Seminars and company events
La Fonda on the Plaza hosts meetings, executive retreats, banquets, galas and business meetings in eight event venues totalling 20,112 square feet. The hotel is at 100 East San Francisco Street, directly on the Santa Fe Plaza, and has 180 guest rooms, so a group can work and sleep in the same building. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America.
The venues suit different formats. The Santa Fe Room has 25-foot ceilings and pounded tin chandeliers. The Lumpkins Ballroom is the hotel's ballroom. The Exchange Room is described as an intimate space for breakouts and small groups, and the Ballen Boardroom is fitted out as a boardroom. The Stiha Room serves small meetings, executive retreats and catered events. The New Mexico Room has a terracotta fireplace near the portal, and La Terraza and Garden Patio offers an outdoor setting for receptions and breaks.
The hotel provides floor plans and a room capacity chart in a PDF; ask for it with your request. Ask for the chart before choosing a room, since the figures decide whether a given venue works for a plenary session.
Weddings and receptions
Weddings, rehearsal dinners, farewell brunches and receptions are held on site, and the hotel offers on-site wedding catering with a published wedding menu. It mentions private terraces overlooking the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi and a ceremony setting close to the Plaza. The Santa Fe Room, the Lumpkins Ballroom, La Terraza and Garden Patio and the New Mexico Room are the rooms presented for weddings.
Rooms and capacities
The hotel states eight venues and 20,112 square feet in total, and names seven of them: the Santa Fe Room, the Exchange Room, the Ballen Boardroom, the Lumpkins Ballroom, La Terraza and Garden Patio, the New Mexico Room and the Stiha Room. No individual size or capacity appears in the text of its pages. Organisers should ask for the capacity chart and the layouts for theater, classroom and banquet seating.
Accommodation
The hotel has 180 guest rooms, following a renovation in 2013. It lists 13 room types in three groups: suites, traditional rooms and deluxe rooms. Some have piñon wood-burning fireplaces, hand-painted headboards or a balcony, and the Presidential Suite has two guest rooms, a gathering room and a rooftop patio. The Terrace at La Fonda offers further suites, some with private balconies and fireplaces.
Catering
Catering is in-house and covers buffets, plated banquets, cocktail hours, carving stations, breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. Menus draw on New Mexican, Southwestern and Italian cooking, and the kitchen can offer lighter options for meetings, themed menus and a dessert menu. Caterers tailor a menu on request. The hotel also has La Plazuela, the Bell Tower Rooftop Bar and a lounge with nightly live music.
History and setting
The current building opened in 1922. Isaac Rapp, Mary Colter and John Gaw Meem all influenced the design, and Colter later led its expansion as lead architect and designer of the Harvey Company. In 1925 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway bought the building and leased it to the Fred Harvey Company. The Ballen family restored the hotel in the 1960s, and in 2014 ownership passed to a partnership of families with ties to the hotel. The hotel describes itself as the only one directly on the historic Plaza, steps from the Palace of the Governors and the cathedral.
