¡Colores!; 1401; Albuquerque's Historic Neighborhoods
- Transcript
Partial funding for this program was provided by the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund of the City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Community Foundation. Neighborhoods are extended families. Even as you walk through the neighborhood, there is a sense of history. This has been a wonderful place to raise my children, my grandchildren, to provide roots for them. In the sense of a place, of being, I feel like I've been long here. Albuquerque's historic neighborhood, next, it was the same incredible cloud in the sky. My dream again has come true, meaning it's time to speak out, to be heard.
Albuquerque is about to celebrate its 300th birthday. We've come a long way from a cluster of Adobe houses, and a church around a dirt plaza and a land remote beyond compare. Now we are in New Mexico's big city. Even old timers get lost, wondering where in the world they are, as they drive around
and around miles of cookie-cutter subdivisions in the street malls, and may sound like the others. So one can keep us connected. Where in our city can we reestablish our sense of place, our sense of belonging. Without long history comes diversity and the opportunity for continuity. If you leave the past behind, as Santa Clara Public Architecture Reno Swenzel once said, you leave behind respect, connectedness, which is love. What follows is a story of six of Albuquerque's neighborhoods, and the people who love them. Their stories help us learn how to survive and flourish in a disconnected world.
And ultimately lead us to a realization of community. Being a neighborhood isn't always easy, conquerors, battles, droughts. Perhaps no neighborhood is more historic or seen as many challenges as old town. Front porches that once held geraniums and welcomed Sunday visitors, now serve green or red, walking through today's tangle of tourists, vendors, and storefronts. It's hard to imagine that old town is still a neighborhood, but it is.
There are those who still have a connection and call it home. My name is Cleto, Enne, to run. Many of my mother's last name won it, and I have lived here all my life. My family has been in Albuquerque or in Old Town since 1706. Old town has been held together by the many threads of its long history. In continuous use for almost 300 years, many would say that the strongest of those threads is the San Felipe de Neri Church. If anyone would ask me what makes this old town unique, then any other place or any other neighborhood in Albuquerque, we all have to say that our monument in Adobe wishes San Felipe. Everybody went to church.
I went to church every day because most people went to church every day. I was brought up in the shadow of that church. We still bury our dead. We still like to get married. We still like to have a three-day fiesta. First and foremost, we are a parish, and it may be right in the middle of the historic zone. The only reason it's historical is because of the church. This is the Lamb of God, the bread of life, who takes away the sins of the world. Maybe or we who are called to his Eucharistic sufferer. Lord, I am not worthy to receive you. Can you imagine the whole five feet thick in there, and it's still standing up, it's still being used. It's not a museum. It's a working and an active life church. During much of the 18th and 19th century, the plaza next to the church was surrounded
by close-knit families of Spanish descent. The old town plaza was a place where New Mexico families traveled, to trade and buy supplies, and was the scene of gunfights and fiestas. At the time when I was growing up, there were only three or four businesses in the old town plaza. There was the Antonio Vihill's Grocery Store on the north side of Romero. Then there was Charlie Mann, who came in from Valencia, New Mexico, and opened a store right where the basket shop was.
Then there was Luis Pringles Grocery Store in Floreses, America, and to me that was where we all did our business. The arrival of the railroad in the 1880s created a new town that stole Old Town's prominence. By the 1950s, Old Town's quiet charm had attracted artists and adventuresome merchants. Now Old Town is more a neighborhood of shop owners, instead of being a place where families live. It is a place where families visit. Old Town was always commercial, but not to the degree it is now. I guess in the last 30 years that I've been here, that's probably the biggest change is that the locals are gradually either selling their property or leasing it out and moving out out of Old Town.
What is Old Town's future as a neighborhood? A truly historic place, Old Town more than anywhere else in Albuquerque, connects the modern city to its past. The roots go deep here. I've worked down here for 27 years and I absolutely love the area. There's an ambience about it. There's a, if you want to call it a spirit, there's an essence about it that's unlike any other area in town. I know it's not just me because when we have tourists come in and people from other states and other countries, they have told me the same thing that there's just something very electric about the area. People have also called it peaceful. They have a sense of maybe even deja vu of having been here before. I have no doubt it's because of the history of the area, the fact that there have been lots of ancestors that have roamed the streets and been in these buildings. You know, there's talk about ghosts and some of the buildings and I have no doubt there's
polyspers that are wandering around Old Town. By working together, the new and old residents of Old Town can blend Albuquerque's rich cultural history with the picturesque marketplace, saving the past for the benefit of the future. I'm very fortunate to live in the oldest neighborhood in Albuquerque. When I was born 70 years ago, it was a very different place. It's still where my heart is and we're still a wonderful neighborhood. Growing up in Old Town to me was a beautiful experience. Something that I should cherish till the day I die. Walking down the street in Santa Barbara, Martinez down is like walking down the street in a
northern New Mexico village where you have the houses close to the street where there's still the values of families that are coming out and sitting in their front porches. Watching life go by and you watch them as they watch you. Over 150 years ago, Martinez Town was founded by a family who was determined to start their own community outside of Old Albuquerque. It remains a fiercely independent village to this day. Martinez Town has a sense of independence and the reason for that is because late in the 60s and early in the 70s, there was a move by, of course, nationally, of course, through
the city of Albuquerque for urban renewal. Martinez Town was targeted, in my opinion, as an area of expansion of a downtown cultural court where the civic auditorium and all these other services were going to be provided. They started to displace a lot of our people and mostly down in the south part of Martinez Town, south of Moments. That's the area that then decided, no, nothing's enough. We're not first set. We're going to stop this, we're losing our people and we're not just going to be eliminated. It is a neighborhood and we stopped it. For over 100 years, Martinez Town remained a small and Hispanic village separated from the rest of the city by the Sandhills and the railroad tracks. But the growing city threatened to overwhelm the little community. The history of the neighborhood in the last 30 years has been one of frequent battles
to stay alive and to maintain its identity. We had a march on City Hall back in the late 60s, early 70s, where we had support from people from all over the county, the neighborhoods and the community pretty much looked like this in a state of disrepair, streets weren't paved. We were plagued by flooding. Under the redevelopment, the whole neighborhood was transformed from a plighted area into a modern neighborhood that you can see here today. I would say about 85 or 90% of the people that lived here before opted to stay here, which is good, otherwise, would all be living someplace else. A second threat appeared when Albuquerque Public Schools wanted to demolish the neighborhood elementary school, Longfellow School.
Longfellow was going to be phased out because we lost a lot of population in the 50s and 60s. We were going to be bused to other schools. The only way we could actually get Longfellow back is to establish an educational opportunity for our neighborhood was to make it a magnet school. That we accepted because it gave us an opportunity to continue to educate our kids here in the neighborhood so they could walk to the school and I have to be bused to other places. And then we had to get APS to agree to build a new school there. Which they did. It sounded simple. It wasn't that simple. There was a lot of work in tail. But we had a lot of help from people that were interested in the neighborhood and interested in keeping the school.
And it turned out to be a premier school. Residents living north of Lomas saw their old county school, Santa Barbara, slowly deteriorating and decided to do something about it. We've had to individually go knock on doors and not say, oh poor us, poor this and that. Say, we've got this wonderful building, we have a building, we have a plan. Let's utilize it. Let's have our seniors here. Let's have our meetings there before our neighborhood meetings are held in homes. The rehabilitated school is now the center of much community activity. Welcome to our celebration. We're celebrating 170 years of life, neighborhood and families. We were started by a man by the name of Manuel Martinez and then later of course we. A recent party celebrated the completion of a new mural telling the history of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is working to protect their kids from gangs and the drug trade.
Residents are looking to the future to keep their children safe and in school all the way to university. Many citizens work as a true labor of love. They're building on their history to make the future brighter for the neighborhood they wouldn't exchange for any place on earth. Who'd want to move out of paradise to move in the place else? That's people like myself who I appreciate the values that was handed down to me by my parents, my grandparents and their parents before them and I see a sense of a place, of being. I feel like I belong here. I was born in 1932 and we came here when I was about eight months old.
I went to school here, all my neighbors lived here, you know, here for I grew up and here for you've got the willing right here for I'm going to take me out of here. You know everything's completely changed. I mean from Alfa Fields to Gardens and all that, you know, ranches that were here to know it's drastic change. The Somile neighborhood got its name from the giant Somile that dominated their community. Near the end of the 20th century, their fight against environmental problems associated with the Somile sparked new life and pride to the neighborhood. First day with the American Liberal Company in 1924, it became the George E. Breeze Company and in 1942 the Duc City, most people today remember as a Duc City and in 1973 a corner
a part of the Somile area was bought by Panderoza products which is a company was making a press, a wood, press lumber, a wafer board and these people, what they do, they use urea of mountaineering and it's a glue that has been the entire ruins, not telling what else kinds of chemicals it has on it and these people were, they didn't have nothing to stop that thing, nothing. It was just going out of a vent completely out in the neighborhood. We couldn't even have a barbecue here, we couldn't have nothing because you know, I mean sawdust was like snowing. One time me and my wife were sleeping and we had the window open and the wind was blowing, we got up in the morning and she says come over here and we went back in there and our
body was imprinted, sawdust, you know, on both sides. Our bodies were, were, were stitched out with sawdust and that, well that's what we had to fight. The formation of the Somile Advisory Council in 1987 united the neighborhood and ultimately forced a settlement with the responsible companies. The industry that threatened to destroy this community helped to create a new one. Residents created Bruno Vida Buena, a good life for themselves. I don't think they'll find a project like this where the community is the one that not only master planted but are the developers. We formed a nonprofit development corporation to the land trust essentially, to develop it.
So we are the developers. We wanted this to be permanently affordable, we're working families here. We're a little good, came a very, very good. In the center of the new homes built by the Somile Community Land Trust stands a new plaza, the neighborhood's first gathering space. Here's Somile residents celebrate their health and history. Our future really lies with such an ethical commitment that we're going to strive towards a life of health, illness and disease. And that is all what community is, that is all I think, what the Somile Advisory Council has demonstrated.
It has demonstrated this commitment towards reaching towards Una Vida Buena's son. Our neighborhood is really unique, I think. Our houses are quite unusual in Albuquerque, they're most of them Victorians and they're a hundred years old. I feel tremendous pride in this neighborhood, I think the houses are splendid and I want to share them with the public in general. They just exuded a feeling of depth and they're not just a house. When we live in this house, it's not just our house. This is a house that's belonged to other people. It has history, it has personality, it's a special place to live. Maybe you can go home again, home to the swing on the front porch, a secret bedroom nook
tucked into an attic, built in China covers, picket fences and pretty cute trim. It's all here in the old Huning Highlands neighborhood just east of downtown. When we moved here, we realized that the area was unique, we just needed people that would come in and become homeowners and really develop and that's exactly what happened. It all began back in the 19th century, soon after the first train chugged into Albuquerque station in April 1880. German entrepreneur Franz Huning recorded the city's first formal residential subdivision, Huning's Highland addition.
After World War II, there was a real housing shortage in Albuquerque and so the larger houses were broken into apartments and additional mother-in-law houses were built out back. At that point in the neighborhood started to decline and continued declining up until the 70s when people all suddenly realized old houses maybe worth doing something with. In the early 1970s, urban pioneers rediscovered the charms of the old neighborhoods around downtown. The downtown neighborhoods west of eighth and Huning Highlands east of the railroad tracks. We realized that we were going to have enough of a lot of work to do here, it was pretty much intact but there was wallpaper to remove, there was all kinds of things that needed to be done, lots of elbow grease.
There were bigger problems beyond restoring these old homes, but that didn't phase anyone. Central Avenue, once peacefully residential, is now a major thoroughfare and caters to a transient community. When I originally moved here, there were two bars with package stores on Central, both of those bars had a lot of crime associated with their operations, which include prostitution, drug dealing with central bases of those operations being a long central with some of the motels here and even in the park on the north side of this park. The other key feature was because of the uniqueness and historical nature of the architecture, the city recommended and we went along and did it was applied for the historic district status.
This neighborhood became the first entire neighborhood designated as a historic district in the city. And Several residents have bought other houses because they so enjoy bringing other faded historic beauties to life. After working on this house for almost 15 years, we had
done about all that we could and so we bought the house next door. We had an eye on her for a long time. It had been a long-time rental house with two apartments and it came up to Sarillon so we bought that house and have been working on it for the last five years, taking more time and letting it tell us what it wants to do, how it wants to be a story. The neighborhood's slow march toward health and stability hasn't discouraged the owners who have fallen in love with their houses and their neighborhood. This neighborhood changed my life. When I first moved here, I'd never been a member of a neighborhood association, I'd never been involved with owning a home before. We're
having to do the kind of work that we have to do to save this neighborhood and the harder you work at something and the people you meet and work with doing it causes you to fall in love with what is happening here and what we're trying to accomplish here. This has been a wonderful place to raise my children, my grandchildren, to provide roots for them. A place that they'll remember. My grandchildren will remember the place where they even know they're grown out and they all have families of their own and moved away. I guess they're sort of like a freedom to move around and to be able to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding area, the houses, the uniqueness and it's just so comfortable.
I came here to visit Albuquerque to visit friends at the University in 1976. I stopped my car and went for a walk in this neighborhood. I was walking down the central and I came to Manavista and I looked up and there was this incredible view of the mountains and I walked down Manavista and I walked through this whole neighborhood and I walked to the very end which is where Jack's model pharmacy is. I went in and I had a chocolate chaquet shape, maybe a chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup and a grilled cheese sandwich and that. I really want to live in this neighborhood because there were people out in the streets,
there were sidewalks, there were people riding bikes, people walking up here to places that weren't central to go shopping and it just looked like the kind of town that I would like to live in and a place I'd like to live in. In the 1920s, Albuquerque was looking to the east toward the sunrise. After the city annexed much of the old northeast heights in 1925 and paved some of the roads, the east mesa, once reached only by horse and wagon over dry, dusty, rutted tracks, became easily accessible. Houses began to sprout on the treeless grasslands. Among them, the homes of the Manavista subdivision, developed by William Leverent. He did three very kind of modern things. First of all, he put a school in the middle because he wanted to sell it to families so that kids could go to school. So he left this piece of land and gave it to the city to build a school rat. He made a boulevard
go right down the center of it and he also called this street which is campus boulevard. He turned it and followed the lay of the land which if you're standing up here in central and you walk down, you realize the land goes down to campus and if you come from the north side and come down, the land comes down to campus. So this is a natural memorial. When I was a little boy, campus boulevard literally would become a river. I remember one time that the water got so high that it was about a third of the way up our lawn. It was almost like having a cabin by a river or the trouble of it is. It only rarely did rain enough so that you had the river out there. Leverard recognized that Albuquerque was becoming an automobile city. He reflected the idea of the car. So these houses were sold with the idea of having cars. So he went
in nice wide streets. All these streets are about five to ten feet wider than later neighborhoods. He did some very unusual things in the sense that these are sold individually. He did not build a house. He did not build a row of houses all the same. Each one of these houses was unique to me. Even as you walk through the neighborhood there is a sense of history that it is not kind of a new neighborhood where like in that popular song, little boxes, little boxes, and they are all made out of tiki tack and they all look just the same. Each new generation of Manavista residents falls in love with its pre-war charm and idiosyncrasies and works hard to keep the neighborhoods unique sense of place alive. We do things in our neighborhood that kind of keep us in contact with each other. We
clean our alleys. We clean them so that keep the graffiti down and keep the trash down. It's just a wave of kind of meeting your neighbors. The state recently recognized Manavista's history and architecture and placed it and the neighboring college view edition on the historic register. Unfortunately, this doesn't give them much protection from the growing popularity of another nearby historic area, the Nob Hill Business District. Residents treasure their nearby stores and restaurants, but also fear that its success will spoil their neighborhoods' peace and quiet. In the early 80s there was an old, very old shopping center and it was toured down and purchased by a large pharmacy company that went into the building of the store and they also went to sell liquor and be up in 24 hours a day, which obviously is going to impact the neighborhood. They didn't seem to care very much about our opinion. We struggled through it and they
finally agreed and they eventually stopped being 24 hour and it seemed to have less of an impact on the neighborhood because when it was 24 hour, we definitely had more street traffic and more street crime. We probably had a reputation of being a tough neighborhood that you better know what you're doing if you're planning to re-develop it. That we question how they're going to take care of the parking and how they're going to take care of the noise elements and the trash elements and things like that because we don't remember the disliked area and become not a good place to live and become a slum. They are determined to keep Manavista a place to feel safe, to feel at home. The neighborhood was a place because it was yours. You didn't feel like any place within that sphere that was far into you and you just learned where everything was and what was
on the street and what was on that street. It was comfortable. There was no place that you didn't feel at home. The developer Dale Belema had a vision. Look at a piece of land. See how it is today. Dream how it could be tomorrow. If the dream is right, buy. In the 1950s, he found the land. Some 100 acres way out on the messa. East of modern U-bank Boulevard. We had sand everywhere. On a good day, we'd have the land coming up
and we'd have best devils coming. All the encampment was blowing in the house and everywhere. Princess Jean, named after Belema's wife, was his dream subdivision. The houses had the latest gadgetry for modern living. Belema provided a lavish array of amenities for his homeowners. We had a swimming pool. It was a wonderful diversion. So you could go and have picnics while your parents played tennis or after you swam, you could go out and have a picnic lunch and a little park here. It was magical and there was a big sign that this was Princess Jean. Princess Jean was also known as a welcoming community. No one was discriminated against. I understand that there were covenants actually written that black people could not live
in certain neighborhoods and that was never the case here. Black people who worked for Dale Belema were given special help. They were his friends and there was no problem with them buying help. The prejudices you had to be taught. We were just kids. The dagger comes with colopinos. The Hammons were black people and Lucy Zamora, Hispanic and the Iversons were white and they all hung out at this house. Will Belema's ideal neighborhoods survive and flourish? After half a century, Princess Jean is losing many of its original owners and poorly maintained rentals are apparent on every block. Princess Jean is at a transition. It's at a crossroads. With that help from the city and from people who are in decision making positions, this neighborhood can either spiral downward,
sustain itself or renew itself. But the Princess Jean edition, now nearing 50 years of age, has a collective memory. Besides old timers memories, the subdivisions history has been officially recognized. The researchers from the Smithsonian Institute was doing an exhibit called Science and American Life for a hundred years and they were looking for homes that best depicted this post-war era. So they selected Princess Jean Park. They collected all kinds of things. People will remember the tile floors, the ladies in the in the short-laced dress, it's like like the steel ball used to wear. And the vacuum cleaners, the skinny leg furniture that we had, the pole lamps.
It was wonderful that they picked this neighborhood. That was really when I learned a lot more history about our neighborhood. It really does boil down to people caring. And if you're not going to care about your home and about your neighbors and about your friends and the people that you share your lives with, then there's something dreadfully wrong. It was great to learn more about as you went around to neighborhoods, started talking to some of the older residents of the neighborhood who still live here. We have a lot of people who are the original residents, who are here now. So they were proud and us newcomers were proud too. The stories of some of Princess Jean's older siblings tell us that the health of communities and ultimately that of an entire city depends on the commitment of his residents.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. These neighborhoods are making the most of themselves. They have faith that whenever they're troubled histories and current problems, there is much within them to be proud of and to build on. To me, a neighborhood is someplace where people feel at home, where they belong. Two out of six, it's barrios. Our barrios are like in a mountainous. We're all like brothers and sisters. We grew up together. I know I live in a neighborhood, the effort that we've had to make to preserve this neighborhood leaves no doubt anybody's mind if they live in one. Do I live in a neighborhood? I do live in a neighborhood, a place of being, a place where
there's life. A neighborhood is an area where people have their roots that is a neighborhood to me.
- Series
- ¡Colores!
- Episode Number
- 1401
- Producing Organization
- KNME-TV (Television station : Albuquerque, N.M.)
- Contributing Organization
- WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip-191-10wpzhtf
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip-191-10wpzhtf).
- Description
- Episode Description
- As Albuquerque continues to grow by leaps and bounds, the question comes up as to what will keep us together as a city and as a community. With a little research, it becomes evident that the city’s neighborhoods are our heart and soul. With Albuquerque’s 300th anniversary coming up, it was time to see what is at the heart of some of our neighborhoods: to share their individual histories, challenges and successes. It is also evident that if Albuquerque is going to succeed as a community then it will succeed because of the health and success of its neighborhoods. Also, there are many dedicated people making a difference in their neighborhoods who do not receive any attention, this documentary is an opportunity to acknowledge their hard work and share it with other neighborhoods! Funded in part by the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund of the City of Albuquerque and The Albuquerque Community Foundation. Featured Albuquerque neighborhoods: Old Town, Martineztown, Sawmill, Huning Highland, Monte Vista, and Princess Jeanne.
- Broadcast Date
- 2003-03-23
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Magazine
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 00:42:43.762
- Credits
-
-
Producer: Purrington, Chris
Producing Organization: KNME-TV (Television station : Albuquerque, N.M.)
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
WGBH
Identifier: cpb-aacip-fb198a0a26a (Filename)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Original
Duration: 00:41:39
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “¡Colores!; 1401; Albuquerque's Historic Neighborhoods,” 2003-03-23, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed January 4, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-191-10wpzhtf.
- MLA: “¡Colores!; 1401; Albuquerque's Historic Neighborhoods.” 2003-03-23. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. January 4, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-191-10wpzhtf>.
- APA: ¡Colores!; 1401; Albuquerque's Historic Neighborhoods. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-191-10wpzhtf