| Since 1991, Inn of the Anasazi has been a signature hotel of Santa Fe, New Mexico. “The thing about this hotel is that the architect, Michael Fuller, did a really great job with the bones of the structure,” says Susan Butcher, who recently renovated the interiors. “Architecturally, it’s so well done,” adds Butcher, who herself studied architecture at Princeton University. However, she explains, “the guest rooms were much more oldworld feeling. They had lace curtains, chenille and a kind of white sisal wall-to-wall carpet. The fabrics didn’t add any character or texture to the rooms.” Butcher focused her remodeling effort on making sure that the furnishings and the architecture were on the same level. “In the eighties, there was that period of Santa Fe style that was a diluted interpretation of traditional weavings and artwork,” she explains. “I wanted to bring in pieces that were authentically New Mexican and southwestern.” Inn of the Anasazi, which is part of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, is situated on Washington Avenue, diagonally across from the Plaza, the historic center of Santa Fe. “It’s the main part of downtown where people sell silver and turquoise,” says Marcie Lieberman, managing director of the hotel. The structure, formerly a state-owned building that housed jail records, was designed in the spirit of the Anasazi, an early southwestern group of Native Americans who preceded the Pueblo Indians and were known for their basketry. The rooms feature traditional ceilings of vigas and latillas. “The ceilings are high so that you feel like you’re in someone’s guest room in a house somewhere in Santa Fe,” says Butcher. For the hardwood floors in the guest suites, the designer customized rugs based on William Randolph Hearst’s collection—one of the world’s most complete gatherings of nineteenth-century Navajo textiles, which were donated to Los Angeles County’s Natural History Museum in 1942—and had them fabricated in Oaxaca, Mexico. “I used their patterns and changed some of the colors,” says Butcher. “In the guest rooms I used carpet that’s more textured, colored and patterned in a way that a weaving might be.” |
