse had moved to 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 noncompliance woes, said Sanchez, who originally took on the role of project manger to oversee the 2009 county complex project.
Several Plaza shop owners and other community members protested the outside location of the elevator, as well as a plan to remove structures on both sides of the old courthouse, but the county insisted the state Historic Preservation Division would not allow the restoration to proceed without the demolition.
On a recent tour of the courthouse restoration, Sanchez 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 Co. 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 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 courtroom is filled with depictions by Taos artists of the trials and tribulations of those who came before judges, along with a massive piece called 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, lies the 1930s-era county lockup, complete with a functioning jail cell mechanism.
It’s a tight fit, at around 15 feet by 7 feet, with four bunks and no plumbed latrine or water.
The courthouse wasn’t just the seat of justice in Taos County. The original architectural plans indicate ground-floor space was reserved for the clerk, treasurer, assessor, sheriff and a justice of the peace. The County Commission also was housed on the ground floor, under the courtroom and adjacent to the jail.
The county agricultural agent and the superintendent of schools had more ample space upstairs. A jury room was 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 there are photos of folks congregating there during Fiesta and other Plaza events.
This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.
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