Palace of the Governors
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The Palace of the Governors is an adobe structure on the Plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico which served as the seat of government in New Mexico for centuries. The Palace of the Governors is said to be the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.
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 of the present-day states of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California, and New Mexico. After the Mexican War of Independence, the Mexican Province of New Mexico 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. During the American Civil War, the building also briefly served as the Confederate Army's regional headquarters.
Lew Wallace wrote the final parts of his book Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ in this building while serving as territorial governor in the late 1870's. He remembered later in life that it was at night, during a severe thunderstorm in the spring of 1879, after returning from a tense meeting with Billy the Kid in Lincoln County, when he wrote the climactic Crucifixion scenes of the novel. Wallace worked by the light of a shaded lamp in the shuttered governor's study, fearing a bullet from outside over the tensions surrounding the Lincoln County War.
In 1909, when the New Mexico state legislature established the Museum of New Mexico, the Palace of the Governors became a state history museum.
