Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin wants to build a medieval castle in his back yard, and his neighbors have banded together to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Here’s a fun story for you: According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, A Song of Ice and Fire author and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin wants to build a medieval-style castle structure on an undeveloped part of a property he owns in a residential area of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he’s lived for many years. That part is amusing enough, but it gets funnier when you consider that, according to The Daily Mail, his neighbors are dead set against it, and the Historic Districts Review Board, which must okay the project, seems baffled by it.
“We thought it was Winterfell when we first saw the plans,” one neighbor joked. “All it’s missing is Jon Snow and a couple of dragons.”
George has done a lot for the arts and he’s very welcome here. But there is a code in Santa Fe and the buildings have a right to retain a certain historic look. If they allow something like this it will open the floodgates to any rich eccentric that wants to live in a castle with a tower.
The neighbor is right that Martin has invested a lot in Santa Fe. He manages the Jean Cocteau Cinema, owns Beastly Books, helps with the House of Eternal Return art installation put together by Meow Wolf, started the nonprofit Stagecoach Foundation to help attract TV and film productions to the area, and recently hatched a plan to restore a defunct Santa Fe railroad.
Personally, I think that’s enough to allow him an architectural indulgence. Just let the rich eccentric have his castle. But I’m not his neighbors, and they aren’t having it. Neighbor Mark Graham lives south of the property, and will not “support having a castle in the neighborhood.”
With the notoriety of Mr. Martin and Game of Thrones, we absolutely fear that our neighborhood will become the next treasure hunt, that his fans will be looking to find the castle that’s in the middle of Santa Fe.
Martin actually submitted plans for this project back in January, acting through architectural firm Autotroph Inc. The main sticking point is a free-standing, seven-sided castle-style library tower called the Water Garden Keep. According to Autotroph Inc. employee Alexander Dzurec, it’s meant to house a “a very sizable collection” of literature and “other collectibles,” which checks out. Martin does love his books.
The problem is that the library tower exceeds the height limit of the historic district where Martin lives. After the original plans were rejected in January, Autotroph came back with some altered ones, but Historic Districts Review Board member Frank Katz was not moved. “It is a medieval castle, and I don’t understand how we could possibly approve it in this style,” he said at the start of a two-hour hearing earlier this week.
Lisa Roach, manager of the city’s Historic Preservation Division, was a little kinder, opining that the plans were “drastically simplified from the last proposal” and included the removal of “Gothic Revival design elements.”
But Katz didn’t think that really mattered much, saying he was “a little dismayed how little it was changed.”
I mean, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind looking at that structure that it’s a medieval castle keep. Yes, there have been these cosmetic little changes around the edges, but that doesn’t really change the basic appearance of the building and what it is intended to look like.
Does anyone think it would be pretty cool to just have a random castle tower in your neighborhood? Clearly not the neighbors, 40 of whom signed a letter urging the board not to grant a height exemption for the proposed property. “Since the meeting of the [board] in January of this year when these exceptions were originally denied, the applicant’s architect has made some changes to the original proposal by reducing the height slightly, changing the material to more stucco and less stone as well as changing the shape of the windows and reorienting the large window,” the letter read. “The fact remains that the proposed building is still a prominent castle in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Santa Fe. It WILL BE VISIBLE.”
Guy Gronquist, who signed the letter, read it out load to the board, poking holes in the architect’s argument that the building does indeed resemble some other medieval-style structures in Santa Fe by pointing out that, unlike Martin’s castle, those buildings aren’t surrounded by ordinary houses. “Attempting to cite a downtown commercial building elevator rooftop access approval as setting precedent for a castle tower elevator rooftop access approval in a residential neighborhood — for the purpose ‘of enjoying mountain views’ — is like comparing an apple to an orange,” Gronquist said. “They are both fruit, but that’s where the comparison ends.”
In the end, the Board found the project didn’t meet the requirements for height and style, and rejected it “on the basis that the proposal at that time was incongruous with the character of the Historic Review District.”
Part of me gets why the neighbors wouldn’t want a castle in their neighborhood, and part of me wonders why they weren’t thrilled by the idea. I’m pretty sure I would be all for it.
But yeah, if Martin wants to build himself a castle keep, maybe the way to go is to buy a vacant lot somewhere away from people. Make it a vacation castle; that’s what the Water Gardens were for anyway.
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