A1.Why did the Jesuits remove the church’s santos?
In 1868 Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy’s orders were to transform the Spanish Church into the American Church. For that reason the five Italian Jesuits he assigned to San Felipe Parish in Albuquerque removed New Mexican santos from the church.

A2. How did early Italian immigrants contribute to Albuquerque architecture?
Italian immigrants built many of the city’s premier buildings. In 1886 Gaetano Palladino and Michael Berardinelli built the first Bernalillo County Courthouse. They also built the ornate, brownstone Nicholas T. Armijo Building. Luigi Puccini, cousin of the famed composer, is responsible for the Puccini building, now home to both the El Rey Theater and Puccini’s Golden West Saloon. In 1927 Oreste Bachechi built both the Savoy Hotel in 1905 and in 1927 the KiMo Theater.

A3. How did the former university hangout Okie’s get started?
 In 1935 it was the Dixie Barbecue. Later it became known as Oklahoma Joe’s Genuine Pit Bar-B-Que and then as Okie’s, a bar for students.

A4. Why was the KiMo Theater unusual?
 When the KiMo Theater opened on September 19, 1927, it was one of the nation’s first theaters with a cantilevered balcony, which didn’t require view-blocking support beams. And its interior and exterior Pueblo Deco design was also unusual. The KiMo offered a soda fountain, a curio shop and later on, a restaurant, the Kiva-Hi.

A5. What African American determined the location of UNM?
Fred Simms, a black law clerk in the Rodey Law Firm, took notes for a committee created by the Territorial Legislature to choose the site of the university. When the committee vote was tied between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Simms was asked to cast the deciding vote.

A6. How did the KiMo Theater get its name?
In 1927 Pablo Abeita, former governor of Isleta, won a naming contest with “KiMo,” meaning “king of its kind."

A7. What was Albuquerque’s first bottled water?
In the 1880s Adolph Harsch opened a bakery and then found a prosperous sideline bottling and selling water from Coyote Springs in the Manzano Mountains. The water had a heavy mineral taste, but locals liked it as a whisky chaser. In the 1930s the Albuquerque Ice Co. carbonated the Coyote Springs water, which helped the flavor. 

A8. What was Albuquerque’s first hotel?
In the 1870s John Murphy built the Atlantic and Pacific, expecting the railroad of the same name to come through. In 1875 Tom Post bought the hotel, changed its name to Post’s Exchange Hotel and made it profitable before selling it in 1879. Post also ran a store and operated a ferry on the Rio Grande.  

A9. What early hotel was a communications center?
In 1876 Maj. Melchior Werner opened the Centennial Hotel west of the plaza. The Centennial also housed the post office (Werner was postmaster) and the telegraph office after that service arrived on February 12, 1876.  

A10. What two hotels became centers of activity after 1900?
The Alvarado Hotel, completed in 1902 at a cost of $200,000, was considered the finest railroad hotel of its time. Charles F. Whittlesey designed the California Mission-style building, which featured towers, balconies, and arcades supported by arches. It became the society center of the city. The railroad tore down the Alvarado on February 13, 1970, but the city’s transportation center echoes its design at Central and First Streets.
In 1923 local investors built the elegant, eight-story Franciscan Hotel at Sixth and Central to attract convention business. Henry C. Trost designed the building in Pueblo Rococo style. It was leveled in 1972; the site is a parking lot. 

A11. Did Conrad Hilton get his start here?
No. In 1939 hotelier and New Mexico native Conrad Hilton built his fourth hotel on the site of a livery stable at Second and Copper. He spared no expense to make it “the finest in the Southwest.” He sold it in the late 1960s. It survives as La Posada. 

A12. Who was Albuquerque’s first mayor?
Captain Martín Hurtado was appointed by the governor in 1706 to serve as the first alcalde mayor. He was also commander of the ten soldiers protecting the settlement. Hurtado apportioned land among founders. 

A13. After incorporation, what ethnic group produced Albuquerque’s first and second elected mayors?
Henry Jaffa, 40, became Albuquerque’s first elected mayor on July 4, 1885. This followed the incorporation of New Town a month earlier. Jaffa, a businessman, was also the city’s first Jewish mayor. The second mayor was Mike Mandell, another Jewish merchant. 

A14. What post did renowned environmentalist Aldo Leopold hold in Albuquerque?
In 1918 he was secretary of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. In this post he prompted the City Commission to seek donations of land along the Rio Grande for a park that became the zoo.  

A15. When did the city zoo begin?
In 1923 the zoo began with a pair of mountain lions captured in the mountains. They were housed in cages at the waterworks on Broadway and Tijeras. In August 1927 the zoo was moved to Rio Grande Park. 

A16. What financial debt endowed the Rio Grande Zoo?
In 1925 Mayor Clyde Tingley suggested that a financially strapped circus settle its debts around town by giving the city some animals. In this way, the city received two African lions, a camel, an ostrich and a gorilla. 

A17. What is the connection between actor Douglas Fairbanks and the zoo?
Fairbanks donated Friday, a spider monkey that had starred with him in the movie, “Mr. Robinson Crusoe.” Mayor Clyde Tingley donated his chimp, Suzy Q, to keep Friday company. 

A18. When did the NAACP begin in Albuquerque?
Albuquerque had one of the nation’s earliest chapters. The Albuquerque Independent Society organized in 1912 and was renamed the NAACP a year later. 

A19. How did Albuquerque Indian School begin?
Albuquerque Indian School was established in 1881 in Los Duranes as the United States Indian Training School. Its purpose was to remove Indian children from reservation culture, educate them, and culturally assimilate them into American culture. 

A20. When did Apaches and Navajos begin raiding Albuquerque-area pueblos?
Raiding occurred as early as 1450 and continued for nearly four centuries through the 1870s. In the 1700s, Pueblo Indians and Spanish settlers began to cooperate in pursuing these raiders. 

A21. What authority declared Indians were entitled to liberty and property?
Spanish law and tradition recognized property rights of sedentary native groups. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it reaffirmed that all peoples of Mexico, including Indians, were citizens. 

A22. When did the U.S. government recognize Indian citizenship?
Following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Congress denied Indians the citizenship conferred under Mexican law. In 1924, four years after women won the right to vote, Congress declared Indians to be citizens of the U.S. and therefore eligible to vote. In 1948 New Mexico enabled Indian voting rights. 

A23. How many Pueblo Indians were in Albuquerque in 1706?
None. In the 1540s the Spaniards found several pueblos when they arrived in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. By the 1580s many had been abandoned, and after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, returning Spaniards found the remaining pueblos abandoned. Their occupants had moved or fled. 

A24. What was the impact on Albuquerque of European diseases?
The impact was devastating. In 1805, 87 percent of 6,930 Albuquerque residents had contracted smallpox at some time. In 1810, after a cure was discovered, Dr. Cristóbal Larrañaga began vaccinating Albuquerqueans. 

A25. When did the first Indian hospital open in Albuquerque?
The Indian Sanitorium was built by the Indian Service in 1934 for $500,000 and provided free treatment to Indian TB patients. The Bernalillo County Indian Hospital opened next door in 1954. 

A26. When was the first All Indian Pueblo Council?
In 1922 the All Indian Pueblo Council organized.  

A27. When did the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center first open in Albuquerque?
In 1976 the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center opened to benefit Pueblo people and educate the community about Pueblo culture. Its main building was modeled after Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. It includes a museum, arts and crafts market, living arts programs, education programs and restaurant. 

A28. What Nobel Prize winner has ties to Albuquerque?
Ralph Bunche was the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As a child he lived in Albuquerque from 1914 until 1917 and attended Fourth Ward School (later Lew Wallace Elementary). He credits his third-grade teacher, Miss Belle Sweet, with teaching him the basic of concepts of peace. His grandmother is buried here.

A29. What famous African American musician grew up in Albuquerque?
John Lewis was reared in Albuquerque, attended Eugene Field Elementary School and Lincoln Junior High.  He led The Modern Jazz Quartet.

A30. What successful African American publisher attended UNM?
Ed Lewis, publisher of Essence Magazine, credits his years in Albuquerque with giving him the inspiration for his magazine. He has made significant donations to the UNM Law School.

A31. What successful African American businesswoman was a mentor to other women?
Edith English operated a catering business for 50 years, educating many other African American women about entrepreneurship and the food business. 

A32. How many of Albuquerque’s founders were of African descent?
Of the 22 heads of households that originally settled, five were identified as Negro or Mulato. 

A33. What Buffalo soldier improved the appearance of Central Avenue?
John Collins, a Buffalo soldier, moved to Albuquerque from Silver City in the late 1860s. He is known for planting trees along Railroad Avenue (Central) in the 1870s.  

A34. How did basketball begin at UNM?
Before New Mexico was a state, UNM women had two basketball teams – the Olympians and Gladiators. They played in knee-length bloomers, heavy stockings and big collars with bows.

A35. What’s the Home Circle Club?
It’s one of the oldest women’s organizations still active in Albuquerque, founded in 1914 by African-American women.  

A36. Who was the first African-American hired to teach in APS?
Loretta Loftus submitted applications to APS every year beginning in 1949 before she was finally hired in 1954. 

A37. Who was the first woman regent at UNM?
In 1921 Julia Brown Asplund, a librarian and suffragette, was appointed to the UNM Board of Regents. She and her colleague Wilma Loy Shelton persuaded regents to build a library before an engineering building. 

A38. Who was the first female district judge in New Mexico?
In 1971 Gov. Bruce King appointed Judge Mary Walters. 

A39. Who was the first woman to serve on the City Council?
Sondra L. Cohn West was the council’s first woman in 1974.

A40. What Albuquerque mayor was not really a mayor?
Everyone called Clyde Tingley “Mayor,” but he was actually the three-time president of the City Commission in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s.

A41. Who was the first African American to be elected to the Legislature?
It was Lenton Malry, who represented Albuquerque from 1968-1978. He was also the city’s first African American school principal in 1964 and the county’s first African American commissioner in 1980.  

A42. Albuquerque was one of the first cities to pass which civil-rights law?
On Feb. 12, 1952, after heated debate, Albuquerque became one of the first U.S. cities to pass an ordinance barring discrimination in public places because of race, creed or ancestry.  

A43. Who was the first African-American housing developer?
Henry Outley, trustee of the Fraternal Aid Society, filed on platted land in 1938. Virginia Outley Glover Ballou subsequently built the East End Addition, a housing development of 22 homes, between 1950 and 1955. The addition continues today, with some of the original owners still living in their homes.

A44. Was the Ku Klux Klan ever present in Albuquerque?
On September 5, 1923, the KKK staged a cross burning east of UNM. The cross was reportedly 25 feet tall.

A45. Who was the all-time greatest athlete ever produced by New Mexico?
Owen Smaulding, who moved to Albuquerque from Clayton, N.M. was named the most outstanding athlete in the United States in 1915.  He participated in track, football, tennis, baseball and race-car driving. And in 1937 he managed a team called the Collegians and later the St. Louis Blues, playing in the Negro Baseball League. He alternated pitching with Satchel Page.

A46. How did UNM athletes become Lobos?
In 1920 student journalist George S. Bryan proposed the Spanish word for wolf. “The Lobo is respected for his cunning, feared for his prowess and is the leader of the pack,” he wrote in an editorial of the student newspaper.

A47. What street in Albuquerque was originally named Railroad Avenue?
Central Avenue. The name was changed in 1912. 

A48. How did Coal, Copper, Gold, Lead, and Silver get these street names?
When the railroad arrived in 1880, Col. Walter Marmon, a civil engineer hired to design and lay out the streets of the new town along the tracks, named five streets after minerals, apparently hoping Albuquerque would prosper from mining. 

A49. What two early streets were named for children?
After the railroad came in 1880, Col. Walter Marmon, a civil engineer who named other streets for minerals, named two streets for his children – Edith and Walter. 

A50. What is the name of the current street that originally was named New York?
Lomas Blvd.