Pueblo Deco

Pueblo Deco is an architectural style of the southwestern United States popular in the early twentieth century that fuses Art Deco design principles with the region's existing Pueblo Revival and Territorial architectural traditions, themselves drawn from indigenous Pueblo and Spanish territorial building. The architect Mary Colter significantly shaped its early development through her incorporation of Native American design elements, and the style flourished through the 1920s and 1930s before the writer Carla Breeze codified and popularized the term Pueblo Deco in books published in 1984 and 1990 examining the fusion of southwestern motifs with the popular Deco style. Its buildings emphasize applied ornament, often in metalwork, alongside extensive tilework and wall murals blending modernist and regional indigenous aesthetics. Notable examples include the KiMo Theater in Albuquerque, built in 1927, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, built in 1929, the El Navajo Hotel in Gallup, and the McKinley County Courthouse in Gallup, built in 1938.