Mable Dodge Lujan

Mabel Ganson was born in Buffalo on 26th February, 1879. She obtained the name Dodge when she married a wealthy businessman from New England.

Dodge moved to New York and her home at 23 Fifth Avenue became a place where left-wing intellectuals and activists met. This included John Reed, Louise Bryant, Lincoln Steffens, Max Eastman, Walter Lippmann, Margaret Sanger, Bill Haywood and Emma Goldman.

She was a woman of profound contradictions. She was generous. She was petty. Domineering and endearing. She was Mabel Gansen Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan – salon hostess, art patroness, writer and self-appointed savior of humanity.

Today as you approach the house of Mabel Dodge Luhan, it’s easy to see why some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were inspired here. Situated at the end of a quiet road not far from the center of town, the house appears much as it did in the days when Mabel admired her views of the sacred Taos Mountain from the third-story solarium. One can only imagine the tantalizing conversations that must have taken place within these walls. After all, Georgia O’Keeffe stayed here. So did D.H. Lawrence, Ansel Adams, Martha Graham and Carl Jung, among many other notables.

A pacifist, Dodge contributed articles to the radical journal, The Masses, during the First World War. After the war Dodge married Tony Lujan, a Native American, and established an artist colony in Taos, New Mexico. In 1922 D. H. Lawrence stayed at Taos where he wrote The Plumed Serpent (1926). The main character in his short-story, The Woman Who Rode Away, was based on Dodge.

Dodge wrote several volumes of autobiography including Intimate Memories (1933), European Experiences (1936) and Edge of Taos Desert (1937). Mabel Dodge Lujan died in Taos, New Mexico, on 13th August, 1962.