Ten stories of earthtone stucco rise above you here, marking Hotel Andaluz, which first opened its doors on June 9, 1939 as the Hilton Hotel. Imagine this ten-story, 160-room building arriving as New Mexico’s first modern high-rise and one of the first in Conrad Hilton’s hotel chain — in fact the first Hilton-branded hotel outside the state of Texas. Architect Anton F. Korn wrapped it in New Mexico Territorial Revival style: earthtone stucco, brick coping along the roofline, and southwest-style woodwork and furnishings.
After a new Hilton opened near the Big I in 1971 the older hotel was sold in 1974 and rebranded as the Hotel Plaza; it was sold again in 1981 and closed before later renovations. The property earned recognition as the Old Hilton Hotel on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1983 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and it’s an Albuquerque historic landmark. It reopened under its current name in 2009 and joined the Curio Collection by Hilton in 2019.
Notice the brick coping tracing the roofline and the southwest-style woodwork framing the entrance, details that have watched over this corner since 1939.