Spruce Park Historic District

The Spruce Park Historic District contains the greatest concentration and widest variety of the 1920s and 1930s residential architectural styles in Albuquerque. It is the core of the Country Club Addition, one of several residential developments which began to grow up around the University of New Mexico after the First World War. Limited in size by its careful siting on two sandhill ridges at the edge of the Rio Grande floodplain and by the lands of the University of New Mexico on the east, the district filled in rapidly: 72% of its buildings were in place by World War II. Homes in the district, notable for their wealth of detail, were designed in a variety of styles, including Mediterranean, Southwest Vernacular, Spanish-Pueblo Revival, bungalow, and Streamlined Moderne, and were built by some of Albuquerque's best builders. These homes were built for many of the city's leading professionals and businessmen.

Recorded ownership of the land begins in the 1830s when Theodoro Duran sold his mesa holdings to Jose Antonio Garcia for "one fat cow, 12 ewes, and four sacks of corn." The land was passed down through Mr. Garcia's extended family until it was willed to Reverend Father Donato M. Gasparri, Superior of the Jesuits in the Southwest during the 1870s. Several other Jesuits held title to pieces of the land until it was bought in the 1880s for speculation and several additions were subsequently platted but never developed. In 1922 parts of these additions were brought together when the land was acquired by the Southwestern Construction Company which proceeded to replat the area for the Country Club Addition, named for the original Albuquerque Country Club which then stood just east of the new addition, the club was moved to a new site by the Rio Grande in 1928. Although the Country Club Addition kept its name on the record books, the area is now called the Spruce Park Neighborhood, to distinguish it from the district surrounding the new Country Club.

The Southwest Construction Co. was incorporated in 1919 by James Gladding, Louis Bennett, Columbus Mauldin, and William Springer; Gladding was the only incorporator destined to remain with the company. He had come to Albuquerque in 1918 as a captain of the Corps of Engineers and by 1920 had become City Manager. In 1922 he was registered as an architect and a few years later became associated with a Dutch architect, T. Charles Gaastra, with whom he worked for ten years. Both Gaastra and Gladding lived in houses of their design and construction in the district.

The Country Club Addition was advertised as "Albuquerque's only restricted district" and offered such amenities as "Water, sewers, paving, electric lights and telephones." Few parts of Albuquerque had all of these conveniences or even some of them. Covenants included with the sale transactions included a $4000 minimum cost for each house, one dwelling only per lot - each to have a detached garage; house plans had to be approved by the company's architect. Private dwellings only were allowed and "no conveyance of the premises or any part thereof shall ever be made to any person or persons of Oriental or African descent."