Spitz, Berthold, House

Erected about 1910 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Berthold Spitz House was originally the residence of one of Albuquerque's most important businessmen and political figures. Significant as the city's best example of the "Prairie School" of architectural design, the house also has historical importance as the home of two prominent German-Jewish families long active in the community's commercial and civic affairs. Extending from 1880, when the railroad first came to Albuquerque, to the 1960s when the city had become a center of space-age technology, the Berthold Spitzes and, later the Leopold Seligmans, saw the community change from a bustling frontier town to one of the largest and most important cities in the Southwest. Used as an office building since the 1960's the Berthold Spitz House remains today as a landmark of Albuquerque's early years and a reminder of the two families who contributed to its development.

A native of Bohemia, Berthold Spitz was one of a large number of German Jews who came to New Mexico in the latter half of the 19th century seeking fame and fortune in the West. In 1880 Spitz, then a youth of nineteen joined his older brother Edward who was employed by an Albuquerque mercantile firm known as Ilfeld & Co. The senior partners, Louis and Noa Ilfeld, were also immigrants from Germany who had moved to Albuquerque in 1878 after previously operating stores in northern New Mexico, first at Santa Fe and later at the village of Alcalde. In later years their brothers, Herman, who died in 1884, and Bernard, were also active in the business.

About 1882 Edward Spitz, seeing that a large number of family members active in the business would inevitably limit his opportunities with Ilfeld & Co. accepted a position as manager of the Albuquerque branch of A. & Z. Staab Co., a rival firm with headquarters in Santa Fe. Soon after, twenty-one-year-old Berthold Spitz opened his own store in Albuquerque.

The separation from the Ilfelds was a friendly one, however; both Spitz brothers maintained lifelong business and social ties with their former employers. During the next thirty years, Berthold Spitz remained active in various Albuquerque mercantile ventures both individually or in partnership with other members of the German-Jewish community notably his brother Edward and Max Schuster, brother of Bernhard Schuster, a storekeeper in nearby Bernalillo. In May 1889 the following advertisement was appearing regularly in the Albuquerque Morning Democrat:

B. Spitz & Co.
Dealers in General Merchandise
South Side Railroad Avenue

Anyone purchasing Dry Goods to the amount of $3.00 can buy five spools of Coates' or Merrick's Thread for five cents.
Following a disastrous fire that destroyed the Ilfeld Bros. store in 1898 Louis and Noa Ilfeld decided to devote themselves to trading in wool and sheep while their younger brother Bernard joined forces with Berthold Spitz in a new merchandising venture. The Ilfeld, Spitz Mercantile Co., as the new partnership was known, continued until 1915 when Spitz purchased an established real-estate and insurance agency known as Gierke, Ogle and Doane.

Throughout his career, Berthold Spitz was also active in the rough and tumble of city and county politics. Distinguished by a no-holds-barred approach in which defamation of character in the local press was a daily event, the Albuquerque political arena circa 1890 was no place for the thin-skinned or faint-hearted. Spitz's political initiation came as an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Clerk of Probate Court in the campaign of 1890. Two years later his efforts for this office became an issue in the race for mayor of Albuquerque when it was stated that Spitz had been appointed city purchasing agent by Sheriff Perfecto Armijo to provide an opportunity to pay off debts incurred during the earlier campaign. On April 3, 1892, the Morning Democrat thundered, "Spitz Bros. should not be allowed a monopoly of the city's business... they do not carry anything but a few cheap dry goods for a cheap trade."

In 1894 Spitz again offered himself to the voters of Bernalillo County this time as a Democratic candidate for the office of County Treasurer but was again defeated in a close race despite his change in party affiliation. Following the canvass of the vote made by the Board of County Commissioners Spitz filed suit against the board and his Republican opponent, charging that three small precincts in the remote area northwest of Albuquerque which had been counted in Bernalillo were in fact located in neighboring Rio Arriba County. Unfortunately, District Judge Needham C. Collier saw the matter differently and Spitz's request for a writ of mandamus was denied. Soon after he returned to the fold of the Republican Party and was a member of the delegation which greeted President William Howard Taft during his official visit to Albuquerque in 1909. Later Spitz's party loyalty was rewarded in an appointment by President Harding to the office of Postmaster of Albuquerque, a position which he held for the rest of his life.

In 1893 Spitz was married to Fannie Schutz of El Paso, a daughter of one of that city's leading merchants. After a honeymoon at Montezuma Hot Springs, then New Mexico's most exclusive resort, and a trip to the Columbian Exposition recently opened in Chicago, the couple settled down in Albuquerque. After the turn of the century, the Spitzes purchased three lots at the corner of North 10th Street and Marquette Avenue and erected the handsome two-story residence now known as the Berthold Spitz House. Following Spitz's death in 1933 Mrs. Spitz continued to live there until her own death ten years later. Late in 1944 Fannie Spitz's sister, Helen Schutz Ilfeld, widow of Noa Ilfeld and executrix of Fannie Spitz's estate, sold the house to Hanni Seligman, wife of Leopold Seligman for $12,500. The new owners recently arrived in Albuquerque from their native Germany, were proprietors of a clothing manufacturing business known as Pioneer Wear which specialized in the production of hand-woven neckties.

Seligman, a refugee from Nazi pogroms of the late 1930s, joined four brothers in New Mexico who had emigrated around the turn of the century and had conducted a successful mercantile and Indian trading business with headquarters in Bernalillo. Leopold Seligman died in 1946 but his widow took over as president of Pioneer Wear and continued to reside in the house at 323 N. 10th with her three children. Her two sons John and Rudolph became active in the business although they changed their last name to Sullivan. After they established homes of their own Hanni Seligman sold the property to Albuquerque attorney Pat Sheehan the present owner. After a brief period in which his own offices were located there, Sheehan utilized the building as a rental property. Since 1970 the occupant has been the Chaparral Home and Adoption Service, a charitable organization devoted to assisting unmarried mothers.