My City Different. Betty E. Bauer

soon attracted opera buffs from around the world.

      The original house burned to the ground in 1967, but from its ashes there arose a larger, more magnificent house which today seats more than four times as many patrons as the original house. The high standards set in that original house from its opening night have not only been upheld, but more often than not have been surpassed.

      Because of the Opera’s excellence, its reputation put Santa Fe on the map and the small town, isolated from reality for 400 years, abruptly met the 20th Century.

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      In the 1960s, urban renewal came to Santa Fe and the town spruced up. Gone was the ugly intersection at Sandoval and Alameda known as five points—five streets that met at the intersection where, in the middle, a small island housed a liquor store. And gone were the tumble-down adobe shacks that bordered West DeVargas and faced the Santa Fe River. Bill Lumpkins and his crew had created from their shells an utterly charming, very Santa Feish facade with spiffy whitewashed interiors abutted by quaint courtyards. The entire block became highly desirable office space.

      A new hotel went up on Sandoval, the Hilton. Built in approved territorial style, it cleaned up that street and the cross street which was lower San Francisco. The low-lying adobes that lined that part of San Francisco had provided many Santa Fe gentlemen with an evening of sport—gambling and girls. The Santa Fe Styles Committee ruled that the old bordellos were of historic value and could not be demolished, so instead they were restored and rehabilitated into more acceptable business enterprises.

      The Plaza received a face lift. Portales were added where there were none. The ancient adobe Palace of the Governors, now a museum, which had given birth to the Ben Hur saga when Lew Wallace was Governor, was the oldest public building in continuous use in the United States. It was replastered, its vigas and canales were repaired, and the doors and window trim were freshly painted. Facades of the buildings around the Plaza were remodeled and many were replastered an adobe color to make them look more in keeping with what we had begun to call Santa Fe style. Even the four streets which enclosed the Plaza were torn up and redone, inlaid with brick.