Pacific Desk Building

The Pacific Desk Building is important primarily as one of the very few examples of substantially unaltered early 20th-century architecture in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. Built in 1914, it reflects the taste of the times in its cast-iron storefront, brickwork, and fine interior stamped metal ceiling. Built in the era just before the rediscovery of native Southwestern architectural forms, it typifies the simplified adaptation of eastern forms seen in the most architecture of the period. As one of the earliest automobile sales rooms in Albuquerque, it also reflects the 20th-century transformation of the city from a railroad town to a car town.

The Pacific Desk Building was erected for Andreas Romero, who owned a butcher shop down the street at 211 Gold when he acquired the property in 1907. When the building was built, a party wall agreement called for "rubble stonework of good sound mountain granite laid in good lime and sand" for the foundation, and walls of "local sand-mould brick laid in good lime mortar in regular courses and regularly bonded." The first tenant, for two years, was the Faber Furniture Store, but by 1918 the building had become the home of the Albuquerque Motor Company and Barber Wholesale Automobiles. By 1922, it was rented to Livingston Furniture, who continued as tenants until 1928.

Andreas Romero died in 1925, willing the property to his wife Eduvigen. In 1927. she transferred the title to her daughter Catrina Romero de Sanchez who held the title until 1942 when it was purchased by Charles and Helen Hoit, the proprietors of the Pacific Desk Company. Between 1928 and 1943, when Pacific Desk Company opened shop in the building, it continued to be leased to furniture companies.
Charles Hoit's business and property passed to his daughter and son-in-law, Thelma and R.G. Lee, Jr., who has continued to run Pacific Desk Company, an office furniture sales company, in the building. The building has now been sold to Thomas L. Popejoy, Jr., a local attorney interested in historic preservation, who plans rehabilitation for legal offices. Happily, the transfer of ownership comes at a time when rehabilitation can prevent serious structural problems with this little-altered building.