The UNM Alumni Association will celebrate the grand reopening of Hodgin Hall, now the UNM Alumni Center, with an evening of music, food and history.
Nearly 120 years ago, Hodgin Hall was the entirety of UNM. It stood isolated on a hill two miles from downtown Albuquerque and housed classrooms, faculty and administrative offices.
“It stood all alone for about eight years,” said Karen Abraham, UNM Alumni Association’s director. “Anything that was happening at the University was happening here.”
UNM’s first class of 108 students arrived on horseback or on “Jumbo” — the University’s horse-drawn cart, she said.
The renovation cost $2.8 million, and Abraham said $1.7 million was used for construction and renovations while the rest of the funds paid architects and went to fees associated with the renovation. The funding for the renovation came from a $1.4 million legislative appropriation, a $1 million University bond and roughly $400,000 from the UNM Alumni Association.
“This renovation was needed to make the space more functional,” Abraham said. “It needed to be brought up to the current fire code and to be made ADA-compliant as well.”
Improvements include a new roof, additional restrooms, a gallery and library of alumni art and publications, new lighting and electrical improvements and refurbished floors.
The basement was also transformed to a garden level with up-to-date meeting rooms.
More renovations to the Hall are scheduled to for the future.
Abraham said two more phases are needed to complete renovations to the hall and to Tight Grove, the grove of trees and grass surrounding a Lobo sculpture on the southwest corner of main campus.
“We need to replace the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system here,” Abraham said. “It’s going to be expensive, but we need to do it. Currently, half of the building uses refrigerated air and the rest is on a swamp cooler. We need to renovate the windows and re-stucco the building as well.”
Estimates for the second phase of renovations total more than $3 million.
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Phase three will focus on restoring Tight Grove.
“We are hoping to find a donor who will help us install a new irrigation system and lighting,” Abraham said. “It’s a beautiful place that has been with us since the beginning of the last century. We’d like to see it transformed into a space that can be used for reflection.”
The current renovation wasn’t the first for the building. Between 1906 and 1909 Hodgin Hall had its roof replaced and was refinished as a pueblo-style building. Rodey Hall was also built to the north of Hodgin.
“In my mind, Hodgin Hall has watched the growth of the University for more than a century,” Abraham said. “UNM has had a huge part to play in the history of New Mexico. It was the dream of many New Mexicans to have an education system, and UNM became its cornerstone. This is where it started.”
Hodgin Hall was in use as a classroom until 1971, according to an Alumni Association brochure. Over the years it has been home to the anthropology and geography departments, the college of education and the theater department. It also housed the University administration until Scholes Hall was built.
Rodey Hall was demolished in 1971 to make room form the Redondo Loop. During that decade, Hodgin Hall was also on the chopping block.
“This was to accommodate the engineering department’s expansion,” Alumni Association spokeswoman Charlene Chavez said. “I remember having classes in Hodgin Hall. No one wanted to see it demolished, and thankfully several alumni got together and worked very hard to keep that from happening.”
The second major renovation took place in the late 1970s.
“Pigeons had made their homes in the roofs and the second floor was covered in pigeon poo,” Chavez said. “Thankfully I wasn’t here to see that. But the efforts to renovate it and save it from the wrecking ball that took Rodey Hall took care of that. I remember being a staff member here when Hodgin reopened in 1983.”
