National Register Listing

Hendren Building

3001 Monte Vista Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM

Constructed in 1946 as building materials began to become more widely available after World War II, the Hendren Building represents the efforts of J.L. Hendren to develop a commercial property that would cater to the residents of the rapidly expanding automobile-oriented suburbs located on Albuquerque's East Mesa. While much of the automobile-oriented commercial construction in the post-war years appeared along long arterial strips, it was not uncommon for concentrations of buildings to extend onto side streets, creating commercial nodes such as the immediate area in which the building is located. The acute angle of the building and its general appearance as to setting, design and materials reflect Hendren's recollection of a photograph of a similar commercial building he had seen and architect T. Charles Gaastra's efforts to incorporate that vision into the plans he drew for the building. The result was one of the finest examples of the Streamlined Moderne Style found in Albuquerque. Well maintained and largely unaltered, the Hendren Building is eligible for listing under Criteria A and C as a notable example of automobile-oriented commercial construction in Albuquerque as well as the Streamlined Moderne Style.

J. L. Hendren was a grocer and building contractor who had moved from Oklahoma to Albuquerque in 1942, seeking a healthier climate for his son, the present owner of the building. Settling in the city's growing suburbs located on the East Mesa and straddling Central Avenue, then the alignment for U.S. 66, he saw the potential for automobile-oriented commercial buildings in the area. Representing what historian Chester Liebs has referred to as "taxpayer strips," the commercial buildings that had begun to appear along East Central Avenue in the late 1930s attracted both automobile tourists and residents of the new suburban subdivisions appearing both to the north and south of the highway. During the early 1940s, Hendren operated a grocery store across the street from the parcel of land on which the Hendren Building is located and felt that the area could support a commercial building that offered both specialty shops and medical offices catering to local residents.

Hendren's belief in the area's potential was based upon the development that had occurred during the 1930s and early 1940s when the Monte Vista subdivision's residential streets became lined with houses and the nearby Monte Vista Elementary School was completed. Running diagonally through the subdivision, Monte Vista Boulevard intersected with Girard Drive and Central Avenue forming a triangle on which a gas station was located and around which other commercial buildings had already appeared. Hendren felt that the site, only a short block removed from Central Avenue, was convenient to local residents and that the wide boulevard offered sufficient diagonal parking for customers. He also felt that with the growing number of subdivisions on the East Mesa, a commercial building offering spaces for doctors' offices and a pharmacy held a great likelihood for success.

The property that J.L. Hendren sought to develop was irregularly shaped and contained an acute angle where Dartmouth Drive intersects with Monte Vista Boulevard. According to his son, Hendren recalled having seen a photograph of a modernistic building in the Midwest located on a similarly shaped lot that solved the problem posed by the acute angle by employing a plan that mirrored the angle in the footprint of the building. Employing T. Charles Gaastra, a local architect with a reputation for versatility in working with a variety of styles, Hendren presented his ideas about the building. By March 1946, Gaastra had prepared drawings, and Hendren obtained a building permit listing the building as costing $45,000 and engaged S.E. Whittmore as the contractor. Construction took approximately nine months, and in 1947, Albuquerque Progress included a photograph of the completed building in its January issue. Shortly after the completion of the building, Gaastra died.

Consistent with Hendren's vision of the building's potential, during its first year of operation the building quickly filled with tenants. The Lobo Pharmacy (Lobo is the nickname of the University of New Mexico's athletic teams.) occupied the central store with its entry at the rounded corner of the building, and a gift and luggage shop, barber shop and electrical supply company occupied the spaces along the northeast wing. J.L Hendren also notes that, as his father anticipated, physicians soon occupied the offices along the north wing of the building. While the list of tenants has changed over five decades, the building continues to house specialty shops and galleries as well as offices. And while the Nob Hill commercial area does draw pedestrian customers from the area's surrounding neighborhoods, the majority of customers doing business in the Hendren Building continue to be motorists who park on streets near the building.

According to J.L. Hendren, the building that Gaastra designed for his father captured the elements that he recalled from seeing the photograph of a similar building in the Midwest. With its shining black upper walls meeting the pink stone lower walls and the smooth flow of its curved corner at the acute angle of the property, it is strikingly modern both in its materials and design. This modernity is reinforced with the graceful curving of the paired display windows flanking the recessed entry at the corner store as well as with the building's lettering rising above the parapet and the fixed metal awnings overhanging the building's large display windows and other recessed entries. While there are other more modest examples of the use of these materials and modernistic design in Albuquerque, the Hendren Building is the best example of the Streamlined-Moderne Style remaining in the city.
With the recent interest directed toward the East Central Avenue commercial strip through a Main Street Project and local efforts to preserve buildings associated with historic Route 66, several buildings in the area in which the Hendren Building is located have been refurbished. This renaissance of the area has led to more interest in the building as a good example of a property that has been well maintained and remains largely unaltered.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2000.