Vitality of a village

New Mexico State Fair's treasured haven for American Indian culture gets a new look, but its spirit will endure

by Mo Palmer

The year 1964 was one of change. President John F. Kennedy was gone; Camelot crashed. His assassination was the "end of the innocence" for those of us holding the "high hopes" Old Blue Eyes sang about during Kennedy's campaign. The "unwar" in Vietnam was escalating. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was voted "Man of the Year" by Time Magazine and was the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bobby Kennedy was in the news daily. Senator Strom Thurmond changed horses in the middle of the stream and became a Republican after decades of Democratic-ness. Barry Goldwater was stumping for election - it was the first year I was old enough to vote.

On the ordinary cultural front, the Beatles were touring the country to thrilled adolescent girls and "a few boys," as a Dallas article put it. They arrived in Texas wearing cowboy hats that "neither fit nor became them." Someone threatened to exterminate the British Bugs.

Here in Albuquerque, the first Mass celebrated in English took place in the Civic Auditorium, located where the Heart Hospital is today. The University of New Mexico's School of Nursing admitted its first male student, and Albuquerque was getting ready for the New Mexico State Fair.

I think the fair used to be a bigger deal than it is now, judging from the coverage it received. Maybe it still is and I just haven't noticed - but every aspect was published, from preparations to prizes, with plenty of people photos.

The anticipated opening of the new Indian Village generated major excitement. In spring of 1964, a committee of the Council of American Indians, representing 21 tribes and pueblos, approached fair officials with its idea. The officials were delighted.

Although there was an Indian Arts Building, and vendors traditionally set up just inside the main gates around the fountain, this was a brand new take.

Joe Sando of the Jemez Pueblo, president of the council at the time, noted that Hollywood American Indians always wore feathered headdresses, inaccurate for Pueblo peoples.

"The Indian people would like to be observed as they are," Sando said at the time.

The idea was unique and brilliant. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, indigenous villages were imported and set up on World's Fairgrounds so folks could observe people in their "natural habitat," like a zoo.

Pretty offensive. Indian Americans were reversing stereotypes and taking control - something they would continue to do as activism increased in the '60s and '70s.

The Indian Village rated mention in the New York Times, as it was the only such dedicated space in America's fairgrounds. I couldn't find the article because the yearly index for that paper is bigger than "War and Peace" and harder to read. It might have a better plot.

The fair donated the land, but members of more than 21 tribes and organizations did all the work. Plans were to exhibit wickiups and other dwellings, although the weather didn't tune in to the event and washed away Cochiti Pueblo's mud and wattle oven exhibit twice. That's New Mexico.

The primary construction was brush arbor. Over the gate was the word "O-Ween-Gay," or "Welcome," in the Tewa language of some pueblos. One report incorrectly claimed this as the language of all pueblos, but some don't speak Tewa at all. I'd tell you what they speak, but it's too complex for me.

You could get a slice of hand-cooked fry bread, that incredible treat, for 30 cents. Get acquainted with it this year. You'll be instantly addicted like the rest of us.

At the center of the village was a platform, where Laguna dancers performed a buffalo dance.

Plains, Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo dancers took the stage daily at 11 a.m. Handmade jewelry, arts, and crafts were available to admire and to buy, at reasonable prices.

Artists were in the village so customers could meet with and talk to them. One was Pablita Velarde, whom I mention because she died in January.

Pablita's name was Golden Dawn-Tse Tsa. Tse Tsa was from Santa Clara Pueblo.

She was renamed Pablita at the Indian School in Santa Fe, one of many changes these schools inflicted upon native children. Pablita was not captivated by women's roles - cooking, cleaning, being a wife and mother. Lots of us weren't, but most of us succumbed to those expectations. Not Pablita. She took up painting, and she was good.

Pablita painted her vision of pueblo life, and suffered frequent criticism. The Albuquerque International Airport has some of her work in its collection, and she painted murals on the Maisel's Building, 510 Central Ave. N.W.

Over time, this independent spirit garnered many awards and helped promote women as gifted individuals. Her daughter, Helen Hardin, was also a fine artist. She died in 1984.

The Indian Village has expanded over the decades and continues to be successful.

Today, State Fair visitors will notice a "new" village, designed to resemble the Taos Pueblo.

The $687,000 project, started earlier this year, was complete in time for this year's fair.

The old vendor buildings have been demolished and replaced. There's a new portal, 12 additional spaces for vendors, four new demonstration spaces, two new dining/picnic pavilions and new lighting for the dance area.

Buildings, lights, and spaces are nice and it's time for this facelift. Such a unique place deserves it. But what's important is that it's served for 42 years as a gathering place and as a hands-on school to teach American Indian traditions and heritage.

What you feel in the village is a spirit - of togetherness, of sharing, of preserving culture. That spirit will endure no matter how it is housed.

Originally published in The Albuquerque Tribune, Thursday, September 14, 2006. The Tribune articles are used with the permission of Scripps Howard.

The Missing Photos:

(courtesy "The State Fair: The Biggest Show in New Mexico")

Workmen lay adobe bricks during construction of the Indian Village at the Expo New Mexico grounds in 1964. This year, the village has undergone a $687,000 rehabilitation project.


(Photo by Erin Fredrichs)

Bryson Sanchez, 5, waits for his turn to perform in the center circle of the Indian Village at the State Fair. Bryson is a member of the White Horse Plains Dancers from Bernalillo. Built in 1964, the Indian Village venue has a strong tradition at the fair but also needed help. A $687,000 rehabilitation project was completed in time for this year's annual event.


(Photo by Erin Fredrichs)

Lights above the Indian Village shine down on Liset Carrillo, 18, and the Tezcatlipoca Aztec dancers, who perform annually at the State Fair. Improved lighting is one of many renovations done this year at the Indian Village venue, built in 1964

The way we shopped

by Mo Palmer

Albuquerque's Downtown is on the rebound.
But it's still just a pale reflection of the bustling center city jampacked
with shopping venues that it was before suburbanization did it in.
I just figured out what's wrong with Downtown.

See, I give tons of boring lectures. I'm always asleep long before the audience is. Last week, while I was on auto-pontificate, ranting about landmarks lost during Urban Renewal, someone woke me up with a question.

The insightful inquirer asked if Demolition Man wiped out cities other than Albuquerque. Well, of course, and for the same reasons: suburbs, shopping malls, parking problems and freeways. People want to shop in their neighborhood. When folks move, merchants must follow.

We're investing a lot in Downtown revitalization. There's a new theater, free parking, galleries and excellent eateries. Confusing one-way streets are back to simple old two-way head-on crash boulevards. New buildings look eerily like old ones—spooky but exhilarating phantom phoenixes rising from cement ashes and all that jazz. Apartments are being assembled.

Seems it's not quite enough, though. What's missing are the stores. There's no place to shop before the movie, after lunch, before cocktails. I think we miss our buildings, but we also miss what was in them. Downtown was everybody's neighborhood market, where you coul buy anything.

Take groceries, for example. Piggly Wiggly, Barber's, Skinner's Hawkin's, Safeway—all were there at one time or another. For a long time, ladies shopped for produce, meat and perishables daily, when only ricos had refrigerators and everyone else had iceboxes. You handed the grocer a list, and your order was assembled for you.

Barber's was a pioneer in the self-serve supermarket—a newfangled notion, where food was stacked all over the place, you selected it and carried it to the register in a basket. Wow, what a concept! Some people were delighted, but others were offended by this change from personalized service. You've got to wonder what they'd think of Wal-Mart, which, contrary to its ads, seems to have no staff at all.

Capo's Restaurant at Eighth and Central was Skinner's grocery. Look into its exquisite art deco face. Just up the block, between Sixth and Seventh, there's a smaller art deco storefront that was Fremont's. Check them out. They'll seem wee, compared to today's acres of asparagus aisles.

Once there was a huge Reddy Kilowatt sign standing guard over the gas-and-light company at Fourth and Central. Reddy was an electrocuted-red lightning-stick figure with a round head, a lightbulb nose and plug outlets for ears. He symbolized the wonderfulness of Benjamin Franklin's invention—electricity—and all the gadgets it powered.

Al Kurman remembers buying appliances at the utility company. The show windows were full of wringer washers, stoves, refrigerators, irons and everything else a housewife needed to electrify drudgery. The cornice was covered with incandescent bulbs, so the place glowed like an enormous birthday cake when the sun went down. Maybe some day they will re-light the dandles, so we can warble "Michael row the boat ashore" and have a group hug or something.

There were some serious stores Downtown. Remember Fedway with its rooftop parking? You drove up this awful, steep driveway in cars with clutches, so when there was traffic in front of you, you rolled back into the car behind you. Pretty scary for novice drivers. I used to peer over the ledge onto the street below and feel giddy from the height—two stories. My mom says you used to shop all day, then run to the rood, get in your car, and drive like hell to beat the kids home from school.

Sears had three locations. An early store stood near the Sunshine Building, from 1928 to 1929. Probably the Depression shut it down. Sears returned in the '30s to a spot between Fifth and Sixth and built that classy, streamlined, modern, curved, yellow building at Fifth and Central. (I think it might be painted now.) You could buy everything there for family, farm, Ford or whatever. Anything over $10 could be put on the Easy Pay Plan. Nothing new about plastic payments.

Lots of grownup children recall snorting hot dogs across the street at Lindy's while Mama shopped.

Sears was almost destroyed in 1953 when an unhappy rebel with an unknown cause hid in the closed store and started a fire. Luckily, she escaped, and no one was hurt. But the behemoth conflagration made Fire Chief Westerfield think Downtown might be swallowed up by flames. It was a spectacular fire, subdued by 2 million gallons of water and some heroic firefighting.

Sears temporarily moved to the Rainbow Roller Drome building on San Mateo south of Central, originally erected for a Billy Graham revival. Says something nice about The Rev. Graham—certainly no Elmer Gantry in a canvas temple. While the retailers were therein esconced, business increased about a zillion percent—an early warning bell ringing for Downtown.

Penney's had three stores and one of those metal baskets where the saleslady stuffed your cash, it thwanged up this wire to the office, where an invisible person made changed and thwanged it right back at you. Amazing.

At Maisel's, real people made real jewelry downstairs and you could lean over the railing and watch them do the intricate work you bought upstairs.

At Third and Central was the Giomi Building, erected when Albuquerque was a one-horse town, in 1883. The Grant Opera House trilled upstairs over a hardware store, until it burned in 1898. The remains became The Golden Rule, a dry-goods store, and later housed elegant Kistler-Collister's, originally a department store "for women."

They sponsored fancy fashion shows at The Hilton. The building is still here, under an atomic-modern facade.

There are too many places to name. Downtown seemed bigger then—possibly because there weren't vacant lots. There were stores and offices on all the streets, not just on Central.

On First and Second were the pawn shops. I got my first guitar in Liberty Pawn at First and Central. It was candy-apple red. The strings were, like, eight feet from the fingerboard, so it was unplayable, but I felt like hot stuff carrying that home on the bus. My friend Linda Schwers and I hit every single store, desperately seeking a left-handed guitar, until some proprietor finally clued us in—we just needed to reverse the strings. DUH!

You got your new car, or one that was new to you, Downtown. Olden's Chevrolet, Galles Motors, Roland Sauer Packard, a Kaiser-Frasier dealership and other auto emporiums, garages and gasoline stations were everywhere.

And lumber yards—right in the middle of town. Baldridge was on South First, and Albuquerque Lumber was between First and Second on Marquette.

Got milk? Creamland Dairies had a Downtown "plant," and you were welcome to inspect it.

Before fur became politically incorrect—before we really knew it comes from animals&mash;you could buy a fabulous fur coat. Or one of those hideous scares with stuffed squirrels or some such animal, their little paws hanging down and their brittle, beady eyes staring accusingly at you, guilting your very soul. You could board the mink monster in the establishment's cold storage during hot summer months. Sort of a reverse hibernation.

Korber's had everything from fine china to finer silver, with S&H Green Stamps to boot.

Speaking of boots, everybody went to Simon's Western Wear on South First to buy cowboy gear for the State Fair. BTW—internet shorthand for "by the way"—when Simon's moved to Central, it took its wonderful neon cowboy sign. He's been saved and recycled. Now on a vacant building, he's a lonesome cowpoke waiting to be lassoed by a new business.

There were places for men and boys' clothes, too—Stromberg's, Washburn's, Meyer and Meyer. Mandell Dreyfuss.

At the dime stores—Kress, McLellan's and Woolworth's&mash;merchandise sat all over tables out in the middle of the room. Today, merchandise is so tightly packaged you can't open a thing once you get it scanned, de-alarmed, purchased and taken home. We never stole anything; we honored that honor system. They sold Blue waltz Perfume in heart-shaped bottles with their blue tops. I bought some on eBay the other day. It truly sucks, but the sweet, nauseating smell evokes colorless Tangee lipstick, mascara with teeny toothbrush applicators, greasy blue eye shadow, a safe Downtown and riding the bus home late at night without a qualm. Not too shabby for an eau de memory.

So what's my point? To mention long-gone places so we may all lament and moan? NOT! I'm invoking the Spirit of Shopping Past.

Downtown was the community's heart, and that's what revitalization is all about, not just architectural revival. We're giving it CPR. We have a weak pulse but no respiration. It still needs the breath of life.

Maybe it's not "If you build it, they will come," but "If you come, they might build it." So let's go to our new theater and restaurants, and give this tentative effort some solid support. We let it go ghetto, but we have a chance to fix it. If we come back, stores might, too. That would be totally cool for our town, for us, for our kids and grandkids.

It has worked other places. It can work here, too. We owe it to the past and to the future.

Originally published in The Albuquerque Tribune, March 2, 2002. The Tribune articles are used with the permission of Scripps Howard.

The Missing Photos:

Courtesy of the Albuquerque Museum/Gift of Judy Eisner
Korber's, Downtown at Second Street and Tijeras Avenue, "had everything" for sale, today's writer says. This photo from 2953 shows the store displaying a car in a wreath in its window.

Courtesy of the Albuquerque Museum/Gift of Channell Graham and Harold Brooks
Barber's, shown here on West Eighth Street Downtown in 1935, was one of the first self-serve groceries in Albuquerque. Before that time, customers would give a list to the grocer, who would gather the goods for them.

Making a Spectacle

by Mo Palmer

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Note: At the bottom is video footage showing the hotel in 1916.

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When Albuquerque's bigwigs needed historical grounding for a gala,
they didn't worry—they invented it

TODAY'S BYLINE Palmer is an oral historian and photoarchivist at the Albuquerque Museum. BUILD YOUR BRAIN: To learn more about the Montezuma Ball, see these books and articles: ✜ "Early Albuquerque, A Photographic History, 1870-1918." Byron Johnson and Bob Dauner (The Albuquerque Museum and Albuquerque Journal, 1981). ✜ "Ben-Hur Wallace, The Life of General Lew Wallace," Irving McKee (University of California Press, 1947). ✜ "The Way We Were: A Newspaper History of Popular Culture in Albuquerque, 1925-1940," Mo Palmer (Honors thesis, University of New Mexico, 1987). ✜ "Albuquerque: A Narrative History," Marc Simmons (University of New Mexico Press, 1982). ✜ "The Fair God, Or, Last of the 'Tzins, A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico," Lew Wallace (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1898). ✜ Archival newspapers, including the Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Journal Democrat and Albuquerque Morning Journal.

Albuquerque revived a revered tradition last November—the venerated Montezuma Ball, a proud charity bash with a 60-year history.

Or so legend would have us believe.

Turns out it began as a "spectacorama"—one of those costumed, historically shaky, campy, kitschy and fun occasions, like Pasadena's annual spoof of the Rose Bowl Parade, called the Doo Dah Parade. (If you'd like to see it, go to www.google.com and type in "Doo Dah.")

Most people don't sign a Declaration of Independence, live in the White House, or invent the Internet. But formal history mainly focuses on the folks who affect world events, so there is a gap between our knowledge of the famous few and the anonymous rest of us. If you want to know what ordinary people did, thought, saw, bought and wore&mash;the things that fill daily life—then you need to read newspapers.

Small towns, as ours was in the 1900s, don't have much breaking news. Every event is a big deal, everybody gets involved, and, luckily, small papers perpetuate the ballyhoo. We can recover distant voices at the library, where old papers beam you back to another century. Today, I want to share with you what I heard there.

Balls, pageants, parades, pomp, secret societies and all kinds of circumstance were popular around the turn of the century, giving people an opportunity to dress "to the nines" and walk around in front of each other. To formally dedicate its new gem, the Alvarado Hotel, in 1902, and to celebrate the annual New Mexico Territorial Fair, Albuquerque invented a tradition that combined all this and more.

New Mexico Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace is best-known for writing "Ben-Hur," a heroic tale of Christ and Charlton Heston. Wallace researched his epic by reading every book on Judeo-Christian history in the Library of Congress, and in the process, became a believer. He wrote much of the book in our state, and I hear of many houses that contain a room wherein he wrote a chapter. If the stories are true, the novel would be four times longer than it is and would resemble the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's like all those houses that were stagecoach stops on the old Camino Real—if there really were that many, a long run for the stagecoach must have been two blocks a day.

"Ben Hur" was not Wallace's first endeavor. Fascinated by William H. Prescott's three-volume history of Mexico, Wallace learned Spanish to read Bernal Diaz's equivalent work. In 1873, he published "The Fair God, Or, Last of the 'Tzins, A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico." It was a smash, selling 217,000 copies, no small number for the times.

"The Fair God" is about Montezuma, Cortes and Alvarado. It teems with loyalty, betrayal, adventure, romance, beautiful women, and 586 ponderous pages. The original Montezuma Ball was derived from this historical romance, tenuously connected to our city by the name "Alvarado."

Now pay attention, this is confusing. Pedro De Alvarado was with Cortes during the Mexican conquest, and may have had brief custody of Montezuma. Hernando de Alvarado was a captain in Coronado's New Mexican expedition and was the first Spaniard to sight the Pueblo of Acoma.

The Hotel Alvarado was named for Hernando, not Pedro. But never mind which Alvarado is connected to Albuquerque and which to Montezuma. When inventing tradition, you can take historical and literary license.

The MOntezuma Ball was a festival celebrating Montezuma's return "to his own" (New Mexico), based on the "leading events in the invasion of Mexico," as interpreted by Wallace. Since Colonel Alvarado (Pedro, that is) imprisoned the Aztec emperor, it was only fitting that Montezuma be "entertained upon his return by the Colonel at his elegant new hotel."

The planned pageant would rival annual celebrations of other states, such as the "Veiled Prophets" of St. Louis and the "Servants of the Silver Serpent" in Denver.

Characters included Montezuma, Queen Tecalco (the name of a never-located Mexican pueblo), and an elaborate entourage. Her Highness, Miss Mabel Hunt, was elected by popular vote and did double duty as Carnival Queen.

A.H. Barkley, "master decorator" of Kansas City, came to design the floral parade and the royal floats, using more than 9,000 pink and white paper chrysanthemums. The queenly float was enthusiastically described, but Montezuma's float and his identity were carefully guarded secrets> Mrs. Somers, "famous costumer of Denver," was on hand to do the royal attire.

Rumors abounded — three Asian elephants to pull the kingly coach, eight milk-white Shetland ponies to carry the empress. We think the ponies showed, but the elephants didn't And it's a terrible thing to be stood up by elephants.

There were tantalizing hints and allegations — the emperor's float would include "a touch of green. The practical Barklay brought additional paper flowers to sell to occupants of the 30 beflowered vehicles he demanded for the parade. The Elks Lodge, in charge of arrangements, was granted exclusive rights to sell teeny pieces of paper for "Confetti Night." Tickets were five bucks per couple and $2.50 for each "extra"—dateless aunts, sisters, and widows.

And to think that the moon in a spirit of cooperation, would perform a total eclipse — at the very moment of the Grand March! Luna, Queen of the Night, would "hide her face from the burning glory of the emperor. Like, totally awesome.

The long anticipated day arrived. The floral parade exceeded all expectations, as did the descriptive floral prose. Queen Tecalco's float was 13 feet high. Montezuma rode into town seated upon a great papier-maché eagle, his identity, Clark Kent-like, still hidden from the adoring throngs.

At long last, MOntezuma went into a telephone booth (metaphorically speaking) and emerged as none other than . . . Sheriff Thomas Hubbell, ending weeks of suspenseful speculation.

As the day darkened and the pink Sandias faded to black, a great electric searchlight spread its beam across the desert skies (thank heavens, since the moon was in a blackout).

The Alvarado's dining room was cleared for dancing, the monarchs' thrones awaited. Designed by Herman Schweizer, curator of the Harvey Collections, seats for the royal rumps were covered with Indian rugs. Authentic Spanish shawls fluttered on the overhead canopy, while Spanish swords and Indian weapons provided elegant, if oxymoronic appointments.

The Grand March commenced. Montezuma, in purple, gold and green raiment, accompanied by his court, awaited the entrance of his lady. Queen Tecalco and her many maidens were draped in blue and yellow silk and velvet gowns — mid=1600s Catherine I-style gowns, for some reason.

Programmed dancing began and a "delicious plate supper" was served at midnight. Revelry spilled into the wee hours. The first of what became the annual Montezuma Ball was a huge success, remembered until at least 1903, when Montezuma didn't show up.

Probably owing to that, newspaper reports tell us, the second ball "lacked the picturesqueness" of the first. But the mighty warrior returned in 1904, matching "the romantic description given by General Wallace."

That year's emperor (Colonel W. H. Greer) almost didn't arrive due to rain and washed-out roads. A valiant overland drive got him here in time to be resplendent and bejeweled in royal red and green.

Queen Tecalco's litter was borne by "slaves." Whaz-hiz-name Alvarado was trailed by a bevy of Aztec maidens, to "half-Oriental music," whatever that was.

After that, Montezuma never returned. Subsequent balls were thematic and could be called the "Minus Montezuma Ball." The theme for the 1907 ball was Japan, with Japanese maidens, a tearoom, hundreds of Japanese lanterns and dragons who leered at ladies from a pagoda beside the hotel's fountain. The basis for this teahouse of the October moon remains obscure, unless it honored Teddy Roosevelt, who had won the 1906 Nobel Prize for positive meddling in the Russo-Japanese War.

With President Taft, 1909 was a very good year. Was this when the 300-pound politician got stuck in the hotel bathtub? If so, he escaped in time to attend a banquet in support of New Mexico's statehood efforts. As he emerged from dinner, lovely ladies begged him to come to the ballroom. The gracious president led the grand march, as the Alvarado's bubbling fountain played water music to Indian teepees surrounding it.

"Robin Hood Park" was created with palms, greenery, tamarack branches, and Navajo rugs. Herman Schweizer always decorated his hotel with priceless artifacts from the Indian Room. One shudders to think of satin slippers tripping the light fantastic on irreplaceable handcrufted rugs.

By 1914, young people attended the ball to timidly test the new dances — as dawn dawned, they dared to dance the Castle Center, create by Vernon and Irene Castle, the era's Arthur and Catherine Murray. The orchestra had that "lure of syncopation" so shocking to decent society.

The influential Ladies Home Journal asked, "Does jazz put the sin in syncopation?" A society reporter actually witnessed "hug me closer" dancing.

Before the country went to the dancing dogs, World War I intervened. The hall and the fair were suspended in 1917 as a horrified world faced the "war to end all wars." The New Mexico State Fair remained dormant until the late '30s, when it opened at the new fairgrounds at Central and San Pedro.

The ball was periodically reinvented through World War II, then endured a long dark spell until last November, when it was held at the Sheraton Old Town and benefited the Women's Resource Center.

As for the original extravaganza, a sorrowful gathering toasted the Alvarado Hotel's long live and service to Albuquerque and mourned its impending demise. Despite community efforts to save it, the Alvarado was demolished in 1970. It is still sorely missed.

I guess the moral of this story is don't believe everything you hear. Some facts turn out to be folklore. And don't knock down walls without determining what history they hold within. Some things only come around once.

Originally published in The Albuquerque Tribune, February 3, 2001. The Tribune articles are used with the permission of Scripps Howard.

The missing photos:

(Photo of costumed men on horseback,
credit: "The Albuquerque Museum, gift of Mrs. Benjamin Osuna")
To inaugurate what became the annual Montezuma Ball, a group of American Indians rode their horses in a parade past the Alvarado Hotel in this 1902 photograph. Under the fanciful invention of author and then-Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace, the ball was an over-the-top celebration of Montezuma and his presumed "return" to New Mexico.

(The Albuquerque Museum, gift of Mrs. Benjamin Osuna)
Horse-drawn carts decorated with paper flowers were among the entries in the first Montezuma Ball parade.

(The Albuquerque Museum, Center for Southwest Research Collection)
This 1903 photo shows the since-demolished Alvarado Hotel at First Street and Central Avenue. The hotel was the city's social gathering place and site of the annual Montezuma Ball

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End of Mo's article; beginning of addendum.

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Here is some Library of Congress footage of Theodore Roosevelt at the Alvarado Hotel in 1916. New Mexico had been a state since January 1912. The video is silent until the end voiceover that it was presented by the Library of Congress. Those are their notes below, too. —Sandra



TR is cordially received on October 23, 1916 in Albuquerque, N.M. where he speaks on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, and attacks President Wilson's Mexican policies. There are long shots of TR being greeted in the courtyard of the Alvarado Hotel; TR walks with a group of men that includes former Rough Rider George Curry, appointed territorial Governor of New Mexico (1907-1911) by TR, and a U.S. Representative (1912-1913); Curry is the tall man in a dark suit and light hat. TR acknowledges an Indian woman and child sitting by a fountain in the courtyard of the hotel and gives the woman some money. A parade on Central Avenue is held in honor of TR; there are views of a marching band, a mounted escort that includes twelve former Rough Riders, and decorated cars carrying dignitaries; distance and camera angle make positive identification of TR in this sequence impossible. From a narrow platform erected in front of the Alvarado Hotel, TR gives his speech; the seated man behind him is Senator Albert B. Fall, one of New Mexico's first senators (1912-1921) and later to be Secretary of the Interior under Harding (1921-1923). Last sequence of TR waving from car, walking with several men through a crowd, and standing in a car, may be unrelated footage.