Rosenwald Retail Building
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Description: Rosenwald Building
Other Names: none
Address: Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, New Mexico
Type: commercial: retail store
Original Client: Rosenwald Bros.
Historic Inventory: National Register number 78001806; on New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties
Date: 1909-1910
Condition: extant
Architect or Firm: Henry C. Trost
Associated Architect or Firm: Trost & Trost
Contractors:
Dimensions and Orientation: three stories, 75 feet x 110 feet 3 inches; faces North
Budget/Cost:
Foundation: concrete
Wall Materials: brick
Roofing Materials: composition
Other Materials Used: interior floor are poured concrete; original interior partitions are hollow gypsum tile.
Remodeling and Additions: side windows have been filled in
Present Owner: Rosenwald Brothers, a corporation; 2015 REA -Real Estate Advisors headed by Tom Jenkins property manager and the city has ownership
Location of Drawings: El Paso Public Library: (F-1) 20 sheets, ink on linen plans, including elevations, dated 1909.
Location of Documentary Photographs: UTEP Special Collections
Bibliography: Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht, Henry C. Trost: Architect of the Southwest(El Paso: El Paso Public Library Association, 1981), page 102
(2) El Paso Herald August 27, 1910 page 11
Remarks: Notation by El Paso Library cataloguer: 11-18-78 copy of plans made for Jack Pickel, P.O. Box 1279, Albuq., NM, 87103.
The Rosenwald Building was Albuquerque’s first reinforced concrete structure, and was billed at the opening as the first fireproof structure in the state. The building was originally designed to carry two more additional stories; mention of the possibility of adding them is made in a lease agreement as late as 1935.
In 1921, a fire in a mattress in the third floor caused extensive smoke and water damage to the entire building, necessitating a total renovation which took six years to complete. Part of the renovation included the addition of a pedestrian entrance directly off Central Ave to a staircase leading to the second floor. McLellan’s Stores, a New York based sundry retail chain, took its first lease on a portion of the ground floor in 1927, and in succeeding years occupied more and more of the building, until they took over the entire structure in 1950.
During McLellan’s tenancy of the building, the second and third floor were increasingly converted in office use; during the Second World Ware they housed a unit of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, later became real estate, law and general offices. McLellan left the building in 1977; the lease and purchase option is now held by Jack Pickel.
Prepared for the El Paso Public Library by Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.