Centuries of Hands

Van Dorn Hooker II was born in 1921 in Carthage, Texas. After serving in World War II as a ground radio operator in India, he studied architecture at the University of Texas, Austin, and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his wife, Peggy, also an architect, eventually settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Van Dorn at first worked for John Gaw Meem, whose firm had designed several early buildings at the University of New Mexico in the Pueblo Mission Style. Van Dorn established his own private practice on Canyon Road, where he became a recognized expert on restoring historic adobe churches. In the early 1960s, as it was about to undergo a huge expansion, the University of New Mexico hired Van Dorn as its first University Architect. One of his favorite and at the time most controversial projects was overseeing the landscaping of a dirt faculty parking lot on the Main Campus, the centerpiece of which is the now beloved Duck Pond. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Van Dorn's watercolors and many articles and books, including Memories, Memorials, and Monuments, reflect his appreciation for New Mexico's natural environment, its architecture, its people, and their stories. He died in 2015.