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Places build up history over time, just as much as they change over time. When looking at old photographs of the University, maybe it’s hard to imagine that the images even depict the same place at all.
I’m looking at two photos as I type this: One is of Hodgin Hall, the oldest building on campus, and the other is an aerial photograph of UNM taken in the late 1950s. Hodgin Hall appears as it did before its remodel into the Pueblo Revival style, and looks to be a dour East Coast building with slanted roofs and square windows with rounded tops. There is nothing around Hodgin Hall except a lone cottonwood tree.
The other photograph displays the layout of the University well enough, but trouble arises when I mentally compare the map to the modern University.
Hodgin Hall is right where it’s supposed to be, along with Mitchell Hall and Scholes Hall. Though bizarrely, the tiny Terrace Street that runs between the modern day Art Annex and Sara Reynolds Hall before letting out onto Central Avenue appears to have once been a real street, terminating at the front of Scholes.
However, what’s missing is what makes it hard to compare the two campuses. There isn’t a Mesa Vista Hall, a Woodward Hall, or a Student Union Building in the old photograph. Nor is there a giant plaza near Zimmerman Library. All are taken up by what looks like a football field. The education department building is also absent. The photo is blurry enough that I can’t tell what replaces it, but it looks like a series of either long square buildings arranged in no particular order, or very tall, really impressive hedges.
There is also no nature fountain because Yale runs straight through the University, which is probably the most bizarre feature.
Modern students, particularly those who drive, will know that Yale enters from Central, terminates at the Yale Mall to the east of the Daily Lobo offices in Marron Hall, and then doesn’t pick up again until Dane Smith on the other side of campus. It then resumes and continues north into the city. Still, if you’re not going to let a lack of road stop you from driving the old Yale route, remember that the reasons cars can’t just drive right through campus today are several.
First, if one did lurch a car over the curb to do a nice drive through campus, the crowds of students might cause some difficulty, not to mention the metal posts to prevent just such an attempt. The nature fountain is a challenging obstacle, though it can be circumnavigated; where it gets tricky is the Center of the Universe sculpture that effectively creates a bottleneck between itself and Mitchell Hall.
If the driver were careful and had a small enough vehicle, they would end up at the Duck Pond. However, that would put our poor driver into two-and-a-half feet of water, which (I have on good authority) is not good for transmissions.
It’s hard to believe that there was a time when the Duck Pond didn’t exist. It is probably the most enchanting feature of our campus and is the popular hangout of many students between classes. But, as the photograph shows, there was a point in time when Yale ran through the University and where the majority of the pond is was a building called Yatoka Hall.
Yatoka was originally a male dormitory, though it served several other functions during its stint on campus. The pictures of it I found online show a rather shabby and ill-taken-care-of Pueblo Revival building with a Volkswagen Beetle-ish car in front of it.
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There are very few other good pictures of this building, but it shows a small place — hardly large enough for a dorm — surrounded by dirt. Yatoka Hall was not a pretty building, and eventually it gave way to progress — though a much more scenic progress than we usually think of when we hear that word.
When the Alvarado Hotel was demolished to make way for a parking lot, there was a huge public outcry. Sure, they’ve done a good job remaking it for the Alvarado Transportation Center in Downtown Albuquerque, but they couldn’t bring the building back. It was a great tragedy.
But when Yatoka Hall was demolished, who can say it wasn’t an improvement? The Duck Pond is a far better feature than the dust-surrounded building that these old photos show, and do we really want Yale to run straight through UNM? Probably not.
There might have been people who had good memories of the place, but they’re all regulated to the ghostly past of building most don’t even remember. And if you do try to imagine its long-gone H-shape at its former location, you’ll have to set it slightly lower than ground level, standing in two and a half feet of water and surrounded by ducks.
