The Scottish Rite Cathedral is a major work by architects Sumner Hunt and S. R. Burns of Los Angeles, who were among the leading exponents of the California Mission style.

The exterior walls and interior stairs and floors are reinforced concrete. The exterior walls are up to thirty-six inches thick and covered with rough-textured, pink stucco. The orange-red tile, hipped roofs rest on wooden decking and steel and wooden trusses.

The Spanish-Moorish imagery was drawn from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This Moorish Revival style was a deliberate departure from the Mission Revival style and Spanish Colonial Revival style popular in Califonia toward an architectural idiom more appropriate for New Mexico.

The completion of the Scottish Rite Cathedral quickly led to a definitive definition of the Spanish-Pueblo style, sometimes call the Santa Fe style.

Source: Adapted from the NRHP nomination submitted in 1987.