Paseo Retreat
The deck on a bright day: the grill and the outdoor kiva fireplace along the parapet wall, the town spread out below, and a wide sky of scattered cloud above. The hand-plastered kiva fireplace with a fire lit behind its mesh screen, the curved white hearth built into the corner, an ash bucket to one side and wrought-iron fire tools to the other. Sunset from the deck with the whole sky gone orange, the umbrella furled and the turquoise chairs in silhouette against it. The whole of Santa Fe under fresh snow seen from the deck, every tree and rooftop white to the horizon under a wide blue sky.
Our story

Why this place.

The story of how Paseo Retreat became Paseo Retreat, from your hosts, Andrew Swerdloff and Tracy Lee.

Santa Fe came first. I didn't come here for real estate, I came for what this place does to you when you step outside: the light, the smell of piñon, air that feels like it was made fresh that morning. It is one of the few places we have found where you can get properly quiet, where there is room to reconnect with yourself and with the things that matter instead of being pulled around by the outside noise. Every visit, I slept better, walked more, thought slower. Each trip ended the same way, with me not ready to leave. So in 2020, I stopped leaving.

We had been waiting for the right property here, and that year we found it: five units on a hilltop street a short walk from the Plaza, in rough shape. Good bones, tired everything else. Kitchens from another era, plumbing and wiring that had been patched instead of fixed, roofs on borrowed time. It was going to need a tremendous amount of work, and it did. Blood, sweat and tears is not an exaggeration. Most people saw a headache. I stood on the back deck, watched the Sangre de Cristos turn pink at sunset, and saw the whole point.

In 2022 we rebuilt it. All of it. New kitchens and new bathrooms in every unit. New electrical, new plumbing, new heating and cooling, new roofs. We didn't cut corners, because I wasn't flipping a building. I was making a place I wanted to stand behind for decades, and one I'd want to stay in myself. Hospitality is my background, and I furnished these places the way an operator does: every inch, from the design and furniture to the linens, chosen for quality, comfort, and convenience. The mattress in the casita is the same one we use in one of our hotels, which is a strange thing to be proud of until you have slept on it.

What I wanted to create was a retreat in the honest sense of the word. Not a themed experience, not a place doing an impression of Santa Fe. A place you nestle into. You arrive, drop your bags, light the fireplace, and within a day the rhythm of the neighborhood is yours: the same quiet street, the morning walkers, coffee down the hill, dinner you can walk to. You're not in a tourist zone. You're in a real neighborhood, living the way locals do, which is the version of Santa Fe worth traveling for.

And the views mean you don't have to go anywhere to get the payoff. The back deck faces the mountains. Some of the best evenings here involve nothing more than a chair, a fire, and the sky doing its thing. When you do want to go, everything is close: the Plaza, Canyon Road, the trails at Fort Marcy. There's a big garage for your car, your skis, your bikes. The practical stuff is handled so the restful stuff can happen.

The part I didn't expect to love this much is the sharing. Telling a guest exactly which trail to take before breakfast, which table to ask for, where the dog can run off-leash for 138 acres. That's not an add-on to the hospitality. That is the hospitality. My favorite places are in the guide, and the guide keeps growing.

It was worth all of it, because this became a place we love staying in, and that was the whole point. This is our favorite place to stay when it's available, which isn't often anymore.

Whether you're staying for a weekend or a year, you're walking into something that was built with care. Welcome to Paseo Retreat.

· Andrew Swerdloff and Tracy Lee, your hosts

Then and now

Two years, and worth every one.

We took all five adobes back to the studs and rebuilt them. You do not need to see the middle of that. This is what it looks like now.

The compound from the street on the 2018 visit, low winter sun behind it: the long adobe wall, the carved gate, a corrugated porch roof, and a roofer up a ladder on the far unit.
2018, from the street
The same approach today: the rebuilt portal on dark timber posts, fresh stucco, coyote-pole gates and firewood stacked along the wall.
The same view now
The compound on the first visit in 2018: a flagstone path between plastered walls, an overgrown juniper, and a single iron chair.
2018, as we found it
The same corner today: the walled courtyard with its blue-painted door, glass-block window, potted plants and a small bistro table.
The same corner now
The gravel court in 2018: a bare timber stair climbing to the units, a low plastered wall, the big spruce behind it and a car parked on the gravel.
2018, the stair up to Unit C
Unit C today: fresh stucco, deep-set windows, coyote-pole fencing and planting along the wall.
Unit C now
Inside the casita in 2018: the same viga ceiling overhead, a ceiling fan, heavy dark furniture, a round table and the kitchen through the opening.
2018, inside the casita
The same room now: the vigas cleaned back to the wood, a lit kiva fireplace, a wide desk that folds down from the cabinetry, a wool rug and the kitchen through the same opening.
The same room now
The casita entry in 2018, looking through to a skylit hall with a panelled door, a framed print, a small painted cabinet and a lamp.
2018, the entry
The casita entry today: clean plaster, timber trim and light coming through from the room beyond.
The entry now
The casita bathroom in 2018: a laminate vanity with a moulded basin, rolled towels on a bracket shelf, small framed prints and a yellow wall.
2018, the bathroom
The casita bathroom now: white subway tile, a rain shower head, and the same window looking out from a fresh tub surround.
The bathroom now
A casita window in 2018: heavy dark red curtains drawn back from a deep sill, a tray of red petunias, and the town and hills beyond the glass.
2018, the same window
The same window today, over a butcher block counter with the coffee station beneath it, string lights outside and the hills in view.
The view never changed
June 2020: a unit taken back to the dirt, ceiling joists open above, temporary posts holding the span, and the old floor dug out for new plumbing.
2020, back to the dirt
Summer 2020: four of the crew working along an open wall line, setting a long new timber beam, with the neighbouring rooftops and trees behind them.
2020, the crew
June 2020: the old fixtures lined up on the verge waiting to go, two toilets, a tub and a pedestal basin, with the compound wall behind them.
The old fixtures, on their way out
The yard in 2018: a sagging lattice fence, dead growth and bare branches, with the town in the trees below.
2018, the yard
Winter 2021: the new coyote-pole fence up, fresh stucco on the walls, a planting bed turned over and waiting, and a new concrete terrace poured.
The ground going back in
Unit D's rebuilt yard: new coyote-pole fence around a gravel court, two iron chairs and a stacked woodpile, with all of Santa Fe and the mountains beyond the fence line.
The yard, rebuilt
The deck's own outdoor kiva fireplace, lit, with the whole valley and the mountains open behind it.
What it grew into
Sunset from the property: orange and pink cloud over the hills with the town in the trees below.
Why it was worth it
The bed, built in place

A carpenter in town built the bed and the custom shelving from scratch, in the room, over several months. It folds up into a desk each morning.

The alcove before the build: bare plastered walls, two oak shelves on brackets and a cabinet above, with nothing in the space where the bed would go.
January, an empty wall
A long stain sample board held up against the wall, six finishes taped off along the plywood, with one circled.
Choosing the finish
The alcove sheeted in plastic and paper with a carpenter up a stepladder fixing the covering to the vigas before the joinery goes in.
Prepping the opening
A carpenter running a tape down the full height of the closed cherry face, checking the fit against the opening.
Measured again
Two carpenters either side of the finished cherry cabinet, one reading the fitting instructions and the older man in denim overalls looking it over.
Reading the fittings
The bed folded down out of the cabinet for the first time, the bare platform out on its steel legs with a toolbox sitting on it, and the carpenter bent to the fixings behind.
Down for the first time
The desk top being fitted: the bed shut away, the worktop out on its brackets, and two men measuring along the shelves beside it.
Fitting the desk
The bed down and made up: blue linens under the lit cherry head, the coral patterned wall behind, vigas and a skylight overhead and the walk-in closet standing open beyond.
Made up for the night
The finished cabinet with the bed folded away and the desk down: a cherry wood face, a chair pulled up to the worktop, and the vigas and skylight overhead.
How it lives now
Andrew and Tracy side by side at a restaurant table, both smiling at the camera over dinner.
Andrew and Tracy
Rumi, a red goldendoodle, fast asleep across a half-played Monopoly board.
Rumi

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