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>>Post: Palace of the Governors is living and breathing because it changed as the people
who lived with it changed. >>Levine: And I often think about the stories that it could
tell, if these walls could talk. >>Post: It's the only public building that's been occupied
and occupied the same space for 400 years. And that 400 years spanned the time of the
Spanish colonization, of the southwest in New Mexico, of the retaking of New Mexico
during the Pueblo revolt, the return of the Spanish in the 18th century, the Mexican independence
from the Spanish in the 1820's, and then the coming of the Americans in 1846. >>Levine:
Pedro De Peralta began building the Palace of the Governors in the winter of 1610. He
used building materials that he salvaged both from sheep camps found here on site as well
as from the ancient pueblos surrounding Santa Fe. >>Post: Here beneath the floors of the
palace, archeologists found foundations, adobe floors and adobe walls remaining from the
first Palace of the Governors in the the early 17th century. On top of those floors we have
the foundations and walls and floors from the Pueblo Revolt pueblo. In 1680, Pueblo
people and their allies basically expelled the Spanish and there was a four story pueblo
made up of one thousand rooms that occupied this space. To me, this is almost hallowed
space because the room remnants that we have beneath the floors of the palace are the only
physical evidence of that time. >>Levine: The palace in the 1780's and 1790's was just
one part of a very large complex that included a precidio or a fort. It included store houses
and stables. It was here where the Governors lived and made their decisions, where military
commanders readied their troops, and where merchants prepared the caravans for the trips
on the Camino Real to Mexico. In many ways, the Palace of the Governors was the heart
beat of the colony. >>Post: The space behind the Palace of the Governors was one of the
last archeological frontiers in downtown Santa Fe. Before the construction of the new history
museum, we had an opportunity to complete a fairly detailed excavation. Working within
what we thought were the most important deposits and areas, we recovered 800,000 artifacts.
We went from finding the ground surface that Don Pedro de Peralta would have walked on...
>>Levine: I often think of what it would be like to be in this building in the 1790's
with the troops getting ready to go out on patrol, and the governor sitting inside the
palace talking to his advisors. I think that these walls echo with those conversations.
It's probably the time that the palace saw the most action. >>Post: We found foundations
which were made out of river cobbles. We found three layers of cobbles: one from the 1860's,
one from the 18th century, and one from the 17th century. To me, what's interesting about
the all cobbles is that we were able to start to get at the level of effort that goes into
building a major governmental complex, in terms of the materials, the time and the manpower.
>>Levine: The very first description we get from the Americans about the Palace of the
Governors comes from Zebulon Pike in 1807. He talks about the raw clay walls, the dirt
floors, but how things in the palace were very warmed by the use of animal skins and
very simple furnishings. >>Post: We found the cobble foundations from the 18th century
building like right here, so as people walk across this spot they're crossing history
into the New Mexico History Museum. >>Levine: Governor Ellingcoster hosted a dinner and
invited Pike to be present at the dinner, and Pike notes that once the governor had
a little bit to drink, he became quite cordial. >>Post: Occasionally we would just find this
tiny artifact that would bring us back to the people who lived..who lived at the palace.
We recovered two amulets. These amulets, which are called 'higas', they are meant to bring
good luck or ward off the evil eye in the 17th century Spanish culture. In this case,
the very small amulet that we found, we believe was probably attached to a babies blanket.
>>Levine: In 1810, when Governor Manrique writes to the viceroy about the conditions
of the palace its really the very end of the Spanish period. Spain is having trouble maintaining
this building, having trouble holding on to this far northern frontier. And Governor Manrique
writes with enormous emotion about this building. He says, "We're losing the palace day by day.
We're losing the palace to rain, to snow, to leaks..." He is alarmed that there aren't
keys to the doors. And, in fact, in some places there aren't even doors. And there are animals
running through the palace and rampaging, destroying some of this architecture. >>Post:
We found the first evidence of kind of formal sanitation, with a wood flew emptying into
an adobe lined cess pit, and amazingly enough when we started to get down to the bottom
of that cess pit we found the skeleton of a horse. >>Levine: We're fortunate to have
descriptions of Santa Fe in the summer of 1846 when General Kearny comes. Kearny tells
us about the simplicity of this building, the fact that he slept on the dirt floors
the very night that he took the Palace of the Governors in the name of the United States.
>>Post: We exposed the remains of almost 10,000 square feet of Spanish buildings that were
used for barracks and store rooms. The soldiers barracks extended from West to East for at
least a couple hundred feet right through this area where we're standing now. >>Levine:
During the 1860's and 1870's, the palace begins to acquire Victorian trimmings. The American
authorities who are living here in the Palace of the Governors change it enormously, adding
Victorian porches to the outside of the porch, adding wallpaper to the walls inside the palace,
and beginning to change its very soul. In 1909, the Palace of the Governors becomes
the first museum of New Mexico. The palace architecture changes enormously. The Victorian
facades are stripped off. We have the emergence of what we call the pueblo revival style.
And that was part of a movement. Santa Fe city fathers became part of the city beautiful
competition in the United States, and they wanted a more uniform style here, and a style
that spoke of the regional architectural traditions. >>Post: The Palace of the Governors anchors
400 years of American history in a way that no other place in the United States does.
>>Levine: It's a building that has absorbed the very essence of the history here in the
Southwest, and you feel that when you're in this building.