Old Town: Four Hundred Years at the Plaza

The plaza at Old Town Albuquerque is roughly three hundred by two hundred feet, shaded by cottonwood trees, surrounded by adobe buildings in various stages of authenticity, and anchored at the north end by the church of San Felipe de Neri. On weekend afternoons, Pueblo artisans sell jewelry and pottery under the portal of the church. Tour groups move through from the parking lots on the south end. There are restaurants serving chile. It looks like a place that has been very carefully preserved.

Some of it has been. San Felipe de Neri was originally built in seventeen oh six and rebuilt in its current form in seventeen ninety-three, making it one of the oldest continuously operating churches in New Mexico. The plaza itself, laid out in the traditional Spanish colonial grid pattern, dates to the seventeen oh six founding charter.

What has changed beyond recognition is the surrounding city. When the railroad arrived in eighteen eighty and established New Town two miles east, it transferred the city's economic gravity and left Old Town to age in place. For decades, Old Town was genuinely old, genuinely neglected, a Spanish colonial remnant in a city that had moved on. Then in the mid-twentieth century, it was recognized as a tourist asset. The adobe was restored and in some cases reconstructed. Shops moved in. The Albuquerque Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and the Explora science center built a museum district on the adjacent blocks.

The Tiwa-speaking peoples who lived in this valley before seventeen oh six are not absent from Old Town's story. Their pueblos were here first. The Spanish colonial grid was built on their territory. The artisans selling at the portal of San Felipe de Neri are their descendants.