We discovered a great way to spend a beautiful fall morning during a mini-adventure to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and home and studio tour in Abiquiú.

The O’Keeffe home and studio reflect a blend of Native American and Spanish Colonial building styles, regional architectural traditions dating back centuries.

The oldest rooms were probably built in 1744. The house was expanded in the nineteenth century into a pueblo-style adobe (mud brick) hacienda, with rows of rooms organized around a common open space, or plazuela.

It was one of the courtyard walls of the home that first attracted O’Keeffe.

“As I climbed and walked about in the ruins, I found a patio with a very pretty well house and bucket to draw up water. It was a good-sized patio with a long wall with a door on one side. That wall with a door in it was something I had to have,” she said.

It took several years to acquire and rebuild the house; O’Keeffe finally made Abiquiú her permanent home in 1949. The special character of the property, a quiet sanctuary from which to draw inspiration, perfectly suited O’Keeffe’s needs.

O’Keeffe lived in the home from 1949 until 1984. She died March 6, 1986 at the age of 98 in Santa Fe.

The O’Keeffe home and studio was designated a National Historic landmark in 1998 and is now part of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.