Palace of the Governors

The Palace of the Governors (1610) is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico between Palace Avenue and Washington Street. It is within the Santa Fe Historic District and it served as the seat of government for the State of New Mexico for centuries. The Palace of the Governors is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.

History

In 1610, Pedro de Peralta, the newly appointed governor of the Spanish territory covering most of the American Southwest, began construction on the Palace of the Governors. In the following years, the Palace changed hands as the territory of New Mexico did, seeing the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Spanish reconquest from 1693 to 1694, Mexican independence in 1821, and finally American possession in 1846.

The Palace originally served as the seat of government of the Spanish colony of Nuevo Mexico, which at one time comprised the present-day states of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California, and New Mexico. After the Mexican War of Independence, the Mexican province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México was administered from the Palace of the Governors. When New Mexico was annexed as a U.S. territory, the Palace became New Mexico's first territorial capitol.

Lew Wallace wrote the final parts of his book A Tale of the Christ in this building while serving as territorial governor in the late 1870s. He remembered later in life that it was at night, during a severe thunderstorm in...
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