From dust to dust...
- Michael Jay Tucker's explosive-cargo
- Apr 24
- 4 min read
So last time I had us almost getting into the Turquoise Museum. I was originally going to do that in today’s post...but...but...I thought I’d make a quick digression and explain how the Alvarado Hotel and the Depot, both works of great art, came to be destroyed.
As I understand it, the hotel and the depot were the property of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. For many years the hotel, the depot, and the railway were one big happy family. But, then came the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, the hotel was in disrepair. And the Railway had no particular motivation to maintain it. Simply put, railway companies wanted out of the passenger business.
And to give them their due, the companies had a point. Passengers are not an easy kind of cargo. You have to keep them reasonably comfortable and you have to get them to their destinations more or less on-time. Also, they complain a lot.
About the Videos: Something very different today. On the Library of Congress site I found two videos of President Theodore Roosevelt visiting Albuquerque in 1916. And, guess what, Teddy came to the city via the Alvarado and the Depot. (These are presumed to be in the public domain.)
In any case, you can see him here both at the Alvarado and in the city itself.
I’ll try to post the videos themselves here. But, if you can’t get them to work, the links for these two are “TR's reception in Albuquerque, N.M., 1916” at https://www.loc.gov/item/mp76000229/ and “TR In New Mexico” at https://www.loc.gov/item/mp76000168/
Compare all that to, say, a few tons of pig iron or freshly dug coal. They don’t mind if you park ‘em on a spur line for a couple of days. You don’t have to worry about them going to the dining car and kvetching when the food isn’t hot. If they arrive a little late, or early, well, the shipper may be bit peeved, but it won’t be a complete disaster.
So, the railway companies had serious motivations to *not* seek out passengers. That meant that if they could get rid of railway hotels, like the Alvarado, well, that would be great. (As an aside, there was actually a planned campaign to alienate potential customers, so they wouldn’t come back. I’m old enough to remember when it all came down. To say that some of the trips I took in the late 1960s -- when there was no dining car and no food, and the wheels squeaked like a banshee for hundreds of miles, and the cars were brutally cold or brutally hot, and your luggage vanished without a hint of apology--were pretty close to low level torture.)
Anyway, in 1970, the railway announced plans to close down the Depot and the Alvarado. Albuquerque residents and the city government scrambled to find some way to save the historic building. But nothing came of it, partly because of insufficient will on the part of the City. But, money also played a role. The Railway offered to sell the buildings to the City...at a price of $1.5 million....which was way, Way, WAY above the “appraised value of $600,000.” (1) This looks a little like deliberate overcharging to make certain that the City wouldn’t or couldn’t save the buildings.
Also, unless I’m misreading the news reports of the time, there seems to be something a little defiant about the statements on the topic coming out of the railway company about its intentions -- a hint, maybe, of Dagny Taggart telling off the bureaucrats, journalists, and whim-worshippers in Atlas Shrugged.(2)
Thus it was that, later that year, down came the hotel and the depot. For quite a while afterwards, the space was used as an unpaved parking lot. I suppose the Railway company made money from that, but I wonder how much.
I guess the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe thought they were making a sound, calculated, and rational decision. And, yet...yet...I can’t help feeling that the whole business could have been handled a great deal better. If the company had been willing to compromise, or the City had been a bit more forceful, perhaps the magnificent Alvarado and Depot could have remained...and both city and company could have profited.(3)
Anyway, that’s the sad story. But stay tuned. Next time we finally get into the Museum.
Footnotes:
1. The Alvarado Hotel, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarado_Hotel#cite_note-14
2. See, for example, the article “The Alvarado Hotel,” John P. Conron, John P. (May–June 1970). New Mexico Architecture Magazine, https://wheelsmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-Alvarado-Hotel.pdf
3. As an experiment, I just asked ChapCPT for options...for ways, that is, that the railroad and/or the city could have made money by keeping the Alvarado and Depot in tact. It came back with no less than six options, ranging from turning the buildings into a “mixed-use facility, incorporating boutique shops, art galleries, restaurants, or even office spaces,” to turning it into event space for “hosted events, conventions, and weddings.”
Somehow those strike me as being a bit better than an unpaved parking lot.
Copyright©2025 Michael Jay Tucker
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