Walk # 5 is a 2.6 mile Tour of Nob Hill developed by Steven Justrich. Steven is one of the Albuquerque Jane’s Walks organizers and is a professional interior designer. This walk is a reflection of Steven’s acute interest in architecture and design.
This walk begins and ends at the Triangle bounded by Central Avenue, Monte Vista Boulevard, and Dartmouth Drive. Along the way you’ll pass many outstanding buildings including the “world famous” Bart Prince Spaceship home and studio. Like any of our Jane’s Walks, you can start your walk anywhere you would like along the route and make as many modifications as you wish.
Before starting our walk, here is some background information regarding the architecture:
Spanish and Mission Revival
Pueblo Revival
Territorial Revivals
Streamline Moderne
Art Moderne
Midcentury Modern
A note about Revival Styles: An architectural Style name followed by the word Revival signals the re-emergence of the style In an altered form from the era in which it was created. For Example: The Territorial Style was created by the Anglo Settlers in New Mexico in the late 1880’s until approximately 1912 when New Mexico became a U.S. state. The style features the blocky massing of the Pueblo or Spanish Pueblo Style with design elements from East coast styles such Greek Revival which used embellishments such as dentil mouldings, carpenter trim, and most notably, the brick finish to the parapet wall. Territorial Revival in the 1930’s and 1940’s has all of these elements, executed with current building methods and materials such as Victorian era carpenter trim in porch posts, brackets and window casing, and most notably, the brick dentil cornices finishing the parapet wall. Streamline Moderne, however, since it occurred in the 1930-40s has no attributed revival style per se. The Carlisle condo complex (#8 on this walk) even though it has elements of Streamline Moderne, is not part of a Revival movement, and would be called Post Modern and not Streamline Moderne Revival. A revival style is typically part of a widespread regional or national movement as is apparent in the Nob Hill neighborhood in Albuquerque, with hundreds of residential buildings in the Spanish, Mission, Pueblo and Territorial Revival Styles built from late1920 to the1940’s.
1.
Nob Hill Triangle Park Police Substation – Central and Girard – Art Moderne Style
This eight seat prefabricated diner was manufactured in 1942 by the Valentine Manufacturing Company of Witchita Kansas. It’s original incarnation was as “The Little House Café” located at the roundabout at 8th and Central until 1993 after which it was donated to the Albuquerque Museum. In 1997 it was moved to Triangle Park just inside the Central Avenue neon gate to Nob Hill and operates as the police substation. The Art Moderne style follows the Art Deco period, with references to a machine aesthetic, motion indicated by horizontal lines and to vehicles of motion such as train cars. I hesitate to call the diner “streamline” due to the absence of curves and rounded corners or corner windows.
2.
The Historic Lobo Theatre and surrounding commercial block.1938. Named after the mascot of the University of New Mexico Lobos or “wolf”, The Lobo Theatre was operated by Paramount Pictures Inc. in the 1940’s, with the original interior designed in the Art Deco style. The surrounding commercial structures adjoining the theatre may have included a gas station on the corner and is indicative of Route 66 commercial block architecture in the1940’s.
3.
Monte Vista Firestation – Central Avenue at Bryn Mawr, 1936, Architect: Ernst Blumenthal- Pueblo Revival.The building is constructed in Structural clay tile and stuccoed to look like traditional adobe buildings with stepped parapets, projecting vigas and ladders. It is a well preserved Works Progress Administration building, and was the first fire station for Nob Hill until 1972. It is on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties and the National Register of Historic Places. It is currently a bar and restaurant.
4.
Jones Motor Company, Central and Wellesley, 1939, Architect: Tom Danahy, Streamline Moderne. This Route 66 era building was formerly a Ralph Jones Service Station and Ford Motor Company Car Dealership, with curved garage bays, a stepped central tower, and white coloration typical of the Streamline Moderne Style. The building is on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1993, and was designated as a protected city landmark in 2001.
5.
212 Tulane Drive SE, D.K.B. Sellars Log Cabin, This large 3800 square feet log cabin was built in1927 from whole logs from the Jemez Mountain by D.K.B. Sellars as a model home for future east mountain cabins. Sellars, remembered as a gregarious and shamleess self-promoter and huckster real estate developer, was the visionary for the development of Nob Hill and the former Mayor of Albuquerque from 1912 to 1914. He arrived in Albuquerque in1906 from Northern California and named Nob Hill after the fashionable neighborhood in San Francisco. The cabin can be rented on Airbnb.
*Further afield: See The Albuquerque Press Club, 201 Highland Park Circle
“The other log cabin” in Albuquerque built in 1903 is an extraordinary rustic style high on a hill overlooking downtown.
6.
316 Tulane Drive SE, 1928 Pueblo Revival. This privately owned compound is entered through an iron gate flanked by stone lion heads.
7.
319 Carlisle Blvd., Tank House – 1937, Pueblo Revival. When D.K.B. Sellars planned University Heights he built a private water system with a tank at the highest point to serve the new addition. After the city water system replaced this private system, a house was constructed around the tank which was repurposed as the living room.
8.
324 Hermosa Drive SE, 1938, Streamline Moderne / International Style, Architect William E. Burke. Called “The Kelvinator House”, it was one of 200 “Kelvin Homes” built around the country starting in 1936 to showcase Kelvinator appliances. It was built by Walter C.Raabe, the owner of Raabe & Mauger Hardware Company, as a showcase for the Kelvinator appliances that the store sold. It was reported to be the first house in Albuquerque to have air conditioning.This prominent corner house on top of Nob Hill is a rare example of Streamline Moderne / International Style architecture in Albuquerque, with it’s corner oriented windows, and curved elements in what appears to be a curved glass block stairwell. This style’s distinctive “white architecture” and flat roofs were derived from the European International Style developed by the German Bauhaus and from Le Corbusier’s 1930 Villa Savoye at Poissy, France. A second story addition was added over the garage in 1976 by UNM architecture student / owner Edna Heatherington and was the subject of her master’s thesis.The house was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1978.
https://albuquerquemodernism.unm.edu/posts/cs12_kelvinator_house.html
*Further afield: The Lembke House,1936, International Style, 312 Laguna Blvd SW
9.
309 Hermosa Drive SE, 1950, Streamline Moderne/International Style
This outstanding house is an excellent example the Streamline Moderne Style in brick, with flat roofs, corner windows, curved glass block side-lites at the entry, and curved massing. This house was built outside of the Streamline Moderne era of 1930-1945.
10.
300 Carlisle Blvd SE, Pueblo Revival compound
11.
Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 114 Carlisle Boulevard SE, Architect John Gaw Meem, was built in three phases between 1949 and 1956. It was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 2004 and the National Register of Places in 2011.
The church is one of Meem’s few buildings in the Territorial style. The church plan is unusual in that it is entered informally and asymmetrically into a gallery on the long West side of the Nave.
Meem came to New Mexico to recover from Tubercuolosis in 1920 at the Sunmount Sanatorium in Santa Fe. Here he was inspired by the SF Art Community who were beginning to create a regional architectural style and many of his first clients and collaborators were fellow patients at the sanatorium. Inspired by the simple forms of Spanish churches and missions, he strived to create an “old new architecture” that “evokes a mood” in a regional “architecture of place”. He was considered the father of Santa Fe Style. In1933 he became the official architect of the University of New Mexico, creating 25 buildings and defining a regional style for the University which still inspires new campus buildings today. His most notable works on the campus are Zimmerman Library and Scholes Hall. The Simms Residence and La Quinta at Los Poblanos Inn in Los Ranchos De Albuquerque are among his finest works.
12.
The Carlisle, 2018 – Post Modern Style, this new 38-unit condo complex on the Southeast corner of Central Avenue and Carlisle opposite the Nob Hill Shopping Center creates a landmark building with a tower that reinterprets the Streamline Moderne era with it’s curved massing, introducing a vintage inspired color scheme and the use of neon to highlight architectural elements.
Note that there are seven towers visible from this location at the intersection of Central Avenue and Carlisle Blvd – The Nob Hill Shopping Center has four towers, and one at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church, the Fan Tang Restaurant and at The Carlisle. Towers are a common element in Streamline Moderne as they recall the nautical influences of the style. The tower at The Carlisle resembles a water tower.
13.
Nob Hill Business Center. 1947. Designed by Architect Louis Hesselden in the Streamline Moderne style with rounded corners, decorative towers, white stucco walls, and horizontal bands of terra cotta tile and brick, reminiscent of the Territorial Revival style. This one-story U-shaped building with an interior parking lot facing Central Avenue was the first modern suburban shopping center in New Mexico. Locals called it “Waggoman’s Folly” after the developer Robert Waggoman, because It was so far from the downtown core, but the shopping center was a major success. The building was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1983, and the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Montanita Coop has recently installed a new neon sign adjacent to their entrance in the style of the existing neon signs.
14.
3405 Central Avenue NE – The Guild Cinema
The Guild Cinema started it’s life back in February 16th 1966 with the debut of the Greek film “The Red Lanterns”. The owners of the Roxy Theatre had taken over the Chinese Village restaurant to screen Independent Art Films but soon found it not as lucrative as the “nudie” films shown at it’s other theatre. So the Guild became a sister operation screening movies such as “The Girls of the Naked West” and “Devil in Velvet”. The era of the Pornographic theatre in Albuquerque came to an end in 1971 and The Guild went legit with a series of owners who were true to making a place for independent cinema. In 2003 the theatre was sold to employee Kief Henley who has since ushered in a new era of the art house film scene in Albuquerque, with The Guild becoming a Nob Hill institution with a devoted following. https://www.guildcinema.com/history
15.
300 Grand Avenue NE, 1964, Midcentury Modern. This Midcentury Modern house in Albuquerque features a red brick walled compound with a low slung shed-roofed bedroom wing and south-facing living wing joined by an entry element.
16.
306 Amherst Dr. NE, This Spanish Pueblo Revival house was designed in 1930 by Beula Fleming, one of the first female architects in New Mexico. It is a registered cultural property with the State of New Mexico and contributes to the Monte Vista and College View Historic District. Fleming’s residential designs in Albuquerque are located in prominent neighborhoods such as Ridgecrest, Huning Highlands, Nob Hill, and University Heights. Her simple frame and stucco designs took hold during the 1930’s and 1940’s, during Albuquerque’s early economic boom. Another prominent house is “The Rock House”, a romantic stone cottage with steeply gabled roofs located at Marquette Ave. and Monte Vista Blvd. in Nob Hill.
17.
344 Amherst Ave. NE
Mediterranean Revival. Built in1930 by decorator and painter Theodore M. Bonet, this house has elements inspired by grander Mediterranean homes but at a small scale, such as the entry tower and the “Spanish Colonial Portico”, which historically created a grand entrance over the driveway of an estate house. Designed as a covered structure to pass through or park under, perhaps an early form of a carport, here, the “portico” is merely a freestanding arch connected to the house to make it look larger.
18.
405 Hermosa Drive NE,1935. Southwest Vernacular/Mediterranean, A well proportioned bungalow in it’s original condition, with corner buttresses, and shaped parapets and original wood windows.
19.
Developer/spec houses on the 400 block of Hermosa Drive
Nob Hill was one of the first planned automobile oriented suburbs in Albuquerque with a mix of single, duplex and triplex homes built on spec by developers or custom by the owners on three lot sizes. Garages in earlier houses were detached and located towards the rear of the property with a long driveway. In later houses, the garage was located closer to the street and attached to the house. The streets were wide and allowed for plenty of street parking. Interestingly, with the commercial district located just a few blocks from the residential neighborhoods, sidewalks were often narrow with frequent curb cuts for driveways – not ideal for obstacle free walking.
The three houses at 440, 438 and 436 Hermosa Drive NE in the College View Addition were built around 1930-31. They are fine examples of homes in the Mediterranean / California Ranch style with similar massing and details such as arched entry doors, heavily stuccoed white walls, wood windows and exposed wooden posts, lintels and rafters. The “false” red clay tile shed, gable, and hip roofs fronting the houses hide the flat roof beyond.
Across the street at 433 and 437 Hermosa Drive are two similar wood frame and stucco Spanish Pueblo Revival houses, built in 1936 by the contractor J.L.Dodson, have similar floor plans. 433 is in near original condition with heavily stuccoed walls, false lintels above the original steel windows, and an exterior entry porch with a decorative wood balustrade. Both house’s original projecting wood vigas have been removed. The exterior porch at 437 Hermosa was enclosed in the late 1940’s with horizontal paned steel windows which are common in houses of that era. Vertical pane steel windows can be seen on Spanish Pueblo Revival and Mediterranean style homes in Nob Hill built in the1930’s. The cost to build one of these spec homes in the 1930’s was about $3000 to $4000.
20.
448 Hermosa Drive NE, 1941. Mediterranean/Spanish Pueblo Revival with Pueblo Revival elements in the protruding vigas in the parapeted window bay. It has a triple arched window, gable wall embellishment, and seldom seen multicolor terra-cotta roof tiles.
21.
445 Hermosa Drive NE
Mediterranean / Pueblo Revival,1930. This corner house is often pictured in historic photos of Nob Hill and is in original condition with wood windows and gabled clay tiled roof elements flanking a small walled entry courtyard in front of a flat roofed Pueblo style element and detached garage. The large corner lot is defined by a low stuccoed wall attached to the house, enclosing the front yard, accessed by two wooden gates.
Bart Prince Houses
Architect Bart Prince, whose influences include architects Bruce Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright, has created a highly individualized and original architecture that is unique in his unusual use of materials and expression of organic and abstract form apart from and free of New Mexican regional influences.
22.
3507 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, Spaceship house 1, Architect: Bart Prince
I describe these houses as “flyovers” built over an existing Pueblo Style house. The house is believed to Bart Prince’s architectural studio.
23.
3501 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, Spaceship house 2, 1984, Architect: Bart Prince. Bart Prince Residence and Studio. This is Bart Prince’s most famous house and uses an innovative combination of materials and structural systems resulting in a more organic architecture.
24.
3502 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, “The Rock House”, Architect Beula Fleming. A romantic English cottage with steeply gabled roofs and rock walls with brick coping.
25.
3416 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, Spaceship House 3, Architect, Bart Prince,1974 – This wood and glass addition to a historic Southwest Vernacular house, elevated above the original house by a steel column and beam structure, is reached by an internal spiral staircase, creating airspace between the original house and the addition.
* further afield: See the Mead-Penhall “Cigar House”,1993, 4504 Sunningdale Avenue NE
26 and 27.
430 and 436 Tulane Avenue NE
Streamline Moderne, 1939-40. Rounded porch entry (437 with banding and steel pipe column),horizontal steel windows, corner steel windows replaced on 436.
28.
Monte Vista School, 3211 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, 1931
Spanish Mission Revival, Architect: T. Charles Gaastra
29.
Hendron Building.1946, Streamline Moderne style. One of the last completed works by T. Charles Gaastra (1879-1947), architect of the Monte Vista School. It was constructed by J. L. Hendron, a grocery store owner who saw Nob Hill resident’s need for shops and businesses near their homes. The first tenants were a pharmacy, an electrical supply company, a luggage shop, and doctor’s offices. The exterior was originally faced with pink stone which remains, and black Carrera Glass which was removed in 2000. It was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1999 and the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
