Where the city's adobe stands
Three houses to start with
If you read only three entries before walking Albuquerque, read these — the highest-tier landmarks in the catalog and the foundation for everything else.
NM-A-001 · NRHP The Old Albuquerque Municipal Airport Building stands at 2920 Yale Boulevard SE on the original Albuquerque municipal airfield, which began handling commercial flights during the city's early aviation era. The terminal…
NM-A-002 · NRHP The Art Annex sits at the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Terrace Street on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The building was constructed in 1926 during the long tenure of UNM president James F.…
NM-A-003 · NRHP The Juan Chavez House stands at 7809 Fourth Street NW in the village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, the strip of historic Hispano farming settlements that line the Rio Grande north of the old Albuquerque plaza. The…
Albuquerque's adobe character
Albuquerque is two adobe cities laid side by side. The first is Old Town, the eighteenth-century Spanish villa founded in 1706 around the church of San Felipe de Neri and its small plaza, sixty miles down the Río Grande from Santa Fe. The second is University Heights — the early-twentieth-century neighborhood that grew east of downtown when the railroad arrived in 1880 and again when the University of New Mexico, under President William Tight and architect John Gaw Meem, decided in the 1900s to build every campus building in the Pueblo Revival mode. The two cities share a river, a tradition, and almost nothing else.
In Old Town the adobe is genuine Spanish Colonial: long, single-room-deep houses with covered portales along the plaza, hand-formed walls more than two feet thick, and the small placita courtyards that the Laws of the Indies prescribed for a frontier villa. The neighborhood survived the twentieth century largely because it was already a tourist destination by 1880, and the Sister Cities preservation efforts after 1949 codified its protection. North along Fourth Street and out into the South Valley the acequia houses still stand among the cottonwoods, irrigated by the same ditches the colonial settlers dug.
The University Heights houses are different — Pueblo Revival, designed and built between 1908 and 1940 by a small group of architects led by Meem, who studied the Pueblo of Acoma and Santa Fe’s surviving colonial houses and built academic adobe at scale. The Estufa (1908), Hodgin Hall, and the President’s House on the UNM campus together form one of the largest assemblages of Pueblo Revival buildings outside Santa Fe. The houses in the surrounding blocks — Gladding, Werner-Gilchrist, the Art Annex — followed the same vocabulary. They are softer, more deliberate, and almost always two stories: an academic adobe that the catalog documents here.
Suggested walking tour
A route through the documented adobe of Albuquerque — 6 stops, measured at a researcher's unhurried pace.
From Old Town to the University Heights
Stops chosen from the catalog and ordered to make a coherent walk. Each stop links to the full catalog entry — addresses, dates, and photographs.
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La Glorieta House
1801 Central Ave., NWLa Glorieta House stands at 1801 Central Avenue NW in Albuquerque, on the south side of the highway where it climbs from the Rio Grande crossing toward the original Spanish villa of Old Town. The exact construction date is not recorded in the registry data,…
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El Vado Auto Court
2500 Central Ave. SW.El Vado Auto Court stands at 2500 Central Avenue SW in Albuquerque, on the south side of the original alignment of U.S. Route 66 west of the Rio Grande crossing. The motel was constructed in 1937 by Daniel Murphy and was conceived from the outset as a Route…
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Art Annex
NE corner of Central Ave. and Terrace St., UNM · Built 1926The Art Annex sits at the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Terrace Street on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The building was constructed in 1926 during the long tenure of UNM president James F. Zimmerman, when the university was…
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Estufa
SE corner of University Blvd. and Grand Ave., UNMThe Estufa stands at the southeast corner of University Boulevard and Grand Avenue on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The small windowless structure was raised in 1908 as a clubhouse for the Alpha Alpha Alpha fraternity, a local…
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President's House
NE corner of Roma Ave. and Yale Blvd., UNM · Built 1930The President's House at the University of New Mexico was built in 1930 on a prominent corner at Roma Avenue and Yale Boulevard, on the edge of the campus that the university had been steadily shaping into a Pueblo Revival enclave. The residence was…
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Gladding, James N., House
643 Cedar St., NE · Built 1926The James N. Gladding House stands at 643 Cedar Street NE in the Huning Highland and Silver Hill neighborhoods just east of downtown Albuquerque. The residence was constructed in 1926, during the building boom that followed the consolidation of the railroad…
All 13 entries in Albuquerque
Documented properties in Albuquerque, listed alphabetically. Each plate carries the entry's reference number, registry status, address, and date of construction.
NM-A-001 NRHP NM-A-002 NRHP NM-A-003 NRHP NM-A-004 NRHP NM-A-005 NRHP NM-A-006 NRHP NM-A-007 NRHP 
NM-A-008 NRHP 
NM-A-009 NRHP 
NM-A-010 NRHP NM-A-011 NRHP 
NM-A-012 NRHP 
NM-A-013 NRHP Nearby cities
Other adobe centers within reach of Albuquerque. Each links to its own chapter of the Atlas.