Fourth Ward District

The Fourth Ward Historic District is primarily important for its architecture, for its great variety of fine homes built between 1880 and ca. 1930 (see Physical Description). As Albuquerque's best residential area in the period between about 1905 and 1923, when the first Country Club Addition was developed on the east mesa, the fourth Ward District also has cultural significance as the home of many of the growing city's most influential citizens. Currently Fourth Ward is valuable as a stable, well-preserved neighborhood on the fringes of the downtown business district and as an important success for neighborhood action and for historic preservation.

The proposed district includes two platted subdivisions. The earliest is the Perea Addition, platted first in March, 1881, less than a year after the arrival of the railroad, and substantially replatted in 1891, after it came under the ownership of the Albuquerque Townsite Company. The second subdivision, not platted until 1907, occupied land shown on an 1898 map as the property of Wiley M. Weaver. The land was acquired and developed by a company headed by Solomon Luna of Los Lunas and was called the Luna Place Addition.

In the first years after the platting of the Perea Addition only a few houses were built in the area. The district began to fill in with large new homes after the turn of the century, and, by about 1905, Fourth Ward had become the premium district. From then on it was increasingly the preferred neighborhood for members of the city's mercantile and professional elite. Families of great importance in the history of the city and the state lived here: the Wallace Hesseldens, the Bonds, the Simms, the Rodeys, the Benjamins, the Amada Chaveses, the McCannas, the Oteros, the Hubbells, the Mandells. But Fourth Ward, like other historic districts in the city, was never exclusively upper-middle class, though that is the dominant ownership. Juxtapositions are common: Arther Martin, vice-president of the Porterfield Real Estate Company had a 1909 cottage at 516 11th Street next to Silas Wolking, a carpenter for E. A. Gertig's building firm, who built his cottage in the same year. It was also never exclusively Anglo-American, though Hispanos were certainly in the minority. From the palatial home of Mariano Otero (now demolished) to Placido Sanchez' bungalow at 614 ilth Street, the district, true to its geographic position between the Anglo and Hispano towns, included a number of Hispano-owned properties.

Intensive development continued through the 1920's, and then slowed down when the city's energy went into building up new neighborhoods on the eastern edges of the city. Many of the old families continued to live in the neighborhood on the eastern edges of the city. Many of the old families continued to live in the neighborhood, however, and while property values sank, it never got the reputation for crime and bleak conditions which have plagued other inner-city districts. Street trees and gardens continued to be well cared for. After World War II there were some razing and rebuilding programs on the southern edges of the neighborhood. In the early 1970's a neighborhood organization, the Downtown Neighborhood Association, formed and had the first of many successes in persuading the city to downzone the bulk of the Downtown Neighborhoods Area, which includes the Fourth Ward District, to single-family uses. The Association has gone on from this first political victory to tackle a number of other neighborhood issues. The result is that the Fourth Ward District has once again become one of Albuquerque's premium residential areas. This neighborhood success story, the district's architectural variety and craftsmanship, and the contributions of its historical population to the growth of the city, combine to make the Fourth Ward District of considerable significance to the area and to the city as a whole.