Isaac Hamilton Rapp

Isaac Hamilton Rapp (1854-1933) designed the New Mexico State Building. Built as a permanent structure for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, the building is an early example of the Santa Fe Style. Rapp designed a similar building for the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe in 1916.

Rapp grew up in Carbondale, Illinois where his father became an architect and builder. Five of the nine Rapp children would become architects. His father trained him until he set up a firm in 1889 along with C.W. Bulger in Trinidad, Colorado. This partnership lasted for three years after which Isaac’s brother, William Morris Rapp and Arthur C. Hendrickson joined him as partners. Rapp is responsible for many buildings that actually put Santa Fe on the map with its own distinct style, including the original La Fonda hoteland the New Mexico Museum of Art. Throughout his career Isaac Rapp practiced in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. He quit practicing shortly after his brother as well as Arthur Hendrickson died of natural causes within a year of each other.

http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/arch453/Santafe/index.htm