It was something he had only heard about, but he wasn't sure how to get there.
It wasn't what he expected either - the animals were bigger, and there were more of them.
Patrick Mullen said before he entered the house on the corner of Campus Boulevard and Lafayette Place, its contents might better benefit biology students. The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology has no need for the mounted animals - it has taken almost everything it needs.
The Daily Lobo invited Mullen to scope out the Hibben House on Tuesday.
Once inside, Mullen found himself checking the dates on paintings, spears, safari hats and inquiring about everything he was familiar with. He tried on one of Frank Hibben's safari hats and said he felt adventurous already. Marilyn Hibben, Frank's widow, immediately caught on to Mullen's interest in anthropology and archaeology and began storytelling.
He got the feeling he had walked into a museum.
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The sheep heads on the adobe block wall caught his attention. Not because Frank gathered the blocks from Pueblo ruins scattered near a highway in the 1930s to build two walls of the house, but because Mullen has been reading about North-American mountain sheep. The 3,000 square-foot house is an artifact because of how and when it was built.
Mullen turned the corner and found what he was looking for - a bison mounted in a room where Frank used to sit and talk with students. Mullen does research on bison tooth enamel, but this one wasn't showing its teeth.
His excitement rose when a bison skull was brought out from storage into the Anthropology Annex - it was one Frank found in 1940 in Alaska.
"It's part of UNM archaeological history, and we have some sort of obligation to see it," Mullen said.
Nora Chino-Wilson, 78, is part of that history. She has lived among the animal heads, gorilla paintings and Frank's books since 1944. After being taken from the Albuquerque Indian School when she was 17, she started work as Frank's housekeeper.
She stays in an apartment in the basement of the house. She walked out from her apartment as Mullen stood in the hippo room, which fits the dimensions of a Spanish chapel. He didn't make it to Frank's bathroom, where the windows fit Spanish design, or to see the metates, flat stones used to grind corn, that line the driveway.
There's a relationship between what students learn in class and what is in the Hibben House. Frank loved the students, and he wanted to have a place for them. There are things that are hard to come by in Frank's house - an encounter with Neil Armstrong, two grand slams, the world's largest leopard and fish larger than any Mullen has ever caught.
The Anthropology Department doesn't have a place where students can lounge and talk.
And still, some students do not know the house is meant for them.
Sources
Marilyn Hibben, Frank Hibben's widow
John Maes, assistant treasurer for UNM Foundation
Garth Bawden, director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
Patrick Mullen, UNM anthropology student
Nora Chino-Wilson, housekeeper
