San Francisco de Asis (Ranchos de Taos)
The Spanish mission church San Francisco de Asis in the village of Ranchos de Taos near the city of Taos in the US state of New Mexico is considered to be the most important Adobe church in the south of today's USA . With a few exceptions, most of the church buildings of this type were torn down in the 19th and 20th centuries and replaced by new stone buildings.
location
The church is located on St. Francis Plaza in the village of Ranchos de Taos in the US state of New Mexico, which has a population of about 2,500 and is about 7 km south of the city of Taos . As is more common in mendicant churches , the church is not faced - the apse is oriented to the northwest; the entrance is therefore in the southeast of the building.
history
Like most churches of the Franciscan order, the founder of the order, St. Francis of Assisi (around 1181-1226), consecrated church was built by the friars and Indian workers commissioned with the Indian mission in the vicinity of a Spanish settlement that has been documented since 1742 in the period from 1772 to 1815. Given such a long construction period, it can be assumed that initially only a smaller predecessor building was built, which was later demolished or partially integrated into the new church. During the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848 and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , the area came under US control, but the region was not spared from Indian raids, which is reflected in the defensive overall image of the church.
architecture
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Only mud bricks were used for the construction of the single-nave church, which has a transept ; the outer and inner walls are protected and smoothed by clay plaster ; the external plaster of the approximately 1.70 m thick walls is renewed every year. The facade, transept and apse of the church are stabilized by massive sloping and partially rounded retaining walls, which give the building a defensive character. The facade ends with two squat bell towers .
The horizontally laid wooden beams of the flat roof pierce the outer walls of the nave , so that the ends of the beams are visible from the outside. Above it was a layer of reeds and straw, which was covered with a slightly sloping layer of clay; From there, the mostly sparse, but sometimes enormous amounts of rainwater after a thunderstorm were diverted to the outside via simple gargoyles .
The cubic-abstract, decor and windowless design of the apse and the transept, which is unique in its kind, is of great importance to the history of architecture. Architects like Frank Gehry and others have been inspired and influenced by her, and the abstract painter Georgia O'Keeffe was also impressed by her.
Furnishing
The interior of the church, about 7.80 m wide, was stabilized in earlier times by a central wooden pillar, has a single nave and is extremely unadorned; it is illuminated by two large exterior wall windows that may be a later ingredient. Two largely uncarved wooden altarpieces are in the apse and in the north-western transept; their colored painting is influenced to a large extent by Indian taste.
Interior (1934)
Altarpiece (apse)
Altarpiece (transept)
literature
- Frank Graziano: Historic Churches of New Mexico Today. Oxford University Press, New York 2019, ISBN 978-0-19-066348-3 , pp. 241-266 (= 9. San Francisco de Asís, Golden ).
- George Kubler: The Religious Architecture of New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1973.
Web links
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 36 ° 21 ′ 30 " N , 105 ° 36 ′ 30.4" W.