Hotel Alvarado was constructed in 1902 and demolished in 1970 despite local efforts to preserve it. The hotel and depot complex, shown in a 1908 photograph looking west, was designed by Santa Fe Railroad architect Charles Whittlesey in California Mission Revival style. The hotel was named for Hernando de Alvarado of the Coronado Expedition of 1540. It was the site of the Fred Harvey Restaurant and Indian Building, and Mary J. Colter designed the interior using regional artifacts and Indian motifs. One of the nation's most distinctive railroad hotels, The Alvarado was for several decades the social and political center of Albuquerque. One affectionate traveler called it "one of the last of the Harvey Houses and the most beautiful of them all, with old gray stucco and the turquoise trim, its cool courts and shady patios inviting siesta, its Indian museum packed with old Pueblo artifacts, its slow heartbeat of the coming and going of the Santa Fe trains."
