"The old adobe towns of the San Luis Valley and Purgatory Valleys are not, like the mining boom towns to the west and north, moral embrassments. Most Spanish-American settlers came to Colorado without the limitless greed that passed in some quarters of the american dream.

They were farmers and ranchers who were content to work on a small scale. Hispanic pioneers build modestly and effectively. Their attention never strayed for long from a functional concern, the geography. From the land they extracted their prime building materials at little cost; then, because construction did not require highly specialized skills, they were at liberty, independent of banks and commercial builders, to shape their homes to the imperatives they actually experienced, those of the weather and social patterns.

The beauty of functional architecture is mysterious. Why, one wonders, is practicality so graceful?

The answer, I think, is that the builder is actually freed by a commitment to obey the climate and materials and the simple needs of the people. One does not, having selected these priorities, need to be self assertive, which is inevitably grotesque (never more so in the vast western landscape). As he commits to remaining subordinate, the building takes on an easy power."


- Robert Adams, The Architecture and Art of Early Hispanic Colorado.