Isaac Rapp

Isaac Hamilton Rapp
Born	1854 Orange, New Jersey
Died	1933 Trinidad, Colorado
Nationality	American
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Colorado Supply Co. warehouse, Morley Colorado; New Mexico Museum of Art; Las Animas County Court House; New Mexico State Capitol Building

Isaac Hamilton Rapp, (1854 – March 27, 1933) was a notable American architect who has been called the "Creator of the Santa Fe style." He was born in Orange, New Jersey.^[1]

Rapp learned his trade working for his father, a sometime architect and building contractor in Carbondale, Illinois. He left in 1887 and by 1889 had moved to Trinidad, Colorado where he joined with C.W. Bulger in establishing the architectural firm of Bulger and Rapp. The company dissolved after about five years at which point Rapp's brother William Morris Rapp moved to Trinidad and the firm of Rapp and Rapp was created. (This should not be confused with the architectural firm of Rapp and Rapp, noted for their theatre designs, composed of Isaac Rapp's two youngest brothers, Cornelius and George.^[2]) Eventually a third brother, Charles Rapp moved to Trinidad, but did not join the architectural firm.^[3]

Isaac Rapp died in 1933 at his home in Trinidad, Colorado.^[1][4]

Important commissions

The New Mexico Museum of Art (1917), an early example of Pueblo Revival architecture.

All are in Santa Fe, New Mexico unless otherwise noted:

• New Mexico Territorial Capitol, 1903 (no longer extant, though parts of it can still be found inside the Bataan Building)
• New Mexico State Building, Saint Louis World's Fair, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904
• New Mexico Territorial Executive Mansion, 1908 (no longer extant)
• Las Animas County Court House, Trinidad, Las Animas County, Colorado, 1912
• New Mexico Building at the Panama–California Exposition, San Diego, California, 1915
• New Mexico Museum of Art, 1917
• La Fonda Hotel, 1921–1922^[5]

References

1. Melzer, Richard (2007). Buried Treasures: Famous and Unusual Gravesites in New Mexico History. Sunstone Press. ISBN 9780865345317. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
2. Wilson, Chris, The Myth of Santa Fe; Creating a Modern Regional Tradition, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1997
3. Sheppard, Carl D., Creator of the Santa Fe Style, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM, 1988
4. http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/06000950.pdf
5. Dye, Victoria E. (2007). All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-8263-3658-3. Retrieved 24 November 2015.