John Gaw Meems

Meem was born in 1894 in Pelotas, Brazil, the eldest child of parents who were missionaries of the Episcopal Church. In 1910 he traveled to the United States to attend Virginia Military Institute, where he obtained a degree in civil engineering. After graduating, he worked briefly for his uncle's engineering firm in New York before being called up for military service. Having spent the duration of World War I at a training camp in Iowa, Meem was hired by the National City Bank of New York and sent to Rio de Janeiro. Soon after arriving in Brazil, however, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Like many other tuberculosis patients of his time, Meem decided to seek the cure in the dry desert climate of New Mexico. He arrived at the Sun Mount Sanatorium in Santa Fe in the spring of 1920.

While at Sunmount, Meem gradually developed an interest in architecture. In 1922, having recovered sufficiently to spend time away from the sanatorium, he spent fifteen months working for the firm of Fisher & Fisher in Denver. In the evenings he attended the Atelier Denver, a studio affiliated with the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. This constituted Meem's only formal training in architecture.

Upon Meem's return to Sunmount in 1924, he and fellow patient Cassius McCormick opened their own architecture practice, using one of the sanatorium's spare buildings as a studio. Meem handled the design work, while McCormick managed the business side of the enterprise. Their first commission was the renovation and expansion of a house belonging to Hubert Galt, yet another fellow patient. McCormick returned to his home state of Indiana in 1928, dissolving the partnership. Meem's most significant work during this period was his remodeling of the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, which demonstrated his ability to handle a complex project. Between 1928 and the beginning of World War II Meem's office remained small, employing only a handful of drafters, though his reputation was growing. In 1930 he entered and won a national competition to select a design for the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe. Among his competitors was the firm of Fisher & Fisher, where he had been apprenticed just a few years earlier. Then in 1933 he was selected as the official architect of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, a position he would hold until his retirement. His best-known work at the University was the iconic Zimmerman Library, completed in 1938. Later that year Meem achieved international recognition for the monumental Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, which is generally regarded as his masterpiece. It was while working on this project that he met his wife Faith, who he married in 1933.

The war kept Meem's firm occupied with a large number of military and government commissions, and his staff at one point reached 35 employees. Hugo Zehner, who had been with Meem since 1930, was promoted to partner in 1940. Another partner, Edward O. Holien, joined in 1944, making the firm Meem, Zehner, Holien and Associates. During this period Holien became the firm's primary designer, with Meem mainly handling public relations work. The post-war years were the firm's most productive period, with a number of buildings designed for the University of New Mexico, Santa Fe Public Schools, Southern Union Gas Company, and many other clients.

Following a gradual transfer of power to Holien, Meem retired in 1956. He remained associated with the successor firm of Holien and Buckley, serving as an architectural consultant. Meem continued to accept scattered commissions through the 1960s, and in later life published occasional articles in architecture journals. He was a benefactor and supporter of Santa Fe Preparatory School, where a campus building is named for him. He died in 1983 at the age of 88.

Meem was most closely associated with the Pueblo Revival style, though he also employed the Territorial Revival and occasionally Modern and Gothic styles. He gained an extensive knowledge of Pueblo and Spanish Colonial building techniques through his volunteer work with the Committee for the Preservation and Restoration of New Mexico Mission Churches (CPRNMMC) during the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike many previous Pueblo Revival architects, however, Meem used architectural forms such as battered walls, vigas, and stepped parapets in combination with modern building techniques and materials to evoke the past without imitating it directly. He explained in a 1966 article that he used symbolic forms to "evoke a mood without attempting to produce an archaeological imitation."