Explore Albuquerque's Nob Hill

For the first few decades after the railroad’s arrival in 1880, the majority of urban life in Albuquerque was concentrated near the Rio Grande. The University of New Mexico, established in 1889, was one of the first major complexes built east of the city’s core. Entrepreneur D.K.B. Sellers found himself in Albuquerque in 1903 after two unsuccessful ventures in California and Alaska. He caused a sensation after purchasing two Oldsmobiles at the New Mexico Territorial Fair in 1906. In 1912, he platted the first subdivision east of Huning Highlands and south of UNM: the University Heights. In 1916, Sellers platted more lots farther east of the city core. This area would become known as Nob Hill, one of Albuquerque’s first “suburbs.” At the turn of the century, people were traveling from the coasts to the Southwest for the popular “climatological” treatment for tuberculosis: sun, fresh air and open spaces. Albuquerque was a major hub for such health tourism, which is likely how Sellers coined the Nob Hill tagline: “Out of the low zone, into the ozone.” Many of the houses and buildings in Nob Hill were finished by World War II. 

Several buildings in Nob Hill were built during the Depression with Works Progress Administration (WPA) funding. The WPA architecture designed in this period would give much of historic Central Avenue its signature “look,” ranging from Pueblo Revival, Art Deco, Streamline Moderne and Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The Smoky Note, housed in the Monte Vista Fire Station (built 1936), is a swanky reimagining of this WPA-era Pueblo Revival building as a jazz lounge and cocktail bar.

The Monte Vista Fire Station, July 1936. Albuquerque Museum, gift of Albuquerque National Bank. PA1983.001.251