[2] In 1909 Santa Fe's paper, The Daily New Mexican, announced that local (he lived and had offices in both New Mexico and Colorado) architect Isaac H. Rapp had been awarded the commission to design a new Scottish Rite Cathedral.

A few months later, in July of the same year, it printed a perspective by Rapp showing a grand Neo-classical styled design for the Temple.

They produced a Moorish Revival style structure based loosely on one of the gatehouses to the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra in Spain.

[4] There are also obvious similarities with the Southwest Museum, in Los Angeles, which was being designed by Hunt and Burns around the same time, including the tower, without the Islamic entry.

That Isaac Rapp did not get the commission was not a huge loss to him as he was to build his design in 1913 as the Las Animas County Court House, in Trinidad, Colorado.