National Register Listing

San Ignacio Church

1300 Walter St., NE, Albuquerque, NM

Built by community effort, and a center of community life for more than sixty years, San Ignacio Church is the focal point of one of Albuquerque's most distinctive urban villages, the Hispano community of Martineztown-Santa Barbara. Founded after the coming of the railroad in 1880, Martineztown-Santa Barbara lies just to the north of the Anglo-American Huning Highlands District (National Register, 11-17-78). Located about a mile and a half from the original villa of Albuquerque, now known as Old Town, Martineztown-Santa Barbara is a cluster of small adobe houses, stores, and dance halls set along winding roads. Sandwiched between the Santa Fe Railroad tracks and modern Interstate Highway 25, the community is built on sand hills that separate the Rio Grande Valley from highlands to the east.

While a few farms may have existed in the area before the railroad's arrival, Martineztown, the southerly of the two settlements which are now generally regarded as a single neighborhood), was founded in the 1880s and centered around the Second Presbyterian Church, a Hispano-oriented mission church. As the community expanded to the north, the newer area came to be called Santa Barbara, after the large Catholic cemetery sited on its north edge. At first, Catholics in the area traveled to San Felipe Church in 01d Town or to Immaculate Conception Church in the downtown area for Mass. As the community continued to grow, the need for a mission church, attached to the old Town parish, became evident.

Sixty Years to the Greater Glory of God, an anniversary history of the church, credits much of the impetus in its building to Father Joseph Arthuis, S.J., who came to San Felipe de Neri from Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1907, and spent most of the years until his death in 1934 at the San Felipe and San Ignacio parishes. Fr. Arthuis was one in a long line of Jesuit priests in Albuquerque, and it was undoubtedly in their honor that both the old cemetery where the church was built and the church itself was dedicated to San Ignacio de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order.

In 1914, the community began to meet for Mass in local halls and homes while deciding on a site for the church. The site picked was a cemetery set on the sand hills east of Edith Boulevard, the old high road north and the main street through the neighborhood. As early as 1898 the tract was labeled "old Grave Yard" on city plat maps, probably to distinguish it from the larger Santa Barbara Cemetery to the north, which had been used as the main Catholic cemetery for the city since the early 1870s. Probably it had been a community graveyard, perhaps serving the Barelas community, located to the south along the same acequia (irrigation ditch) that served Martineztown-Santa Barbara.

Graves were moved to the Santa Barbara Cemetery to clear the site, and landscaping with local rocks and plants was begun in 1914-15. Near the church site, the congregation made adobe bricks for the building which measured 16" x 14" x 4". In all, some 5,000 adobes went into the main structure of the church.

Roofing materials for the original tin roof, carpentry work, and church furnishings were donated from the community and from other Catholic churches in the area. The church as originally built was very simple: "The new church had neither pews nor heating. People knelt on the concrete floor, but then found a way out of the difficulty, bringing small blankets, tilmas, and cushions to kneel and sit on.

At this time only San Ignacio and the Catholic Church that has been built in Bernalillo were said to have been built without any outstanding debt left at the time of their dedication--a feat few parishes have accomplished even to modern times." (Sixty Years to the Greater Glory of God, 22).

The church was dedicated during the Feast of San Ignacio, July 1916, by Archbishop John Baptist Pitaval; July 31 continues to be the fiesta day in the neighborhood. In 1926, San Ignacio was given official status as a parish; this year also saw some alterations to the church and the building of the arch which frames it on Edith Boulevard.

Through the years, San Ignacio Church has been a focus of community life, with performances of traditional folk plays and dances, fiestas, and ceremonies marking the stages of the year. The church is a cultural property of great significance in one of Albuquerque's most distinctive Hispano communities.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.