place

Berthold Spitz House

Houses in Albuquerque, New MexicoHouses on the National Register of Historic Places in New MexicoIndividually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National RegisterNational Register of Historic Places in Albuquerque, New MexicoNew Mexico Registered Historic Place stubs
New Mexico State Register of Cultural PropertiesPrairie School architecture in New Mexico
Berthold Spitz House
Berthold Spitz House

The Berthold Spitz House is a historic house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is significant as the city's best example of Prairie School architecture. It was built around 1910 by Berthold Spitz (c. 1860–1933) and his wife Fannie Schutz Spitz (1873–1943). Berthold was a German Jewish merchant who was born in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) and immigrated to Albuquerque around 1880. He ran a successful dry goods business and made a few forays into local politics before being appointed as the city's postmaster in 1921. Fannie grew up in El Paso and was notable as the inventor of the first commercial pine nut shelling machine. She was described by the Albuquerque Journal as "the greatest known authority on the piñon nut and its possibilities". The house was designed by Henry C. Trost of the El Paso firm of Trost & Trost. It was listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1975 and the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.The house is a two-story masonry building with a broadly overhanging hipped roof. The design is relatively simple and lacks the heavy ornamentation of some of Trost's other Prairie houses, including his own residence in El Paso. The Spitz House has stuccoed walls with dark wooden trim around the casement windows and a projecting sill course on the second floor. The front elevation is symmetrical, with a hipped entrance porch, while the rear has an asymmetrical two-story projection and less regular window patterns.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Berthold Spitz House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Berthold Spitz House
10th Street Northwest, Albuquerque Downtown Albuquerque

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Berthold Spitz HouseContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 35.088611111111 ° E -106.65777777778 °
placeShow on map

Address

10th Street Northwest
87102 Albuquerque, Downtown Albuquerque
New Mexico, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Berthold Spitz House
Berthold Spitz House
Share experience

Nearby Places

Downtowner Motor Inn
Downtowner Motor Inn

The Downtowner Motor Inn is a historic motel on Central Avenue (former U.S. Route 66) in Downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. Opened in 1965, it was originally part of the Downtowner chain, which operated economy-priced motels in city centers across the U.S. In 1972, the motel was sold and became a Quality Inn. It has also operated as a Ramada and most recently as the Hotel Blue, which closed in 2017. In 2020, it was announced that the motel would be renovated by the Los Angeles-based ARRIVE Hotels & Restaurants to reopen in 2022. These plans were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and ARRIVE Hotels was purchased by a different hotel company, Palisociety, in 2021. Renovation work began in early 2022.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 as "an exceptional example of a mid-20th-century motel on Route 66 in Albuquerque."The motel was designed by James L. Burke of the Memphis, Tennessee-based firm of Burke & Beaty Architects. It is a six-story building of reinforced concrete construction and is an example of International Style architecture with an emphasis on simple rectangular forms. It has 145 rooms, which are accessed in typical motel fashion via open-air exterior walkways with metal railings rather than a central lobby. Elevators are located in a breezeway near the center of each floor. The ground floor has scalloped concrete portes-cochères on the south and west elevations, facing Central Avenue and 8th Street, respectively. The south elevation includes stylized Southwestern symbols cast into the exterior concrete panels, which was unusual for International Style architecture. These elements have been obscured and damaged by new exterior trim which was glued onto the panels during a 2007–08 remodeling. ARRIVE Hotels reportedly planned to restore the exterior of the building closer to its original appearance.