Funding for the continued renovation of a courthouse in Taos County, partially built by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, has won the approval of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Located at 121 N. Plaza, the Spanish Pueblo-style Taos County Courthouse is registered on the National Register of Historic Places and has been subject to a renovation effort begun two years ago designed to return it to its original floor plan and exterior.
The building is particularly valued by preservationists for housing a series of fresco murals with work described by New Mexico Magazine as “allegorical in nature and quite dramatic.”
Just over $5.3 million was approved as a capital outlay earlier this year by New Mexico lawmakers to complete the courthouse’s restoration work, making it the largest single appropriation for Taos County.
Altogether, around fifty individual projects based in Taos County have been approved, accounting for a total dollar amount of more than $19.3 million.
Other Taos County projects: the building of the Picuris Pueblo volunteer fire and emergency services station, with a $2.5 million capital outlay; and a new multi-purpose gymnasium for the Taos Municipal School District, at $1.5 million.
An additional $1 million has been approved for the building of a senior day care facility in the Taos Pueblo, while $325,000 is going to the town of Red River to fund several bridge reconstruction projects.
By Garry Boulard
