John Gaw Meem's Scholes Hall, the historic administration building of the University of New Mexico, is the Pueblo Revival landmark you have reached on the main campus in Albuquerque. This is the first of many buildings that Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem designed for the university, and it helped cement the Pueblo Revival style as the campus's "official" architecture. Built in 1934–36 with Public Works Administration funding, Scholes Hall is regarded as one of Meem's most notable designs and is listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties and the National Register of Historic Places.
It bears the name of France Vinton Scholes (1897–1979), an American scholar and historian noted for his research on the history of New Spain, especially Spanish Yucatan and the Southwestern United States. The building was the first of three major UNM buildings raised in the 1930s under President James Fulton Zimmerman (1887–1944); Meem had been commissioned in 1933 after an introduction by Board of Regents member John J. Dempsey. Imagine the university's pressing need for space that shaped this moment—stone, adobe forms and civic ambition funded by the PWA.
Meem's stone and adobe forms here became the pattern for the rest of the main campus.